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Manhattan Love Song
"Nothing beats a tale of fatalistic dread by the supreme master of suspense, Cornell Woolrich. His novels and hundreds of short stories define the essence of noir nihilism."-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review The father of modern noir first wanted to be the second F. Scott Fitzgerald. This 1932 novel brilliantly showcases Cornell Woolrich's transition from modernist to pulp master, as the reader follows a young Manhattan couples' tragic fall from grace. Cornell Woolrich reinvented suspense fiction for the twentieth century. For four decades hundreds of his stories appeared in popular American pulp magazines while motion picture directors as varied as Hitchcock and Truffaut memorably translated his work into such classic suspense films as Rear Window and The Bride Wore Black . He died, alone in a Manhattan hotel room, in 1968.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1980
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About the author
Cornell Woolrich
436 books470 followersCornell Woolrich is widely regarded as the twentieth century’s finest writer of pure suspense fiction. The author of numerous classic novels and short stories (many of which were turned into classic films) such as Rear Window, The Bride Wore Black, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Waltz Into Darkness, and I Married a Dead Man, Woolrich began his career in the 1920s writing mainstream novels that won him comparisons to F. Scott Fitzgerald. The bulk of his best-known work, however, was written in the field of crime fiction, often appearing serialized in pulp magazines or as paperback novels. Because he was prolific, he found it necessary to publish under multiple pseudonyms, including "William Irish" and "George Hopley" [...] Woolrich lived a life as dark and emotionally tortured as any of his unfortunate characters and died, alone, in a seedy Manhattan hotel room following the amputation of a gangrenous leg. Upon his death, he left a bequest of one million dollars to Columbia University, to fund a scholarship for young writers.
Source: [http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bi...]
Source: [http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books_bi...]
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July 25, 2019This book is a hardcover and not a library book.
This series of Gregg Press books are edited by Otto Penzler.
This series of Gregg Press books are edited by Otto Penzler.
August 20, 2019
COUNTDOWN: Mid-20th Century North American Crime
BOOK 66 (of 250)
An introduction by Francis M. Nevins says this 1932 publication was "read by few, reviewed almost nowhere, and swallowed up almost at once in the Sargasso Sea of forgotten books." But there it was on my library shelf! Thanks to someone at Pegasus Books who found and republished this in 2006.
Hook=3 stars: A man and a woman walk toward each other on a busy sidewalk. Wade can't help but to turn around and follow her.
Pace=3: A relatively slow, dark, build to a crime occurring late in the book.
Plot=3: A married man has an affair. We will write and read this same story till the end of time.
People=5: Wade falls desperately for Bernice (Dante's savior in "Divine Comedy). Woolrich goes deep into Wade's obsession with Bernice, who is living in her own very bleak, dark world. She can't save him. Characters are king in this story.
Place=5: A dreary, dark, lonely Manhattan drives a multitude of lonely people to their own hells. "Blue, that badge of the nineteen-twenties. A hundred years ago it was just a color; today it was a mood, the soul of a generation," writes Woolrich. Manhattan will not save these characters. The readers knows it, and so does Wade and Bernice.
SUMMARY: This work is all character (Manhattan being one of them). My average rating is 3.8, or 4 stars here on goodreads. If you like your crime novels heavy on atmosphere and character, this is not to be missed: Woolrich surrounds us with despair and never lets go. But this isn't anywhere close to this author's darkest works: more to come!
BOOK 66 (of 250)
An introduction by Francis M. Nevins says this 1932 publication was "read by few, reviewed almost nowhere, and swallowed up almost at once in the Sargasso Sea of forgotten books." But there it was on my library shelf! Thanks to someone at Pegasus Books who found and republished this in 2006.
Hook=3 stars: A man and a woman walk toward each other on a busy sidewalk. Wade can't help but to turn around and follow her.
Pace=3: A relatively slow, dark, build to a crime occurring late in the book.
Plot=3: A married man has an affair. We will write and read this same story till the end of time.
