Everyone Is Watching

by Megan Bradbury

New York: A city that inspires. A city that draws people in. A city where everyone is watching, waiting to see what will happen next.

1967. Robert Mapplethorpe knows he is an artist. From his childhood home in Queens he yearns for the heat and excitement of the city, the press of other people's bodies. He wants to be watched, he wants to be known.

1891. Walt Whitman has already found fame, and has settled into his own sort of old age. Still childlike, still passionate, he travels with his friend and biographer Bucke to the city he has always adored, the scene of his greatest triumphs and rejections.

1922. Robert Moses is a man with a vision. Standing on the edge of Long Island he knows what it could become. Walking down a street in Brooklyn he sees its future. He is the man who will build modern New York.

2013. Edmund White is back in New York. It's the city of his youth, of his life and loves. He remembers days of lazy pleasure, nights of ecstasy and euphoria. But years have gone by since then.

Everyone is Watching is a novel about the men and women who have defined New York. Through the lives and perspectives of these great creators, artists and thinkers, and through other iconic works of art that capture its essence, New York itself solidifies. Complex, rich, sordid, tantalizing, it is constantly changing and evolving. Both intimate and epic in its sweep, Everyone is Watching is a love letter to New York and its people - past, present and future.

"Bradbury’s writing is beautiful: unusual, intoxicating and bold. I may have been sceptical at the start, but I finished Everyone Is Watching on a high." —The Guardian

Genres: Fiction, New York, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Novels, LGBT, American

279 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2016

About the author

Megan Bradbury was born in the United States and grew up in Britain. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in England. In 2012 she was awarded the Charles Pick Fellowship at UEA and in 2013 she won an Escalator Literature Award and a Grant for the Arts to help fund the completion of her first novel, Everyone is Watching.

Reviews

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel is an account of New York and what defines it and how in turn it inspires art – told largely around the lives of four historical individuals, all visionaries and all whose story is inseparable from New York: Walt Whitman – 19th Century writer on a journey with his biographer back to one of his key inspirations New York; Robert Moses – a City planner who through his vision and determination largely built modern New York, from re-designing Long Island to be the beach of the City rather than just the elite, to bulldozing and redesigning slum areas, roads, swimming pools and parks, increasingly running into activism and hostility as they losers as well as winners from his often paternalistic actions gain voices; Robert Mapplethorpe – the photographer, across almost all of his career and relationships; Edmund White – a modern day writer returning to New York from his writing time in Paris and remembering the more hedonistic days of his youth. Interspersed are descriptions of various art pieces, typically by, about or inspired by the protagonists (including New York itself which is clearly the fifth main character in the book and credited as such in the closing acknowledgements).

American born, but Norfolk based author’s debut novel – one which clearly shows huge promise and is definitely memorable, but one which perhaps relies too much on a detailed knowledge of (or frequent Googling of) New York's cultural history and which uses “original” techniques (present tense, multiple narrators and fractured narratives, telling fact via fiction, short repetitive sentences) which are close to becoming clichés of creative writing rather than really setting out a unique style.

[diario_de_um_leitor_pjv · Rating 5 out of 5]

[COMENTÁRIO]
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
"Onde todos observam*
Megan Bradbury
Tradução de Marta Mendonça

O grande protagonista destes livro é uma cidade, um território: Nova Iorque.
Mas não é a cidade dos prédios e ruas, é a cidade da vida urbana, da intensa vida que percorre casas, ruas, parques, jardins... E memórias e metáforas intensas do modo de vida urbano.

A autora coloca em "contínuo diálogo" quatro personas que representam bem esta cidade em múltiplos momentos da história contemporânea: o poeta Walt Whitman, figura única da cultura norte-americana do final do século XIX; Robert Moses, o urbanista que mais se destaca a "produção de cidade e de políticas urbanas" na NY de meados so século XX; Robert Mapplethorpe, fotógrafo e figura cimeira dos efervescentes anos 70, que retrata uma cidade em profunda transformação; e por fim Edmund White escritor ainda vivo que retratou como poucos as vivências da liberdade sexual e da população LGBTI entre os anos 60 e 90.

