The Burning City Book

The Burning City is New York at the height of summer; one of the achievements of the Dorfman's, father and son, is that they make us see one of the most clichéd of cityscapes in a new light. For one thing, this is New York as seen by high-speed bike and roller-blade messengers, in which every street is a set of pit-falls and a set of opportunities; sixteen-year-old Heller wants to be the best and fastest and is quietly ruthless with himself and with pedestrians as he slides his bike under trucks and through building sites. It is also the New York of exiles and foreigners--Heller works for a company specialising in tidings of death and other miseries and spends his days telling people of a death in Paris or a forced marriage in Kurdistan. This is also an intelligent novel about adolescence; Heller is a flawed protagonist who learns some hard home truths about what is really important. This is a touching and exciting book, the deliberate na&imul;veties of which reflect those of its profoundly ambiguous and amoral young hero; like him, it stands at the very edge of teen wish-fulfilment fantasies and adult concerns. --Roz KaveneyRead More