People=5: Wade falls desperately for Bernice (Dante's savior in "Divine Comedy). Woolrich goes deep into Wade's obsession with Bernice, who is living in her own very bleak, dark world. She can't save him. Characters are king in this story.
Place=5: A dreary, dark, lonely Manhattan drives a multitude of lonely people to their own hells. "Blue, that badge of the nineteen-twenties. A hundred years ago it was just a color; today it was a mood, the soul of a generation," writes Woolrich. Manhattan will not save these characters. The readers knows it, and so does Wade and Bernice.
SUMMARY: This work is all character (Manhattan being one of them). My average rating is 3.8, or 4 stars here on goodreads. If you like your crime novels heavy on atmosphere and character, this is not to be missed: Woolrich surrounds us with despair and never lets go. But this isn't anywhere close to this author's darkest works: more to come!
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September 15, 2007In his early days, Woolrich sought to become the second Fitzgerald and penned a half dozen jazz age novels before turning to the pulps and forming his distinctive noir style. Manhattan Love Song is a transitional novel, the last of his jazz age novels that at the same time introduces some of the darker themes he would begin to employ regularly in what was to come.
Woolrich is probably the best example of a noir writer who was decidedly NOT a hard-boiled writer. Those two terms tend to get conflated but they are not at all the same thing, even though they often go together. By comparison to the tough, gritty style and attitude one finds in a Dashiell Hammett novel, Woolrich seems almost effeminate: descriptive, literary sentences with a very sensitive attention to moods and feelings. Even when his protagonist is an insensitive, self-centered anti-hero, as is the case with Manhattan Love Song, there’s a refinement and delicacy to the way his story is told that distinguishes Woolrich’s voice from his contemporaries.
Manhattan Love Song is a tale of doomed love between a self-absorbed, cocky, foolish man and a vain, mysterious girl who is bound by invisible forces to the criminal underworld. Woolrich’s talent is in making feelings of not only dread but also feelings of elation, surprise, desire, and tension really come alive through the intensity of his writing, and in these terms he’s in top form with this book, blending this self-consciously literary style with an intensity of emotional experience. The result is still somewhat different from his later books; the fatalism here almost seems like a surprise rather than an inevitable consequence, perhaps because it would seem so far removed from the late jazz age setting from which it embarks, but that only makes it all the more compelling.
Woolrich is probably the best example of a noir writer who was decidedly NOT a hard-boiled writer. Those two terms tend to get conflated but they are not at all the same thing, even though they often go together. By comparison to the tough, gritty style and attitude one finds in a Dashiell Hammett novel, Woolrich seems almost effeminate: descriptive, literary sentences with a very sensitive attention to moods and feelings. Even when his protagonist is an insensitive, self-centered anti-hero, as is the case with Manhattan Love Song, there’s a refinement and delicacy to the way his story is told that distinguishes Woolrich’s voice from his contemporaries.
Manhattan Love Song is a tale of doomed love between a self-absorbed, cocky, foolish man and a vain, mysterious girl who is bound by invisible forces to the criminal underworld. Woolrich’s talent is in making feelings of not only dread but also feelings of elation, surprise, desire, and tension really come alive through the intensity of his writing, and in these terms he’s in top form with this book, blending this self-consciously literary style with an intensity of emotional experience. The result is still somewhat different from his later books; the fatalism here almost seems like a surprise rather than an inevitable consequence, perhaps because it would seem so far removed from the late jazz age setting from which it embarks, but that only makes it all the more compelling.
September 16, 2018
With a great intro by Francis M. Nevins, I found out his earlier works were trying to copy his idol, F. Scott Fitzgerald. When he decided to abandon the "literary" world. this was his first mystery-suspense novel. I have read 2-3 of his so-called "Black Series", and those are excellent noir tales. This was a nice look in at his first in to this genre. 3.5 stars.