É pois a partir de pequenos textos/capítulos em torno destas quatro personagens que Megan Bradbury nos cria um complexo retrato de uma cidade que todos "conhecemos".
Não fica claro que tipo de texto temos perante nós, pois tem uma construção narrativa muito próxima da ficção pós-moderna mas também poderá ser um ensaio que cruza biografias diversas para nos retratar esse território.
Não sei bem que livro é, mas é certo de que adorei este livro e que o aconselho a todos os que amem NY ou a visitem.

(li de 18/03/2023 a 20/03/2023)

#livro #literatura #leitor #leitores #leitura #literaturanorteamericana

#book #bookstagram #bookclub #bookstagramportugal #bookworm #booknerd #booklover

[Moses · Rating 1 out of 5]

I *really* wanted to like this book. It has a lot of things I love–city planning, New York City, art, and eyes on the street. However, the book is written in this strange staccato, only punctuated by vignettes about individual pieces of art and their artists. Part of the problem I had was probably that I read an ebook version which wasn't formatted the way the actual book was, but the overall effect was unpleasant. The descriptions ended up feeling colorless, despite the vivacity of the actual characters, which could be known since they were all real people.

When comparing this to real person fanfiction, it felt to me like Bradbury was trying a bit too hard to be respectful, and wasn't quite courageous enough to have her characters feel things that were wild, or exciting. She might have felt constrained since she used biographies and memoirs as her source texts, but it would have been more exciting if she had gone further with the liberties she allowed herself.

Ultimately, what bugged me the most about this book was the focus on white male artistry. There are vanishingly few women in the book, and no people of color, except for people being objectified. There aren't really any Jews in the book, which is astonishing since it takes place at a time when around 25% of New York City was Jewish. The feeling of the whitewashing of New York Fucking City made my teeth grind. One particularly odd point is that people typically think the story of Robert Moses purposefully preventing buses from going to Jones Beach as a way of keeping out black people has explanatory power, but it's never brought up in this book, even though he's criticized in many other ways.

I think that Bradbury deserves props for her defense of New York City as a place that grows and changes, and that long after the great artists in her book have dismissed New York as a place where new great artists can come from, she shows new great artists living different, but similar lives, still in New York, still making great art. But there are too many frustrating things about this book to recommend reading it for this.

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had an interesting approach, providing fictional accounts of real life events from the point of view of historically significant figures in NYC history from the last 150 years, from Walt Whitman, to Robert Moses, to Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe, to Jean Jacobs, to Edmund White, each part separate though some intertwining, with the overall narrative being about the evolution of the city in each of the protagonists' eyes.

Bradbury has certainly done her research - indeed she lists her sources at the back of the book, something I rarely have seen at the end of a novel - and this shows in the threads she pulls together. To be honest, I thought the initial Mapplethorpe / Smith section was a little wooden, having just finished a reread of 'Just Kids', but I do think that ultimately the author redeems herself in the way she portrays the characters and the city.

The fact that I was reading it while in the surroundings of the city it featured can only have helped my enjoyment of the book.

[Victoria Sadler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adored this book. This book brought so much passion and energy into my veins.

This book is a blend of fiction and non-fiction centered around four key figures in new York's history - Robert Mapplethorpe, Walt Whitman, Edmund White and Robert Moses. She takes these four lives and weaves them together that brings New York to life in all its ambition, grit, energy and sex, and broken hearts and broken dreams, as well as marginalization and that wonderful sense of a city constantly renewing itself, each generation imposing its own beliefs onto it.

We follow these four lives as they tumble over each other. They intertwine and weave together and we get to see how decisions made decades ago impact the city so many others have walked down since. I have a weakness for NYC and this book fed that part of me, but this is also a book about life and death and what we do with our lives and the communities we live amongst.

[Kelsi H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Please read all of my reviews at http://ultraviolentlit.blogspot.ca

I felt like this was a great concept with so much potential and so many interesting, fictionalized historical characters - but it kind of fell flat for me. The writing style is stilted and dry, and I didn't get to know any of the characters in the intimate way that I was expecting. Still some interesting vignettes about fascinating people and their connections to New York City.

This book was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I have just corrected some spelling mistakes - September 2024 - and can't help adding how this novel has stayed with me and haunted my memory, possibly because it is about New York and New York, or at least one of New York's multitudinous pasts, is the only part of Ameriuca I ever lived and knew well, as an adult.)

