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31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Jeffrey Ford strikes again, August 17, 2005
Jeffrey Ford is on my short list of authors for whom I'll put down whatever else I'm reading when they have a new book out. His Well-Built City trilogy is fantastic, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque is wonderful, and his short stories are routinely first-rate -- The Fantasy Writer's Assistant is one of my very favorite story collections. That said, I was a little worried about Ford's latest novel, The Girl in the Glass. Published under Harper's suspense imprint, Dark Alley, this novel promised to be less overtly fantastical than Ford's previous outings, which did not bode well, as my taste runs toward fantasy.
I needen't have worried. The Girl in the Glass was a delight from start to finish, or rather a non-stop deluge of delights. I read it in one sitting, then immediately wished I hadn't, because I wanted to keep on reading it. Set in Depression-era New York, the story is narrated by a young Mexican immigrant who's been adopted by a con man and is posing as a Hindu to avoid repatriation -- and to add a bit of the exotic to his mentor's act. The mystery kicks in when, on a con, his mentor sees a ghostly girl in the glass, and makes it his mission to find out who she is and what's going on. As our characters work to unravel the mystery of the girl, we meet a variety of wonderful characters, from carnies to Klansmen, and get embroiled in all sorts of grotesque, wonderful events.
I'm not so good at plot summary or book reviewing, I think, so I'll say this: it's worth your time to give this novel and this author a try. Almost every page offers up some new beauty or wonder, the characters are a treat, and the prose goes down smooth. This is probably not the best book you will read this year, but it is a gem that you would do well not to overlook.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
SCAMS AND BUTTERFLIES, August 17, 2005
Writing this, I'm torn between describing the strengths of this elegant and compelling novel or just telling you that there are still a few weeks of summer left and that The Girl In The Glass will be the beach book of your dreams.
Ford catches the spirit of The Thin Man, both Hammett's novel and the Powell/Loy movies that followed, and mixes that with deft dashes of magic and some darker tones. Set in the bitter Depression year of 1932 on a Long Island from which the Great Gatsby would have only recently departed, the novel catches the special mystery of a lost time and place where rural back roads, led to lavish beach-front estates and liquor smuggling was a local industry.
Young Diego, a Mexican immigrant, is a wonderfully engaging narrator. Through him we see Thomas Schell and Anthony Cleopatra, a master con man and his assistant, making hay among the well to do and easily fooled. Then, in the middle of a phony séance, Schell, a dealer in sleight-of-hand, a collector of exotic butterflies sees the inexplicable reflection of a girl on a pane of glass. Against a backdrop of kidnapping and murder, both Diego and Schell find romance and the fly underworld of carnival freaks and flim-flam collides with the deeply disturbing one of eugenics cults.
I came to love this little band of scam artists enough that I was sorry when the pages ran out and the book ended. In summer or in any other season, I think you'll love them too.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent story full of great characters set in a wonderfully constructed world (my endorsement)..., August 10, 2007
Girl in the Glass drew me in from the first paragraph and kept me engrossed till the end. Few novels of late can boast of doing the same with me. Jeffrey Ford not only creates/recreates a time period and a very distinctive subculture, he tells one heck of a story utilizing this setting.
Every character in this book comes to life. Antony in particular is a character that will live for a long time in my memory. I sometimes find myself in situations where I would not mind having an Antony handy.
The butterfly motif here would shame even Nabakov.
All in all, I find myself not wanting to say too much to ruin this book for you. I will say this--you should read Girl in the Glass. You will not be disappointed.
I give this book a full recommendation.
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