The Waterworks

I've read almost all of E.L. DOCTOROW'S work and especially enjoyed WELCOME TO HARDTIMES and THE WATERWORKS . The latter book is intriguing and artfully written .

This is one of the few books that I had to read twice to fully understand. The plot is complex and builds upon itself really well. The characters are admirable, and the story is well plotted with the history of New York. An excellent book, I do not think it gets the recognition it deserves. I recommend it to any intellectual fiction reader

E.L. Doctorow's THE WATERWORKS is likely to draw comparisons to Caleb Carr's THE ALIENIST. That would be comparing apples to oranges. Carr's 19th Century novels are wonderfully plot-driven with somewhat rounded characters. Doctorow's mystery is more cerebral: to me the solution was less interesting than how the characters got to it. I'm not going to re-hash the plot; there are several other reviewers who have already done so. What I think needs to be addressed is Doctorow's uncanny ability, no matter which of his historical novels you read, to keep late 20th century values out of the minds and mouths of his characters. This is a temptation that's tough to resist, but Doctorow pulls it off every time, and especially here. Considering the narrator is a 19th Century writer (journalist actually), 20th Century Doctorow must have used supreme discipline to ring true to the era. A great virtuouso performance.Rocco Dormarunno, author of The Five Points

about more than whodunit. E.L. Doctorow is really smart, so he doesn't write the run-of-the-mill mystery. The Waterworks is more about ideas - a society's obligation to confront politcal corruption, ethical questions that arise as humankind's scientific knowledge advances, the ethical obligations of journalists - than the mystery of why a young man has disappeared and if he's dead or alive. Doctorow captures the atmosphere of New York City of the 1870s. His characters, esp. the narrator McIlvaine and the Police Captain, are complicated and intriging.