Every now and again I stumble on a new novel which blows my mind. This novel is one. In the absence of bookshops (I must qualify that by saying there are still in London some excellent new and second bookshops - but they are just a few) it is often only through grazing the shelves in my local libraries (again we are very lucky in London with them) that I manage to belatedly discover new and interesting writers (again although literary papers and magazines still exist books no longer have the serious coverage they used to in mainstream newspapers).

This novel is extraordinary in its portrayal of New York over a hundred years and how it was shaped by the imaginations of artists and writers, and one other incredibly significant figure in New York's history, and how it shaped them and their work.

I don't want to say more - read this remarkable first novel.

[Latkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a highly original novel, which examines moments in the lives of four real characters in New York: photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, writer Edmund White, poet Walt Whitman and controversial city planner Robert Moses. It does provide an insight into these four men's lives, and makes you feel like you are living in New York (I've never been there, but would love to go there one day). You also get to know more about other people associated with them, such as Mapplethorpe's great friend Patti Smith and Moses's opposer Jane Jacobs. There's also a piece which appears to be about the author coming to the city to write the book, which I thought was quite clever. However, I found the structure a bit hard to get my head around, particularly as nearly all the characters were real people, many of them still alive. The bibliography and filmography at the back of the book shows all the research which went into it, and I admire the author's skill in writing the novel. But I think a lot of it went over my head - probably my fault rather than that author's.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Everyone is Watching is purportedly a novel, but it really isn't. It's more like a series of little vignettes from the lives of famous New Yorkers such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Edmund White, Walt Whitman and Robert Moses. The idea seems to be that these little stories add up to telling the story of New York City. It's highly debatable that the book achieves that; there is a lot more to New York and its history than what Bradbury manages to convey here.

The novel has only the barest semblance of a plot, if any, and the line between fiction and fact is so blurred that the whole thing reads as non-fiction (even including footnotes at the end). Readers interested in this subject matter might do better to read the non-fictional The Lonely City which covers similar ground, only better.

[João · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nova Iorque: onde todos observam e são observados. Instantâneos da vida de protagonistas do grande drama que é Nova Iorque, Mapplethorpe e Patty Smith, Edmund White, Walt Whitman, Robert Moses e outros que com eles se cruzam, famosos ou simples figurantes, como os banhistas de Jones Beach ou os defensores das árvores e do forte Clinton de Battery Park.

Megan Bradbury escreve como quem descreve fotografias ou pequenos filmes, um capítulo para cada "imagem", quase aleatoriamente. Todos os capítulos são muito curtos, tal como as frases que os compõem, quase telegráficas. O conjunto é um grande mosaico de Nova Iorque, ou uma manta de retalhos, em que todos os quadrados são feitos com um restinho de lã diferente.

[Joanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway.

After finishing this book, I had to reread the description because I wasn't quite sure what I had just read. I recalled entering the giveaway because I loved Patti Smith's Just Kids and wanted to see what another writer thought of Robert Mapplethorpe and New York, and the other icons that shaped the city. Unfortunately, I was not impressed. I don't really care for the short sentence style of writing; I found it rather difficult to follow the author's thoughts - though perhaps that was intentional? In the end, I found the book rather boring, which is unfortunate given the subject matter.

[Sean Kennedy · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I really wanted to read Walt Whitman/Robert Mapplethorpe/Edmund White fanfic, then they should at least see the timelines cross and have an orgy.

[Paul Holden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A towering achievement. To write about real people, some still living, and have no driving narrative save the city of New York... But did I like it? Yes, of course, an enviable body of work. But I didn’t quite get the picture of New York I thought I was meant to get. Perhaps it’s a book that needs to be read in one setting. But no, it isn’t supposed to be just one mental picture of New York. No city can be reduced to a single image, feeling or trend, much less the Big Apple. The characters we follow are spread across the last 150 years, all artists. A writer, a photographer, an Urban Planner who almost destroyed the city and a poet from the civil war era. This is a story of a city through an artistic lens. I had to frequently put the book down to look something up. That’s not a bad thing, I’m learning interesting facts. It pulls no punches, but then neither does New York.

[Kasia · Rating 2 out of 5]

*2,5*

[Rogue Male · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10

[Tripfiction · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review first appeared on our blog - we also chat to the author about writing, the book and NYC:
http://www.tripfiction.com/stories-of...

Snapshots of the life and people in the metropolis spanning a century and a half.