November 16, 2022
Perhaps the perfect soundtrack to any Cornell Woolrich book is just the frantic beating of your own lonely heart inside your head growing louder the quieter it gets around you, but a good second place might be mid-2000s UK band Manhattan Love Suicides, who managed to put a simultaneous Jesus and Mary Chain/Black Tambourine fetish to good use in a single album and a compilation. The combination of sweet voiced singer and grimy layers of feedback could serve as the harbinger of doom for almost any of Woolrich's characters but for this book in particular "You'll Never Get That Guy" probably evokes the feeling as much as anything else they ever did. The band put out two versions of that song and while the slightly longer one is decent there's a take that's about two minutes and a quarter that just seems to encapsulate everything this book is about. Distant booming drums like relentless footsteps following you through claustrophobic alleys, buzzing webs of feedback like that hangover or a draining, sclerotic sickness you can't seem to shake and somewhere buried in the center of all a woman's delicate, chiming voice intoning words that aren't always easy to make out but what snippets you can make out (like fighting to pay attention through a debilitating, screeching migraine) don't bode well for whomever the message is intended for. "No matter what you do/no matter what you say/no matter how hard you try . . ." "You've got pleasure/I've got pain . . ."
"You're going down . . ."
In literature it seems there are two kinds of New York Cities. There's the bustling gleaming jewel of endless possibilities, like that Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song or "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist" where a scrappy hustler can make it all happen with some luck and a little bit of pluck. Then there's Woolrich's NYC, where its always night, the streets seem two feet wide and all the buildings are constructed at weird angles so they seem to be looming down on you no matter what you stand. Its too congested, everyone is lonely, nobody has pure motives and nobody gets what they want, unless what they want to do is beat you up, in which case it seems to be open season. His city is the kind of place that features stories that aren't so much drenched in "nobody gets out alive" as its populated by a group of people who don't want to get out alive because what does "survival" mean in this environment? You just get to do it all again the next day.
"Manhattan Love Song" was written just as Woolrich was transitioning from the more mainstream novels he had written at the beginning of his career to the dread soaked nightmares that would come later . . . as such it has some of the remnants of that portion of his career when he was more concerned with crafting more normal Jazz Age set tales, generally featuring young folks getting into all kinds of rascally mischief. Those particular novels (the first six he ever published) probably wouldn't be remembered today if not for what he accomplished later and "Manhattan Love Song" was the last of those (his next novel, eight years later, was "The Bride Wore Black" and let's just say some things had changed in the interim).
But despite the adorable title promising some romance in the shadow of the Empire State Building, maybe a duet in some empty karaoke bar after a night of meet-cute crazy antics, this novel is anything but adorable. Sure, its got a meet-cute aspect to it where Wade has a chance encounter on the street with a young woman named Bernice. Before you can say "morals and standards of the era" they're in bed and Wade is in l-u-v. And not some noble, dignified love where he just wants to hold her hand and meet her parents, but unrestrained lust where its all he can do to keep his own clothes on when he's near her, let alone hers. And when he's not able to be in a position where clothes can be torn to pieces, he's gradually working himself up until he's a barely repressed volcano, simmering with a sick need.
Okay, so he's a little intense. That's the plot of lots of stories, some of them actually good. And yeah, there's complications in spades, like the fact that he's married. And the fact that while Bernice may not be married, she sure seems mysterious as to who pays for her apartment and what kinds of friends she really has. Wade, of course, doesn't care, but if you don't think at some point he's going to have to care in a very definitive way, well then, welcome to the world of Cornell Woolrich, Generally Hopeful Person.
This is not a book you read because you like anyone in the book because frankly you're not going to. Wade is single-minded to the point where even ants are like "Dude, find some hobbies" . . . once the story gets going literally every fiber of his being is bent to making sure that he and Bernice are going to have a sex-soaked future together, even if he has to auction off his organs and his parents' organs to do so. Bernice alternates between begging him to stay and begging him to leave (and her begging to leave isn't always entirely convincing, not that anything short of Bernice volunteering for a one way mission to Mars would maybe give him the idea that maybe she's not interested) and sure doesn't do a lot to discourage everything bad that happens in the book. As mentioned, Wade is married and his wife Maxine might be the most sympathetic character in the book even if you wonder why she hasn't taken out a big life insurance policy on Wade and then murdered him just to keep the general tone of the overall situation consistent. Even when the cops eventually show up they are not friendly neighborhood policeman, eager to crack a case only if they can diligently hammer a square clue into a round arrest to make sure they can clock out on time. Hey, have to keep those metrics up.
