E.L. Doctorow - World's Fair

Pros: A pleasure to read, captures the wonder of childhood

Cons: ----

Review: Do you remember what childhood was like? Back when the simplest things, like a street cleaner truck, gave you the greatest sense of wonder. E. L. Doctorow does, and he reminds us about it with his wondrous novel, World's Fair.

The novel...

Pros: Doctorow's details are so precise, you'll swear you can taste the penny candy and hear The Green Hornet on the radio

Cons: The slow pace won't hold impatient readers' attention

Review: Imagine taking your late-model time machine for a spin around the block and—BAM!—you land in 1939, a year when America teetered between the dark years of the Great Depression and the equally dark years of the coming world war. You’re in New York...

Pros: Incredibly detailed recreation of 1930s America

Cons: Not much of a story

The Bottom Line: World's Fair succeeds in the aims it sets itself - it recreates the 1930s in astonishing, surprising detail.  it sometimes fails as a story.

Review: E. L. Doctorow's World's Fair is one of those very American novels, a tale of growing up and expanding horizons, of innocence lost as the scales covering the hero's eyes are removed. It is the story of Edgar, a very young boy with a loving, tired mother ...