kahale's review against another edition
2.0
A Civil War veteran who has to wear a mask due to injuries strikes up a friendship with Herman Melville and his family while living in New York City. It got a little boring in the end but interesting pictures of NYC in the post-Civil War period.
stacys_books's review against another edition
5.0
A story of a Civil War veteran who aims to make his fortune in a new America. Busch does a fine job of capturing the amoral just-getting-the-job-done value of America—something I never thought about stretching back as far as the Civil War, but I suppose it makes sense that it would. People were no doubt just as motivated by money back then as they are now. This is a must-read.
chewdigestbooks's review against another edition
5.0
I'm not going to lie, exhausted, I finished this with one eye open last night because I could not put it down, leaving the last 25 pages or so until this morning. At the end, both eyes were tearing up, both with the story itself and for having to say goodbye to such unique characters and writing that was at times so visionary.
If I had to compare his prose, it reminded me of [b:Rules of Civility|10054335|Rules of Civility|Amor Towles|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1311705045s/10054335.jpg|14950407], which seems unfair since Busch passed long before Towles published his first book. I read and fell in love with Towles first, however.
The blurb on the back was pretty short, thanks to lots of praise quotes that didn't help me at all, and opening the cover I only knew that it was going to be a story of a maimed Civil War vet and how he forged on in NYC after the war.
What I found was magic, not the Harry Potter kind, but the lyrical and living kind. A story of very different people that somehow crossed paths, one of which was the Herman Melville, referred to as M, who at the time was not the literary god he is today and was, in fact, a forgotten man and a Customs Inspector at the port of New York and occasionally had to work a shift as the night inspector, and a cast of varied other characters that were all wounded by life and the war in one way or another. (That Melville was forgotten and became a Customs Inspector is true, BTW.)
The main ringleader of the story, William Bartholemew AKA "Billy", was what we would call today a sniper which at the time was viewed as a very ungentlemanly way to fight the war. He had a few men around him whose job was to keep him safe and ready to move on to his next assignment. These men all had a prickly relationship because of their disgust with his job of shooting men that were unaware (again, it was seen as ungentlemanly) and yet they all did their duty and there was even a bond of sorts while none of the men would ever understand each other or their motives in doing what they did for the war or for Billy. They were at the same time ashamed and treated him with respect, even when he was horribly wounded and stuck up in a tree, they calmly talked to him and slowly got him down and to medical help.
Billy's face was left horrifically damaged to the point where he had to wear a half-assed mask and tended to wander the slummier parts of NYC at night in hopes of hiding his face somewhat as opposed to exposing himself and others to the full light of day and to outrun his nightmares and ghosts from the war. (Most of us have seen those farcical masks that doctors used to the lasting wounds of both the Civil War and WWI, they often made people stand out just as much, if not more because they were so obviously false and left the viewer wondering just how bad it was under that mask, if it was indeed better than exposing the real wound to view. (Like watching a train or auto crash, it seems part of the human condition that while we are scared, we can't turn away.)
He meets M (Melville), saves an African American from being beaten because he is still too afraid to fight back in this new world where he is free, but not quite, befriends a widowed Chinese Laundress, that is determined to leave her Chinese roots behind and become "American" along with her two children who does his shirts and gives her hot water for his occasional bath, a "dusky" prostitute who doesn't seem to be afraid of his wounds, since she has some of her own from the history of slavery of her and her people, reunites with one of the men that was assigned to assist him during the war who has turned into a Boston reporter, and a few other non-important characters other than for the role they serve at one point in the story.
His thoughts on the war and on all wars are of a broader view and almost contemporary. He did his duty and what he was best at, but for not one moment did he see it as freeing the slaves or states rights. I won't spoil it and paraphrase his thoughts.
The point, oh the final point, would be a spoiler, but let's say that it them all even more wounded, dispirited, helpless to change what they see as wrong around them and less likely to trust their fellow man even more so than when we started.
I loved them all and will miss them. Billy, I will miss the most for his clear view of the state of the world and at the same time his naivety in thinking that there was still some good in people and something to fight for. He was a man after my own heart, sees that there are users and the used and thinks that he is the former and can use that only to find that just as in the war, he is, in fact, the used and has to find a way to make a life with that truth.
If I had to compare his prose, it reminded me of [b:Rules of Civility|10054335|Rules of Civility|Amor Towles|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1311705045s/10054335.jpg|14950407], which seems unfair since Busch passed long before Towles published his first book. I read and fell in love with Towles first, however.
