Beryl W. reviewed on 8/20/2010 + 44 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 1

Homer and Langley Collyer were real people who lived and died in the family mansion on 5th Ave. in Manhatten. E. L. Doctorow has written a moving, disturbing fictional account of their lives. To read this book is to be inside this house with Homer, blind, and eventually deaf who lives through his music, and his brother Langley disabled by mustard gas in the First World War. After their parents death in the Spanish Influenza epidemic, their mostly solitary lives became even more so. Though they have fleeting interaction with various characters, some lasting over a period of years, Langley in particular becomes more unbalanced as time goes on. A casual collection of miscellaneous objects of interest becomes over a period of time, overwhelming. At the time of their death it had accumulated to over 130 tons of trash. In the end Langley's misguided attempts to protect them from thieves is their undoing as Langley falls victim to one of his own elaborate booby traps, and without his brother to feed the now completely blind and deaf Homer starves to death. The telling, so alive through Doctorow's words and descriptions, the way these men spring again into life, is akin to reliving their story, so beautiful and sad as you follow them through the years and step by step into their doom. Only you are left to walk away... EXCELLENT!! ( )

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