Honestly, though, if you're reading a Woolrich book for people to identify with it may be time to start questioning what exactly it is you think you should be getting out of life. If you're on board with what's happening here you are along for the ride for one thing and one thing only . . . to watch two people unwittingly dig their own graves and then offer to shovel the dirt back onto themselves. And then insist on paying twice for the shovels. From the moment Bernice and Wade lock eyes they are basically doomed and its not a "whoops didn't see that coming" sort of doom but a combination running with scissors/playing with matches in the tinder warehouse . . . on some level you are going to grasp how screwed these people are seemingly long before they do but the fact that they seem to be utterly surprised when it all comes down just demonstrates how limited their self-awareness is. Just because you have tunnel vision doesn't mean you are actually standing in a tunnel. Everyone can still see you!
So it’s a nightmare dreamt by a handful of people who think the nightmare they're inhabiting is the good version of the dream and thus aren't inclined to want to wake up. Because we're still in early Woolrich it doesn't have the dire sense of the inevitable that his best work has . . . the overall vibe is "This is going nowhere good" but on some level its just "normal bad" instead of soul-destroying desolation. Wade pines after Bernice, feels a bit better when he's with Bernice, plots how to stay with her forever, fights with his wife and plots how he can leave her, all the while gradually eroding what little common sense he had to start with. Its jagged but lacks that little extra special something that Woolrich could bring, that near cosmic sensibility that the default state of the universe is crushing people and its just a matter of time before the number on your particular doom was called up. On a certain level even HP Lovecraft might have found it extreme.
Here, though, the nightmare only comes to the fore occasionally, especially in an extended sequence at what feels like a swingers party on downers. When a drunk Bernice appears to be offering to sell her body to the highest bidder for the evening it sends Wade into a mad spiral where he attempts to get the money by almost any means necessary to outbid everyone there for the privilege of not letting them have her. The obsessive scenes that follow are almost excruciating watching Wade do everything short of digging up corpses in the cemetery and selling them to unscrupulous med students (or cannibals) . . . he careens around a city seemingly completely comprised of only an underworld like a maniac on the wrong amphetamine dosage, begging, borrowing and stealing for what amounts to win a drunk woman engaged in a sophomoric party trick. In those moments you can almost sense the Woolrich that was about to emerge straining to see how far he could push things, at what point neurotic fixation crosses the line into something darker and much, much worse.
The book for the most part pulls back from that sheer darkness, as if Woolrich wasn't quite ready for it yet. When the doom comes down it feels almost conventional, Wade's building triumph crashing down with all the assertiveness of gravity deciding to remind everyone who's boss. Bernice's doom feels inevitable only so much as the plot requires it to be, without the sensation that everyone in the book is trapped in the gears of a massive groaning engine and everything Wade does after that feels mostly self-inflicted, a pity party where he's the only guest and he couldn't even be bothered to spell his own name right on the invitation. Instead of being borne along by forces that have shaped the world into whatever you might call a civilized abattoir he's just carried along to the ending, laying down and willingly offering up his own throat. As deep as his despair might be, its hard at times to buy great sex with Bernice being worth all this, especially when multiple off-ramps to the ending keep we get presenting themselves and Wade stubbornly resists even acknowledging they exist.
But when the intensity is on its effective, its not just as sustained as it would be in later novels . . . I'm not sure if it's better served as a good gateway to the more famous Woolrich novels or as a palette cleanser for the more experienced Woolrich reader between slabs of pure darkness. But it’s a quick and easy read and people who are into doomed noir undertones will probably get a kick out of all the unnecessary futility here (amusingly they apparently filmed the story in 1934 but the tone seems to hew closer to what the title actually suggests, instead of treating it as some sick joke). By no means is it a happy book, but at least you won't finish it feeling that the darkness outside is a layer of suffocating burlap and the wind is just muffled cries for help that will never come. Its romantic for about ten seconds and with Woolrich you learn to take what you can get.