This is a very unusually constructed book, a classic of short story pieces. The oftentimes brief chapters chart the lives of selected New Yorkers from the late 19th Century onwards, short, sharp, sexualised at times, how their lives built and broke the foundations of this sparkling and brooding city.

Robert Mapplethorpe, photographer of people, sharp shooter of bodily forms, a quintessential master of creative in the later 20th century is the style icon to whom the author returns time and again.

A colourful character set in what is an array of stark shots, visualised almost in acute black and white, just like the photos that feature between many of the short chapters. “..a photograph is a window into someone else’s life”. This eclectic collection of stories and observations is much like a photo burst, capturing a time and holding it in a frame for the reader to peruse, from the present looking to the past.

Patti Smith and Walt Whitman are well profiled, and Robert Moses who shaped much of the skyline in the city was a larger than life man behind some of the great changes ever seen. It is due to his vision – and sadly his ruthlessness with many of the underclass – that we can bathe in the wonder of the city that is larger than life. He was the driver behind the1964/5 World’s Fair, yet it closed on a very sour note, and he was the dominant force in the creation of Stuyvesant Town on the East side of Manhattan.

A trip back in time takes the reader to the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, and explores the lives lived by the Kumpertz family – the soot and squalor are detailed, and measures were imposed so that germs from the lowly classes on one side of town would not infect the richer echelons on the other side.

Overall this is a novel of stories that challenges the reader in its construct, it veers between being insightful and gripping, and mundane – the polar opposites mirror the life in a city. A book that flits around the city and is perfect for the channel hopping generation. At times I truly wondered where the meandering narrative was going, I tired of it on occasion and yet…. it has really stuck with me and I have this feeling that this will over time become a kind of classic. It is certainly a book that I would recommend to most visitors – but not all because of the scenes of a sexual nature – heading to the city. Echoes of footsteps past will greatly enhance a visitor’s understanding of what it means to explore the different neighbourhoods. Everyone is Watching is a very much a novel about the people who have defined New York to this point in time.

[Elaine Aldred · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the late nineteenth-century, poet Walt Whitman travels with his friend and biographer Robert Maurice chronicling his life. In the 1920s Robert Moses has a vision of transforming New York into a modern city. In the 1960s Robert Mapplethorpe begins a career which will lead him to produce some of the most iconic images of the twentieth-century and the some of the most controversial. In the twenty-first century writer, Edmund White, returns to New York, remembering his hedonistic youth and finds a changed city.
Like the descriptions of the photographs interspersing the main protagonists lives capturing moments frozen in time, the narratives of these men are sequenced like snapshots of life in New York in different eras.
Like the photographs, some of the stories are told in close up (Walt Whitman), while others are narrated in a way that makes you feel you are seeing New York from a much wider perspective (Robert Moses). This adds to the subtlety of the sparse text and the short, episodic stories of each of these men’s lives.
Yet despite the economy of words Megan Bradbury's writing makes reading and the visualization of the vibrancy of New York effortless, as well as creating a sense of immersion and involvement of the stories which unfold.
Bradbury is fearless in her descriptions of Mapplethorpe’s explicit photographs and the lives of the gay community in New York. However it is Moses who feels like a forceful intrusion and appropriately so as the man considered to be the “master builder”, driving through construction with brutal energy and disregard for the human cost. It is probably why his story is told from the most removed viewpoint, and why poet Whitman’s account of the effects of man waging war against man is told on such an intimate scale.
Bradbury’s research has been meticulous, but does not get in the way of the story. Instead there is a sense of being guided through New York by someone who really has got right to the core of the relationship these people had with the city and how they and it changed.
Everyone is Watching was courtesy of Pan Macmillan via NetGalley.

[Rebecca Morofsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a native New Yorker, I really wanted to love this book, but there were too many things I took issue with.

The whole novel was written in this awkward staccato, making it read like an MFA thesis. I wanted to get more into the lives of each character, but they were only afforded short vignettes every 20 pages.

Speaking of the characters, they're all real people: Robert Mapplethorpe, Robert Moses, Edmund White, and Walt Whitman --- each man a fixture of the NYC cultural and political landscape in his own way. I found Mapplethorpe's and Moses' narratives the most enticing. I learned to love Mapplethorpe through my love of Patti Smith. On the other hand, Moses is this deeply problematic, practically mythological figure that transformed NY into the urban jungle as we know it today. Through this novel, I discovered that beloved institutions like Lincoln Center emerged through the mass eviction of working class people. So in this way, I found sections of the book to be quite riveting.

