Wicked City: Stories of Old New York
By Clifford Browder
Clifford Browder’s Wicked City is a collection of short fiction featuring a wide range of people surviving, and trying to fully realize themselves, in turbulent nineteenth-century New York. Among them are:
An ambitious young man given the rare opportunity to marry his boss’s daughter and advance in the firm, the only drawback being his secret preference for brief sexual encounters with men;
A cartman hired to transport the anatomical collection of a respected professor of surgery, including a corpse in embalming fluid that, if discovered by the public, might well cause a riot;
A young Chinaman who witnesses the murder of a compatriot and must decide how to survive and thrive among these savage round-faced barbarians;
A woman so unnerved by the sinister growth of her garden that she asks her pastor to perform a full-blown exorcism;
A ragpicker trudging the streets in a snowstorm who fights off drowsiness and fatigue with grandiose fantasies, bitter memories, and a desperate plea to her deceased mother for healing;
A buckskinned Westerner with a Sioux arrow through his hat who dazzles the city with his stories of grizzlies and buffalo hunts and wild women, while limping sometimes with one leg and sometimes with the other.
Whatever their hopes and fears, Browder’s characters cannot live without New York.
They bear witness to the city’s wild diversity, its intensity, its creativity. They are New York.
Getting to know them, readers will better understand this astonishing metropolis, unique yesterday and unique today, the most exciting city in the world
Review
Wicked City is a wonderful collection of short stories that really draws the reader in. The stories are not only vastly entertaining but also give an insight into the historical era and more especially what it was like to live in New York during this time. The characters were also very well drawn, all equally flawed in some way or another, and although there were some characters that I liked, there were others which I did not, which I think was what the author intended. The author also explores the darker side of New York which I found fascinating.
I thought all the stories were equally wonderful, and I thoroughly enjoyed every single one. The stories are perfect for a quick coffee break.
If you enjoy quality historical short stories then I think you will enjoy this collection very much. I highly recommend this book.
Clifford Browder is a writer living in New York. He has published two biographies, a critical study, and three nonfiction works about New York and New Yorkers in his Wild New York series: No Place for Normal: New York, Fascinating New Yorkers, and New Yorkers: A Feisty People.
His Metropolis series of historical fiction set in nineteenth-century New York has five novels to date: The Pleasuring of Men (his only gay-themed work), Bill Hope: His Story, Dark Knowledge, The Eye That Never Sleeps, and Forbidden Brownstones. His poetry has appeared online and in print.
His blog, No Place for Normal: New York, is about anything and everything New York.
A longtime resident, he lives in Greenwich Village high above the Magnolia Bakery of “Sex and the City” fame, and thinks New York is the most exciting city in the world.
He has never owned a television, a car, or a cell phone. Mostly vegan, he is fascinated by slime molds, never kills spiders, and eats garlic to fend off vampires. (So far, it seems to be working.)
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