"You're going down . . ."
In literature it seems there are two kinds of New York Cities. There's the bustling gleaming jewel of endless possibilities, like that Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song or "Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist" where a scrappy hustler can make it all happen with some luck and a little bit of pluck. Then there's Woolrich's NYC, where its always night, the streets seem two feet wide and all the buildings are constructed at weird angles so they seem to be looming down on you no matter what you stand. Its too congested, everyone is lonely, nobody has pure motives and nobody gets what they want, unless what they want to do is beat you up, in which case it seems to be open season. His city is the kind of place that features stories that aren't so much drenched in "nobody gets out alive" as its populated by a group of people who don't want to get out alive because what does "survival" mean in this environment? You just get to do it all again the next day.
"Manhattan Love Song" was written just as Woolrich was transitioning from the more mainstream novels he had written at the beginning of his career to the dread soaked nightmares that would come later . . . as such it has some of the remnants of that portion of his career when he was more concerned with crafting more normal Jazz Age set tales, generally featuring young folks getting into all kinds of rascally mischief. Those particular novels (the first six he ever published) probably wouldn't be remembered today if not for what he accomplished later and "Manhattan Love Song" was the last of those (his next novel, eight years later, was "The Bride Wore Black" and let's just say some things had changed in the interim).
But despite the adorable title promising some romance in the shadow of the Empire State Building, maybe a duet in some empty karaoke bar after a night of meet-cute crazy antics, this novel is anything but adorable. Sure, its got a meet-cute aspect to it where Wade has a chance encounter on the street with a young woman named Bernice. Before you can say "morals and standards of the era" they're in bed and Wade is in l-u-v. And not some noble, dignified love where he just wants to hold her hand and meet her parents, but unrestrained lust where its all he can do to keep his own clothes on when he's near her, let alone hers. And when he's not able to be in a position where clothes can be torn to pieces, he's gradually working himself up until he's a barely repressed volcano, simmering with a sick need.
Okay, so he's a little intense. That's the plot of lots of stories, some of them actually good. And yeah, there's complications in spades, like the fact that he's married. And the fact that while Bernice may not be married, she sure seems mysterious as to who pays for her apartment and what kinds of friends she really has. Wade, of course, doesn't care, but if you don't think at some point he's going to have to care in a very definitive way, well then, welcome to the world of Cornell Woolrich, Generally Hopeful Person.
This is not a book you read because you like anyone in the book because frankly you're not going to. Wade is single-minded to the point where even ants are like "Dude, find some hobbies" . . . once the story gets going literally every fiber of his being is bent to making sure that he and Bernice are going to have a sex-soaked future together, even if he has to auction off his organs and his parents' organs to do so. Bernice alternates between begging him to stay and begging him to leave (and her begging to leave isn't always entirely convincing, not that anything short of Bernice volunteering for a one way mission to Mars would maybe give him the idea that maybe she's not interested) and sure doesn't do a lot to discourage everything bad that happens in the book. As mentioned, Wade is married and his wife Maxine might be the most sympathetic character in the book even if you wonder why she hasn't taken out a big life insurance policy on Wade and then murdered him just to keep the general tone of the overall situation consistent. Even when the cops eventually show up they are not friendly neighborhood policeman, eager to crack a case only if they can diligently hammer a square clue into a round arrest to make sure they can clock out on time. Hey, have to keep those metrics up.
Honestly, though, if you're reading a Woolrich book for people to identify with it may be time to start questioning what exactly it is you think you should be getting out of life. If you're on board with what's happening here you are along for the ride for one thing and one thing only . . . to watch two people unwittingly dig their own graves and then offer to shovel the dirt back onto themselves. And then insist on paying twice for the shovels. From the moment Bernice and Wade lock eyes they are basically doomed and its not a "whoops didn't see that coming" sort of doom but a combination running with scissors/playing with matches in the tinder warehouse . . . on some level you are going to grasp how screwed these people are seemingly long before they do but the fact that they seem to be utterly surprised when it all comes down just demonstrates how limited their self-awareness is. Just because you have tunnel vision doesn't mean you are actually standing in a tunnel. Everyone can still see you!