On the other hand, I felt that the characters were pretty one-note. For instance, Edmund White cannot shut up about how much NY has changed for the worse and laments the city's retreat from its 1970s grit. He ends up sounding like a dinosaur, one whose point feels tired and overdone. I had the urge to skip through Whitman's sections, I found them to be really dull.

For a city as diverse as NY, I find it funny that the author chose four white dudes to represent its history. And there's a lot of attempts at writing gay male eroticism by a presumably straight female.

My final, slightly petty criticism is that this book is written in British English and contains some anglicisms that don't resonate with NY.

My rating is more like a 2.5. The book had a lot of potential and was written beautifully in some sections. But I was still left feeling disappointed.

[Chris Roberts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Brah.

There are outhouses in Europe older than any grand building found in New York. "Empire State" not.

There are reasons why people across the country despise New York City.

To wit:

New York City is a gutter-scape
acrid urine fogging subways
rabid cabbies doubling the fare for tourists
there is an actual tax on breathing
insurance rebates to motorists that mow down bicyclists
disease carrying pigeons are the official city bird (on the seal)
Mayor Koch gave his "State of the City” on a skateboard
City Hall is LITERALLY wrapped in red tape
clothing is optional within city limits
begging is a skill taught in public schools
9 to 5 stiffs death marching concrete
and hot dogs (vomit here).

Chris Roberts, God

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

A paean to New York City, its art and its artists.

I'd hesitate to call this a novel, it's more a series of vignettes, of imagined and real encounters, hopes and ideas. And I loved every page. I know the work and lives of Mapplethorpe and Whitman well so there was a sense of familiarity and I was fascinated to learn about the work of Moses. I found the White sections least satisfying, not sure if it was the current day setting or that I've never read his books so was missing context.

A very impressive debut. I'm already looking forward to Bradbury's next book (which sounds amazing - please hurry).

4.5

[ClumsyBeardy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some parts were excellent, especially towards the end. Most of the book, however, seems to just drift, is full of purple prose and doesn't seem to have a point. It reads like a creative writing exercise but isn't as clever or experimental as it thinks it is.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enthralling portrait of a city told using characters who lived there. There is an energy to the writing which drew me in to the lives of the characters and the changes of an evolving city.

[Virginia Weir · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm about to read this book again because it was so good first time around! It's brilliant. I wish I had written Everyone is Watching. Maybe I can best it some day.

[Gabrielle Mueller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Slow to get into the format, but intoxicating after a bit. Really helped inform me of the historical underbelly of NYC. In the end, so happy I stuck with it and loved!

[Mew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book. Like a strange biography of a city. People and place - really well written. Made me want to walk around New York.

[Elisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Everyone Is Watching was an impulse buy, based primarily on the cover and the promise that it would explore the New York City through the art produced there. Though I have never been to New York, I do love reading about it, and so this book, which offered the opportunity for me to learn about the city's history and culture as well as transporting me there as usual New York novels do, sounded absolutely perfect for me. Admittedly, I did not know much, if anything at all, about the novel's four main historical figures - Walt Whitman, Robert Moses, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Edmund White - when I started reading, but I figured that this would be a good opportunity to learn. And it was. If nothing else, Everyone Is Watching certainly piqued my interest. I've been googling and reading about these four men who were previously not on my radar ever since, which is surely a good sign. Furthermore, Megan Bradbury includes a stellar bibliography at the back of this novel, so, if I wanted to take my reading about any of the people I encountered in this book any further, a guide is in place to direct me to the best sources. I really appreciate all of the work, research, and effort that has clearly gone into this book, and I don't doubt that I'm the only person who will have come away from it having learned (or wanting to learn) something. However, I don't think that Everyone Is Watching is entirely convincing as a novel.

