The Empire City Burns Bright In a Major Debut Novel

By the numbers, City on Fire, Garth Risk Hallberg’s first novel, is doubly notable: for its 944 pages and its reported $2 million advance–a hefty sum for any work of fiction, especially a debut. Hollywood helped with the payday; Scott Rudin, the producer behind literary adaptations like Michael Cunningham’s The Hours and Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, bought movie rights before the book even had a publisher, prompting a two-day bidding war among 10 houses. (The winner: Knopf.)

So what tantalized everyone? City on Fire weaves a web through 1970s New York City, flashing forward and back, and uptown and downtown, with cinematic flair. Grungy record stores and palatial apartments serve as backdrops to colorful characters–an unhappily married heiress; a semi-closeted Georgia transplant; an addict-artist–united by a mystery: Who shot Samantha Cicciaro, a Long Island teen turned downtown punk? It’s Clue meets legendary music club CBGB, but Hallberg elevates his whodunit with poignancy about the tumultuous decade too often in the shadow of the Bright Lights, Big City ’80s and Sex and the City ’90s. His New York City is ablaze, with fireworks, trash-can infernos and the burning Bronx.

–SARAH BEGLEY