So it’s a nightmare dreamt by a handful of people who think the nightmare they're inhabiting is the good version of the dream and thus aren't inclined to want to wake up. Because we're still in early Woolrich it doesn't have the dire sense of the inevitable that his best work has . . . the overall vibe is "This is going nowhere good" but on some level its just "normal bad" instead of soul-destroying desolation. Wade pines after Bernice, feels a bit better when he's with Bernice, plots how to stay with her forever, fights with his wife and plots how he can leave her, all the while gradually eroding what little common sense he had to start with. Its jagged but lacks that little extra special something that Woolrich could bring, that near cosmic sensibility that the default state of the universe is crushing people and its just a matter of time before the number on your particular doom was called up. On a certain level even HP Lovecraft might have found it extreme.
Here, though, the nightmare only comes to the fore occasionally, especially in an extended sequence at what feels like a swingers party on downers. When a drunk Bernice appears to be offering to sell her body to the highest bidder for the evening it sends Wade into a mad spiral where he attempts to get the money by almost any means necessary to outbid everyone there for the privilege of not letting them have her. The obsessive scenes that follow are almost excruciating watching Wade do everything short of digging up corpses in the cemetery and selling them to unscrupulous med students (or cannibals) . . . he careens around a city seemingly completely comprised of only an underworld like a maniac on the wrong amphetamine dosage, begging, borrowing and stealing for what amounts to win a drunk woman engaged in a sophomoric party trick. In those moments you can almost sense the Woolrich that was about to emerge straining to see how far he could push things, at what point neurotic fixation crosses the line into something darker and much, much worse.
The book for the most part pulls back from that sheer darkness, as if Woolrich wasn't quite ready for it yet. When the doom comes down it feels almost conventional, Wade's building triumph crashing down with all the assertiveness of gravity deciding to remind everyone who's boss. Bernice's doom feels inevitable only so much as the plot requires it to be, without the sensation that everyone in the book is trapped in the gears of a massive groaning engine and everything Wade does after that feels mostly self-inflicted, a pity party where he's the only guest and he couldn't even be bothered to spell his own name right on the invitation. Instead of being borne along by forces that have shaped the world into whatever you might call a civilized abattoir he's just carried along to the ending, laying down and willingly offering up his own throat. As deep as his despair might be, its hard at times to buy great sex with Bernice being worth all this, especially when multiple off-ramps to the ending keep we get presenting themselves and Wade stubbornly resists even acknowledging they exist.
But when the intensity is on its effective, its not just as sustained as it would be in later novels . . . I'm not sure if it's better served as a good gateway to the more famous Woolrich novels or as a palette cleanser for the more experienced Woolrich reader between slabs of pure darkness. But it’s a quick and easy read and people who are into doomed noir undertones will probably get a kick out of all the unnecessary futility here (amusingly they apparently filmed the story in 1934 but the tone seems to hew closer to what the title actually suggests, instead of treating it as some sick joke). By no means is it a happy book, but at least you won't finish it feeling that the darkness outside is a layer of suffocating burlap and the wind is just muffled cries for help that will never come. Its romantic for about ten seconds and with Woolrich you learn to take what you can get.
June 4, 2015
Wade a young married man falls in love with a girlfriend of the mob. His obsession is so strong that he cannot back off even when all sense tells him to. So he must face the consquences.
This is an early work. The barometer I use are Woolrich’s later great works of noir. The beginning was a little too flowery. I suspect he was trying very hard to be another Fitzgerald. Still he was, as a writer, a work in progress when this was written. A definite must read for a Woolrich fan to see where he came from and where he went.