The chapters in this book alternate between the four characters (although other voices occasionally appear) - generally, if memory serves, it's Mapplethorpe then Moses then Whitman then White. As you can probably tell from that, the book is non-chronological; it hops from the 1970s to the 1920s to the 1890s to the 2010s. That part didn't bother me at all. In fact, I think the book worked all the better for it, as Robert Moses's chapters in particular have more impact sandwiched between Mapplethorpe's adventures within the urban super-city, and Whitman's remembrances of a less built-up and more rural New York. Also, as the chapters are more episodic than anything else, the transitions from person to person and period to period aren't as jarring as they could have been, since they don't interrupt a 'plot' in the traditional sense. However, whilst I liked the differences between the chapters and thought that they worked well together as a whole, I do think that some were more successful than others.

I got the impression whilst reading that Everyone Is Watching started off as a passion-project about Robert Mapplethorpe. According to the copyright page, one of his chapters was previously published in a magazine, presumably as a short story, and the other chapters focused on him definitely felt more vivid, detailed, and alive than chapters about the others. Even the bibliography at the end seems dominated by Mapplethorpe. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it did hamper the experience of reading this story of a city slightly, because Mapplethorpe seemed, to me, to be the star of the show rather than New York. It got to a point where I was waiting for Mapplethorpe's chapters to roll around again whilst I was reading about Whitman or White, and that's not how a novel of this sort should be. I did also really enjoy Moses's chapters, as I found them the most ambiguous and complex in the whole novel. I could never quite work out whether Bradbury was portraying him as a hero or a villain, and I think that was intentional, given his legacy. Most of the chapters which focus on people other than the main four characters are also related to Moses, which added further depth and intrigue to his story which I really appreciated. White and Whitman on the other hand... I was less keen. Whitman's chapters were really boring. REALLY boring, which saddens me as he was the figure I was most excited about reading about initially. They mainly just consist of a train journey and his biographer's introspective thoughts about him. They generally aren't very long, and I didn't feel that I took anything of substance from them. Compared to the other three, Whitman felt far less alive in this book for me. White's chapters were better. Some took my interest more than others (I especially liked hearing about his work), which I think is mainly because he sometimes covered the same ground as Mapplethorpe. Whilst all the other characters predominantly focused on the present, White spends most of his time looking back... mostly to his youth in the 1970s. Therefore, I didn't get the range of historical perspectives that I expected when I started this book, because all I really got about 2010s New York from White is that it isn't as great as the 1970s New York already covered by Mapplethorpe's chapters was. So, overall, Everyone Is Watching was a bit hit-or-miss for me. It's a grand idea, but I don't think that Bradbury pulled it off quite as well as she could have done.

Also, I dearly wish that the figures Bradbury selected were a little more diverse (particularly given the cover art for my edition! Which features a black woman even though there are no prominent black women across this entire story!). Yes, Mapplethorpe and White are gay (and I think we're all aware that there's debate about Walt Whitman), but that doesn't detract from the fact that the four protagonists are white men. Women have made great and influential art in and about New York too. Black people certainly have. It would have been nice to hear their voices too, especially since the opportunity was RIGHT THERE with Patti Smith. I felt like I needed to know about her to understand her place in Mapplethorpe's chapters, so why not give her a voice of her own to work alongside his? It just seems a bit of a shame to me, and, especially given the blandness of Whitman's chapters, I do think that a better selection of historical figures to memorialise as pivotal to New York's cultural history could have been achieved.

This has already been a long review, because my thoughts and feelings about this book are very mixed. In a lot of ways, I really like it, and I do sincerely appreciate the work that clearly went into it which ultimately proved successful in getting me to take an interest in these people. However, I also think that it is flawed. It's not the all-encompassing portrait of a city that it sets out to be. Sometimes the writing style wasn't fully convincing, especially towards the beginning, where I felt it was trying to be clever and stylised without taking enough care to establish its characters and setting, which left me feeling disconnected for quite a while. And I had other problems besides. Yet, I still came away from Everyone Is Watching feeling glad that I read it, and I guess that's the important thing. For a debut novel, it really is a monumental and impressive feat. It simply wasn't the perfect New York novel that I wanted it to be.

Everyone Is Watching was my 50 States Reading Challenge pick for New York (2/50).

[Deaddad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a surprising and extraordinary read. Definitely ‘literary fiction’ in all senses but not difficult or obscure. It is a loving, impressionistic portrait of New York and of four creators, three artists and one city planner, who lived, worked, reflected on and shaped that most American of cities. The men occupy different time periods and have separate narrative arcs: Walt Whitman is on a train journey in 1891 with his biographer and reflecting on his life and art. Edmund White has returned to New York and reflects on his earlier life and loves there in the 1970s. The strand devoted to Robert Mapplethorpe proceeds chronologically from his arrival in NYC in 1967 and living with Patti Smith, through to finding his voice and making a mark as a photographer, up to his death in 1989. And Robert Moses is the determined city planner who for four decades from 1922 onward fights bureaucracy and public opinion to build highways, skyscrapers, parks, world fairs and beaches.

