So - he is not a professional narrator with stage voices- but in this case author narration works wonderfully. Doctorow begins by telling us that he is going to "say" us a novel. Too good for my words, anyway! I downloaded this because it was cheap and I was dimly aware that was supposed to be a good novel (but must confess that I am a Can Lit and Brit Lit fan and not so much interested in Americana - so I didn't approach the listen with great expectations.) I think it one of the most fascinating novels I've ever come across! I can't believe I was given a degree in literature and history without being advised to read this imaginative cross pollination somewhere along the way. Time magazine included the novel in its Time 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923-2005. Morgan, Evelyn Nesbit, Sigmund Freud, and Emiliano Zapata slip in and out of the tale, crossing paths with Doctorow's imagined family and other fictional characters, including an immigrant peddler and a ragtime musician from Harlem whose insistence on a point of justice drives him to revolutionary violence.Ī rich tapestry, Ragtime captures the spirit of America in a unique historic context. Almost magically, the line between fantasy and historical fact, between real and imaginary characters, disappears.
One lazy Sunday afternoon, the famous escape artist Harry Houdini swerves his car into a telephone pole outside their house. The story opens in 1906 in New Rochelle, New York, at the home of an affluent American family. The novel interweaves fictional characters with actual historic events and figures. Ragtime, a classic work of historical fiction first published in 1975, details the lives of three families in early 20th-century New York.
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