The City Below [Paperback]

James Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 1996

In this compelling family saga set during a tumultuous era in Boston history, 1960-1984, James Carroll chronicles the lives of two brothers, Nick and Terry Doyle, as they strive to move beyond the strictures of their working-class Charlestown neighborhood to" the city below." Though one brother is drawn to the worlds of politics and real estate and the other to the underworld of organized crime, their fates remain inextricably linked as each struggles to break free of the blood tie holding him captive to the past. As in his previous best-selling novels Mortal Friends and Family Trade, James Carroll seamlessly blends fiction and history to create a gripping tale of family bonds and ethnic violence, vows and betrayals, and political intrigue in the inner sanctums of both church and state.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From the author of Mortal Friends comes a pithy, absorbing and piquantly topical tale again set in a vividly evoked Boston--and again probably bestseller material. Here Carroll writes of a bond between two Irish brothers that is battered by gusts of furious love, guilt, betrayal and jealousy. In 1960, Terry Doyle, a sober older son marked for the priesthood, chooses instead to follow his black friend Bright in campaigning for the Kennedys; he later becomes a successful, though self-loathing, businessman. In his arduous ascent, he leaves behind Charlestown, a fractious working-class enclave that boils with racial hatred during Boston's busing crisis, and his younger brother Nick, a sweet-talking crook who hitches his star to the Mafia. Carroll's superbly detailed vision of Boston is at once elegiac and hard-edged: the tight-knit embrace of Charlestown turns to ugliness as a mob spits on black schoolchildren and rages at Ted Kennedy, their last and most tarnished prince. Occasionally predictable plot turns--twice fueled by the cliche that Catholic guilt insists on destruction as payment for pleasure--mar an otherwise excellent chronicle of three decades during which starry-eyed idealism was brought low by political cynicism and personal greed. Author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In this sequel to Mortal Friends (LJ 4/15/ 78), we again meet the Doyle brothers, who are no longer inseparable. Coming of age in the turbulent 1960s, Nick has turned to organized crime, while Terry has left the seminary for the promised Camelot of the Kennedys. Boston is a maelstrom of religion, politics, bigotry, and racism. Indeed, the city itself is the central character in this Cain-and-Abel saga. Terry returns home often as a Kennedy campaign worker and later as an aide to Senator Teddy, and with each return he clashes with the dark underbelly of Boston and with Nick. From the busing conflicts and church reforms of the 1960s through the longstanding turf wars between the Irish and Italians to the real estate boom of the 1980s, Terry's idealism is sharply at odds with Nick's calculated opportunism. This intense and powerful novel skillfully weaves together history and fiction against the backdrop of one of our country's most famous and beautiful cities. Highly recommended.
--Susan Clifford, Hughes Aircraft Co. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (November 11, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395825229
• ISBN-13: 978-0395825228
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,429,067 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

James Carroll was raised in Washington, D.C., and ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. He served as a chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, then left the priesthood to become a writer. A distinguishedscholar-in-residence at Suffolk University, he is a columnist for the Boston Globe and a regular contributor to the Daily Beast.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Definitely worthwhile, December 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The City Below (Paperback)

James Carroll is such a thoughtful writer that I wish I could give this book a higher rating, but it lacks punch when it comes to the criminal underworld aspect of the story. Carroll certainly knows Boston, especially Boston politics, and he knows the workings of the Cathlolic church inside out, and he captures the relationship between the Doyle brothers in a way that will be recognizable to any Irish American. But the criminal stuff is garden-variety crime fiction, written from a great distance. A pity. This is a good book that could have been a great one with a little more grit.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The City Below - Morality Play in Irish Boston, December 5, 1999

By 

Clif Watts - See all my reviews

This review is from: The City Below (Paperback)

Living in Massachusetts and working in Boston, this book had obvious appeal to me. I think the author takes the reader's knowledge of Boston to be that of a resident, so I think one would like this novel less if one did not know Boston. Another problem is related to the editing of the book. It seems as though the editor may have cut this book down too much. As a result, some characters are not well developed and the story seems to jump ahead too quickly. That said, this book is a real page turner. It combines history and fiction so well, you could easily imagine that the main characters (Nick and Terry Doyle) were indeed real. Furthermore, it contrasts the paths of these two brothers, and in a roundabout manner questions the morality of choices made by both. I would especially recommend this book to anyone that is familiar with Boston or its recent history.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superbly Crafted, December 30, 2003

By 

James W. Christian "scripophilist" (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The City Below (Paperback)

James Carroll's The City Below recounts the saga of the Doyle brothers in four giant steps--1960, 1968, 1975 and 1984. Set mainly in Boston and centered on the working-class Irish of Charlestown, Carroll takes Terry and Nick Doyle along sharply disparate paths from late adolescence, staring at the cracks in the ceiling of the bedroom they share above the family flower shop, to an affluent middle age--Terry in commercial real estate and Nick in organized crime.

Slated for the priesthood, Terry is afflicted by what his friend, Bright McKay, describes as having a need to see himself as a sinner and life's good things as temptations; Terry is a straight arrow, an idealist doomed to disappointment, a trusting friend destined for betrayal, even by those within the Church. Fastening his star to the Kennedy family, Terry rises in the world of politics, ultimately veering in commercial real estate development, envisioning the rehabilitation of Boston's old ethnic quarters.

Nick is as crooked as they come, his style distinguished by a subtlety that would delight Machiavelli. Inheriting the family flower business, Nick sees beyond its commercial expansion to organizing a protection racket for the Flower Exchange. Powerless to compete head-to-head with the Italian Mafia, he crafts a subservient alliance with them, continuously plotting to expel them from Irish turf.

Although Terry perseveres in loving his brother, Nick is as disloyal as he is devious, using Terry at any opportunity to advance his own interests. Like two speeding comets, the enmities of their relationship ultimately collide in a deeply personal way.

This is not a story of Boston, in spite of the fond (or not so fond) memories it may evoke in Townies; it isn't a story of the Catholic faith or the Irish Catholic culture; it isn't a story of politics peculiar to Boston. While these elements enrich the tapestry of the tale, the story clearly transcends these parochial concerns to reveal a growing mastery of the storytelling art that Carroll realizes in his most recent novel, Secret Father.