I have never read anything like this book. I had thought that Coney Island in the first years of the 20th century might be interesting, but this world of gangsters, impoverished immigrants, circus freaks and show people just drags you in and holds you fast. Totally absorbing.
Our city went up on a back lot of Dreamland, a treeless, rubbled flat, where the flotsam of the world floated through. It was there that Brinkerhpff had housed his exotic tribes - his Pygmies, and his Esquimaus, his Boers and his Bantocs, and his Dog-eating Igorrotes - all the funny little peoples with colourful costumes and odd facial hair, which the world had passed by.