The blurb on the back was pretty short, thanks to lots of praise quotes that didn't help me at all, and opening the cover I only knew that it was going to be a story of a maimed Civil War vet and how he forged on in NYC after the war.
What I found was magic, not the Harry Potter kind, but the lyrical and living kind. A story of very different people that somehow crossed paths, one of which was the Herman Melville, referred to as M, who at the time was not the literary god he is today and was, in fact, a forgotten man and a Customs Inspector at the port of New York and occasionally had to work a shift as the night inspector, and a cast of varied other characters that were all wounded by life and the war in one way or another. (That Melville was forgotten and became a Customs Inspector is true, BTW.)
The main ringleader of the story, William Bartholemew AKA "Billy", was what we would call today a sniper which at the time was viewed as a very ungentlemanly way to fight the war. He had a few men around him whose job was to keep him safe and ready to move on to his next assignment. These men all had a prickly relationship because of their disgust with his job of shooting men that were unaware (again, it was seen as ungentlemanly) and yet they all did their duty and there was even a bond of sorts while none of the men would ever understand each other or their motives in doing what they did for the war or for Billy. They were at the same time ashamed and treated him with respect, even when he was horribly wounded and stuck up in a tree, they calmly talked to him and slowly got him down and to medical help.
Billy's face was left horrifically damaged to the point where he had to wear a half-assed mask and tended to wander the slummier parts of NYC at night in hopes of hiding his face somewhat as opposed to exposing himself and others to the full light of day and to outrun his nightmares and ghosts from the war. (Most of us have seen those farcical masks that doctors used to the lasting wounds of both the Civil War and WWI, they often made people stand out just as much, if not more because they were so obviously false and left the viewer wondering just how bad it was under that mask, if it was indeed better than exposing the real wound to view. (Like watching a train or auto crash, it seems part of the human condition that while we are scared, we can't turn away.)
He meets M (Melville), saves an African American from being beaten because he is still too afraid to fight back in this new world where he is free, but not quite, befriends a widowed Chinese Laundress, that is determined to leave her Chinese roots behind and become "American" along with her two children who does his shirts and gives her hot water for his occasional bath, a "dusky" prostitute who doesn't seem to be afraid of his wounds, since she has some of her own from the history of slavery of her and her people, reunites with one of the men that was assigned to assist him during the war who has turned into a Boston reporter, and a few other non-important characters other than for the role they serve at one point in the story.
His thoughts on the war and on all wars are of a broader view and almost contemporary. He did his duty and what he was best at, but for not one moment did he see it as freeing the slaves or states rights. I won't spoil it and paraphrase his thoughts.
The point, oh the final point, would be a spoiler, but let's say that it them all even more wounded, dispirited, helpless to change what they see as wrong around them and less likely to trust their fellow man even more so than when we started.
I loved them all and will miss them. Billy, I will miss the most for his clear view of the state of the world and at the same time his naivety in thinking that there was still some good in people and something to fight for. He was a man after my own heart, sees that there are users and the used and thinks that he is the former and can use that only to find that just as in the war, he is, in fact, the used and has to find a way to make a life with that truth.
margaretpinard's review
3.0
Hard to read, but well done.
p185 'A family from India, it seemed--the father wore a dirty turban, his wife a sari of bright, stained yellow--were moving their household at dawn, along the railroad embankment at Hamilton Square at the corner of East Sixty-fifth. She carried a sleeping infant, swathed in blue, in her slender, hairy left arm; in her right, she steadied on her shoulder a long, thick wooden rod that rested, before her, on the shoulder of her man...They marched a peculiar dancing march to the rhythm established by the swinging weight of their household goods. They walked, in alternating darkness and light, communicating, so it seemed, through the distribution and redistribution of their burden..."
p185 'A family from India, it seemed--the father wore a dirty turban, his wife a sari of bright, stained yellow--were moving their household at dawn, along the railroad embankment at Hamilton Square at the corner of East Sixty-fifth. She carried a sleeping infant, swathed in blue, in her slender, hairy left arm; in her right, she steadied on her shoulder a long, thick wooden rod that rested, before her, on the shoulder of her man...They marched a peculiar dancing march to the rhythm established by the swinging weight of their household goods. They walked, in alternating darkness and light, communicating, so it seemed, through the distribution and redistribution of their burden..."
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