Amazon.com Review
The American journalist Stephen Amidon spent 15 years living in London, and during that time he wrote a trio of fiction books whose very brevity seemed to reflect the English penchant for understatement. Now, however, he has returned to the United States. And it's hard not to see
The New City--a long, dense, detail-encrusted narrative of the kind that a cutting-edge Theodore Dreiser might have produced--as a token of his homecoming. Even the subject of the novel, a meticulously planned utopian community in the Maryland suburbs, is as American as apple pie. And so, alas, is the ingrained racism that ultimately destroys this Watergate-era city on a hill.
The dream community of Newton is largely the work of two men. One, a white lawyer and developer named Austin Swope, has specialized in pitching his vision to the masses, not to mention the deep-pocketed investors:
Look, he said, passing a conjurer's hand through the air above the model. No overhead power lines or billboards or factories to blot out the sky. With the exception of a single central building, nothing would rise above the trees. And Newton's citizens would work where they lived, in landscaped business parks that housed new industries like telecommunications and computers. They would shop in nearby village centers and worship under the discreetly steepled roofs of interfaith centers.
Too good to be true? That's exactly what Swope and his master builder, a black construction ace named Earl Wooten, discover in the course of the novel. As the Vietnam War winds down and the Watergate hearings ramp up, the ugly discords of American life seep directly into Newton. Racism and paranoia--the stock-in-trade of American political life, circa 1973--soon separate not only Swope and Wooten but their two sons. Like most paradises, this one is lost in painful increments, and Amidon has structured a suspenseful narrative around Newton's rise and fall. At times the sheer pile-up of detail can stop the story in its tracks. Still, the author has managed to erect an impressive fictional edifice, and unlike the misbegotten community, it appears to be built to last.
--Nicole Nolan
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Amidon, an American writer who has lived in London for many years, was brought up, he tells us, in a "planned city"Ain his case, Columbia, Md.Aand he has made such a city the setting for this ambitious and effective social drama, which offers a nod to Othello in theme if not quite in tragic dimension. Austin Swope is city manager of the community, still under development as the story opens and just beginning to be visited by the kind of racial problems the residents of such places went there to avoid. His best friend and closest colleague is Earl Wooten, the black construction chief who has dragged himself up from poverty to a level of power almost equal to Swope's own. And there's the rub: Swope convinces himself that Wooten is plotting behind his back to take his job; when Wooten's son Joel (who is also best friend of Swope's bright son, Teddy) becomes romantically involved with Susan Truax, a pretty, white girl from considerably lower in the social scale, the scene is set for what will eventually become a fearsome showdown. The time is 1973, with the Vietnam War winding down, the Watergate hearings in full swing and youthful drug taking the order of the day, and Amidon doesn't miss a beat in catching the tenor of the era (Teddy is a devotee of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and thinks the rest of the Beatles are a waste of time). As in Shakespeare's original, Swope's endless conniving is somewhat baffling, and Wooten is given some tragic flaws that mar his large humanity. But there is the same inexorable sense of doom about the course of events, aided here by some powerful character sketches: Irma Truax, the racist German refugee who is Susan's mother; Wooten's wife, Ardelia, an ebony tower of strength to her bewildered husband; the calculating, bloodless execs back at the head office in Chicago. The plotting is adroit if sometimes overly contrived, the narrative grip fierce, and the book is head and shoulders above most commercial thrillers. What keeps it from attaining tragic stature is a certain glibness and flatness in the writing and an airlessness that is perhaps inevitable in so tightly focused a setting. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
