City in Love: The New York Metamorphoses - Softcover

Shakar, Alex

3.77

35 ratings by Goodreads

9780060508838: City in Love: The New York Metamorphoses

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060508833 ISBN 13: 9780060508838

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2002

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A City Dangerous, Seductive, and Strange

Set in a fantastical New York City of 1 B.C., these seven stories are a stunning mythic vision. In odysseys that wind through urban streets, Shakar's modern characters pursue their quests and meet their fates.

Roxanne, a schoolgirl superhero from Queens, saves the day at a brutal playground. The Junk Man build his lady love from trash he finds while Dumpster diving. A tough police detective comments on a city's decadence. A serial prankster leaves timely messages via light.

Story after story -- each fabulous and joyously imaginative -- are linked by their magnificent location. The result is a celebration of the sights and sounds of New York, its timeless eccentrics and its larger-than-life essence.

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Review:

This first work of fiction by Alex Shakar won the 1996 FC2 National Fiction Competition. Set in a very different New York City in 1 B.C., the novel is a stunning (re)vision of myth, using Ovid's Metamorphoses as the foundation. The city takes the place of nature for Shakar's modern characters as they pursue their quests and meet their fates on the streets rather than the high seas. Shakar has created such memorable characters as Roxanne, schoolgirl superhero from Queens, and the Junk Man, who builds his lady love from the trash he finds while dumpster diving. Welcome to a brilliant new millennium.

About the Author:

Alex Shakar is the author of the story collection City in Love, which won the 1996 National Fiction Competition and was published by The Fiction Collective. It was an Independent Presses Editors' "Pick of the Year." Shakar graduated from Yale University in 1990, was a Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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