The prose style is curt and to the point: short, often single clause, sentences and factual description show moments in the lives of the four (and someone of those they work with) and their interactions with different districts or streets or buildings in the city. It is fragmentary and often dream-like but with a sense of real lives lived and a realistic depiction of how the city was planned, build and expanded. Some may find the episodic nature of the book frustrating or feel that despite some events taking place over decades there is limited character development for our four protagonists. I found it hypnotic and enthralling. Bradbury lists nine pages of source material at the end of the novel: biographies, art books, books on urban planning, sociological studies, films and interviews. However Everyone Is Watching never feels like an academic exercise in distillation. Instead it is a vibrant, imaginative and illuminating journey which brought me closer to these four men and the artistic and social milieu they inhabited. A superior alternative travel guide to New York.

[Catullus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having finally got around to finding my next book, following an annoying gap where a combination of workload and inability to find a book which held my attention for longer than 10 minutes, I was somewhat disappointed by Everyone is Watching.

Before I get onto the reasons why, let me outline some of the positives. The setting here is all - New York IS the protagonist and a vibrant presence throughout. I know next to nothing about the history of the city, and, having never visited, my only experience is through TV shows of the seventies and a range of (usually very good) movies.

Thus I enjoyed reading about the founding of many landmarks I am familiar with only through television, and discovering more about the people who had the vision for them in the first place

I also felt the book captured the spirit of the Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe era especially well. Bringing the photographs to life by short description of them as if moving from shot to shot in a gallery was a nice touch.

The problem for me was the fact there was simply too much going on in a very short space of time. The chapters are very short, we jump from decade to decade with gay abandon, and it is very difficult to gain a foothold in any of the scenarios being explored.

The author has linked the different times via certain conceits...political decisions that have resonance throughout the timescale of the book, locations visited by a number of the characters, words and phrases that are relevant to more than one person in the book. This, for me, becomes overworked and detracts from the narrative too readily.

All in all, I felt compelled to finish as quickly as possible, and fairly empty when I reached the end. Not the immersive experience I had hoped, but equally not enough to keep me away from Megan Bradbury's work in the future, as there is clearly much in her writing to celebrate (unlike my own faltering attempts here!)

[Klaas Roggeman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a weird one. it features 4 main characters: photographer/artist Robert Mapplethorpe, (parks commisioner) Robert Moses and writers Walt Whitman and Edmund White. All these historical figures are related to New York, but the link seems rather flimsy at times. Mapplethorpe's parts reads the most like a classic biography: from a poor beginning towards recognition and early death. Moses is followed throughout his life and is shown as a rather megalomaniac planner and architect. He has a clear vision, but the people who have to live in his city are mere ideas and if they're in the way, they need to be moved elsewhere, especially if they're poor. There's a woman Jane Jacobs, who features briefly as she protests about his rehousing schemes, but it's not completely clear how that storyline ends. White returns to New York, reminisces about his younger years and about the state of the city. An older Whitman is on a train ride back to the city and talks with his biographer. In between there are descriptions of various photographs linked to the city.

Some parts of the book are certainly interesting, the writing is sometimes quite beautiful, but it is all such hotchpotch. I think she could have written four good novels/novellas about these characters instead of intermingling them.

[Jaco Barnard-Naudé · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, three and a half stars. The idea is wonderful, the execution not so much. I enjoyed reading about Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, which is the strongest section of the book. The part on Robert Moses - the man who built New York - is also largely compelling. The sections on Whitman and Bucke left me cold, maybe because they were rendered in such distant pedestrian prose. And the part on Edmund White is meandering mediocrity at best. The novel about New York City as a pastiche (made up of a pastiche) of biographies, is a fun idea, but pastiche and mish mash are two different things. There is too much mish mash telling (endless enumeration in the case of Mapplethorpe, for instance) and too little pastiche showing / portraiture (viz Edmund White). Ultimately, perhaps, too much watching and not enough looking.