This is an early work. The barometer I use are Woolrich’s later great works of noir. The beginning was a little too flowery. I suspect he was trying very hard to be another Fitzgerald. Still he was, as a writer, a work in progress when this was written. A definite must read for a Woolrich fan to see where he came from and where he went.
June 19, 2013
Frustrating to give this one such a poor rating. Woolrich writes superbly in his first published book, but the protagonist of this noirish romance is an abusive spouse who mentions in passing that he steps on his wife's feet and throws scalding hot coffee on her to remind her who's boss. At the time, I guess this would have qualified him as a flawed protagonist, but I have absolutely zero sympathy, which is a dealbreaker in a romance.
May 14, 2009
The protagonist is an unsympathetic idiot at best and a contemptible cad at worst, but the story is engrossing and the draw of an impending train-wreck kept me reading to the very end. The book is well written, if obviously a product of its time both in style and substance.
May 27, 2009
The first noir from a notable pulp author. After attempting Jazz Age prose a la F. Scott Fitzgerald, Woolrich turned to dark mysteries. This is a tale of doomed lovers in Manhattan in the 1930s. Rather grim ending but a good period piece.
April 28, 2012
The lead in this book is insufferable. He's such an idiotic, self-centered character, I'm surprised I like this book at all, but it was well written, and with an engaging story, be it pretty simple.
September 13, 2016
A tremendous noir––Woolrich crafts a first person descent into forbidden love and murder (kind of).
August 30, 2019
Lettura altalenante nel senso che ho faticato ad appassionarmici all’inizio, mi ha coinvolto nella parte centrale e mi ha deluso sul finale. Principalmente poco credibile il protagonista che perde la ragione innamorandosi di una squillo invischiata con la malavita newyorkese. Non è un giallo non è un poliziesco...mah!
March 4, 2025
El protagonista se m’ha fet antipàtic i m’ha costat acabar-la.
No sé si és una novel·la negra. Situacions que semblen irreals, com malsons.
Això sí, William Irish escriu molt bé. Té una mirada singular sobre les coses, com si tinguessin ànima. Aquest tret sí que m’ha agradat molt.
No sé si és una novel·la negra. Situacions que semblen irreals, com malsons.
Això sí, William Irish escriu molt bé. Té una mirada singular sobre les coses, com si tinguessin ànima. Aquest tret sí que m’ha agradat molt.
L’havia deixat sobre el telèfon, el meu lloc preferit, i quan el treia d’allà, el telèfon sonà com si s’hagués estat aguantant tota l’estona abans.
January 22, 2010
I have to admit, I didn't even get into this book. From the first chapter I thought it was crude and disgusting. I had no desire to continue reading.
December 5, 2018
“Manhattan Love Song” is a dark tale of dangerous liaisons, unrequited love and loneliness set against a seamy New York cityscape of the late 1920s. The story revolves around a doomed love triangle opening when the first-person narrator Wade meets his beautiful love interest Bernice on the street. He falls head-over-heels in love with her and she reluctantly returns the feeling, though world-weary Bernice, who lives life on the edge and has ties to organized crime, tries to push Wade away. Meanwhile, Wade is trying to push away Maxine, his wife. They have been married for years and the union is broken from Wade’s point of view. Maxine is still deeply in love with her husband even though they fight like cats and dogs. Wade hatches a plan to flee the Big Apple with Bernice but alas (spoiler alert), it is not meant to be: his marriage and finances and Bernice’s troubles with the criminal underworld prove insurmountable. Well, we know noir novels are meant to end tragically. However, this tragic tale is worth reading for reasons beyond the melodrama. It is noted here on GoodReads that Cornell Woolrich created strong characters to carry this story through some less-impressive plot points. I agree. The characters and their dialogue kept me turning pages. There were also humorous moments and observations by Wade that made me smile; a book of doom needs those bright spots to make it bearable. The book was copyrighted in 1932 and contains some slang references to black and female characters to which some readers may take exception. I give it a pass, having read titles by other, more celebrated authors over the years that were far more racist and sexist. Really, this book is a window into another time and it contains the language and attitudes that era. I would read more Woolrich based on the strength of this work.
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