City of Strangers: A Novel [Paperback]

Ian MacKenzie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2009

Faith, family, and the weight of history intersect in this remarkable debut from a rising literary talent

A cold, gray Sunday dawns on New York City to find Paul Metzger trudging through the winter streets to visit his past. He goes first to see his estranged, decades-older half-brother; then his dying father, whose notorious early life still haunts his children; and finally the ex-wife he cannot help but continue to love. But a fourth encounter-violent, unexpected-sets in motion a chain of events that will forever change Paul's life, as well as the family he's struggled so long to understand.

Ian MacKenzie's stirring and lyrical debut is a story of a family inalterably fractured by its past, of a man who refuses to believe that what is done cannot be undone, and of a world that insists- catastrophically, in the end-otherwise.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A novel as grim as it is extraordinary, MacKenzie's debut tells the story of two estranged brothers at odds on how to view their Nazi-sympathizer father. Paul Metzger has troubles: a struggling writer with a dying father and an intense longing for his recently ex-wife, he's also estranged from his much older brother. In what ends up being more than a random act of violence, Paul is pummeled while trying to stop two men from assaulting a boy outside his Brooklyn apartment. Shortly after, Paul's father, Frank—an early Nazi sympathizer who retains some notoriety decades later—dies, and Paul receives a lucrative offer to write a book about his father. Meanwhile, Paul's hedge fund brother, Ben, under investigation for insider trading, faces prison time, and one of the goons who beat Paul pursues him across the city. All of this leads to unexpected turns that shed light on the major characters. MacKenzie sets up a New York rampant with alienation and misunderstanding, and his visceral narrative, powered by taut prose and braced with sturdy philosophical and psychological underpinnings, is a winner. (July)
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Review

" In City of Strangers, Ian MacKenzie tells, in direct, beautiful, and convincing language, a story that examines the surface tensions and deeper sources of pressure in today's uncertain world. City of Strangers exhibits a maturity well beyond the writer's years. He is a talent to watch."
-Uzodinma Iweala, author of the national bestseller Beasts of No Nation

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 211 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); Original edition (June 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143115782
• ISBN-13: 978-0143115786
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,017,077 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars When a book with promise goes off course..., February 28, 2010

By 

Larry Hoffer (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City of Strangers: A Novel (Paperback)

When good books go bad...this book started out really great. Paul Metzger is having some relationship issues: he's estranged from his half-brother, his father (a former Nazi) is about to die, and he's still trying to get over his ex-wife. An editor is trying to persuade him to write his father's life story. And then, when he arrives at his apartment building one night, he comes upon two thugs beating up a young Arabic boy and gets involved, winding up beaten up himself.

This is about where the book starts to go off track. Instead of solely focusing on the relationships, of Paul's struggle with his half-brother to come to terms with their father's impending death--and his legacy--the book turns to the aborted violence Paul gets unwittingly involved in. The last 50 or so pages of the book seemed as if they belonged somewhere else. A shame, really, because Mackenzie would have had a whopper of a story otherwise.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "...dinosaurs, his own heart, Russia..." --Take Notice of Ian Mackenzie!, July 5, 2009

By 

CURIOUS "peoples" (Miami, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of Strangers: A Novel (Paperback)

I'll try to be brief and concise, like Ian Mackenzie is in his incredibly compelling debut. I can barely recall reading a first novel of a contemporary author that stung me so pointedly by force of both its content AND its language. Take for example:

"He first considered death when he was eight or nine. His mother had already been dead for several years, but she existed in an atmosphere of the abstract, of he things he took on faith but couldn't see or touch - dinosaurs, his own heart, Russia."

Normally I find modern writers who fascinate me with their verbal athletics (Nicholson Baker) OR who compel me purely with their intriguing narrative (Robert Ludlum). Rare is the book or author that writes with such straightforward gusto and delicacy about the whole range of the human condition- sex, love, death, joy, anxiety, religion, fear- while still engaging us in a story that doesn't seem merely a pretext for his own mental masturbation. I'm thrilled to find a young, contemporary author who can dazzle in a modest manner, show his charm and style without banging us over the head with it, and pull the reader along in a classic yarn without making us feel manipulated.

I will stop because I feel that I've already gushed too much or written too self-indulgently, which are precisely the qualities that Ian Mackenzie avoids so gracefully. Read the first chapter, and you will be hooked. That's all. (Waiting for the movie now...)

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disjointed story, July 13, 2009

By 

Debbie's World of Books "Debbie's World of Books" (Union City, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City of Strangers: A Novel (Paperback)

I cannot say I really enjoyed this book although it was not as bad as I was expecting after reading the first few pages. Initially it seemed like MacKenzie was just trying too hard with phrases like "The exhausted, somnambulant city..." and "the cholesterol of automobiles" and was trying to use every long word he could find in the thesaurus. That did improve as the story went on although it still felt disjointed with so many different facets of Paul's life being covered. On one hand the story seems to focus on Paul's relationship with his father, brother and ex-wife and then it seems like MacKenzie felt the need to throw in a suspense story as well. I did not feel like the two meshed well to form a cohesive story.

I wish we had heard a little more from Paul's father on what his thoughts were about his previous devotion to Hitler. I think my favorite part of the book was the funeral in which his father's neighbors stands up to tell his story of how he knew Paul's father.