Imprint
- Abacus
- Abacus
Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
A new masterpiece from E. L. Doctorow - the story of two eccentric New York brothers adapting to life in a century of change, it is humane, wise, funny and moving.
Brilliant brothers Langley and Homer Collyer are born into bourgeois New York comfort, their home a mansion on upper Fifth Avenue, their future rosy. But before he is out of his teens Homer begins to lose his sight, Langley returns from the war with his lungs seared by gas, and when both of their parents die, they seem perilously ill-equipped to deal with the new era.
As romantic Homer and eccentric Langley construct a life on the fringes of society, they hold fast to their principle of self-reliance. But they are mocked and spied on, and despite wanting nothing more than to shut out the world, the epic events of the century flow through their housebound lives as they struggle to survive and create meaning for themselves.
More books by E. L. Doctorow
Praise for Homer And Langley
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** 'Exquisite writing, an extraordinary story and a charmingly wry take on life and all its inconvenience - INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
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** 'Beguiling . . . Doctorow shows how each decade leaves a distinct thumbprint on the siblings, to the extent that one starts to regard them as an unwitting index of changing times in America at large - GUARDIAN
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** 'The interweaving of the epic and the domestic makes for a fascinating read - DAILY MAIL
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** 'Doctorow's work grants inner life to historical personages and revives the past in fine grained detail . . . like Doctorow's best written earlier books, Homer and Langley prompts one to question the purpose of formal punctuation, familiar spelling and - TLS
E. L. Doctorow
E. L. Doctorow's novels include Andrew's Brain, Homer and Langley, The March, City of God, Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate and The Waterworks. Among his honours are the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the presidentially conferred National Humanities Medal. He died in July 2015.
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