Book Review: Surrender, New York by Caleb Carr

Ugh. I really don’t like writing book reviews for books I couldn’t get into… This was one. And it was a book I requested, which makes it doubly disappointing. My review copy was generously provided by the good people at Random House. Quick sidebar – I have had the most amazing luck in my dealings with Penguin Random House, they really have a fantastic group of publicity staff. I’m sure their job is relatively thankless, much of the time – in my experience in corporate America, publicists generally only get commentary when things go wrong – so I wanted to take this quick opportunity to say thank you publicly and loudly (well, as loudly as one can type) to all of the fantastic women I’ve had the fortune to interact with at PRH. They’ve been helpful, gracious, appreciative, and supportive, and make reviewing books for them a pleasure.

But enough delays, on to Surrender, New York.

I am a huge fan of several of Caleb Carr’s earlier works. The Alienist and its sequel The Angel of Darkness and Killing Time are all phenomenal, as I’ve noted before. Carr writes detailed, lengthy, complicated books. Normally, I love that; I love getting drawn into a story, watching the story unfold through minutiae, particularly in mysteries. His latest book looked to be in that vein, and I was thrilled at the chance to get an advance copy for review. Unfortunately, something fell horribly flat for me with this one – so much so that I couldn’t even finish it…

As I’ve said before, I tend to decline to review things I can’t finish – or to formally review them, at least. I usually still do a “review” on reader sites like GoodReads and on Amazon, because dedicated readers (a group to which I unapologetically claim membership) like to talk about books, and we like talking about their failures and foibles almost as much as their successes and fine points. But if I didn’t like the book enough to even finish it, I don’t generally feel like I’m in a position to say very much about the book – the fact that I didn’t finish it usually speaks for itself. With this one, though, I feel like I owe both Random House and readers a little explanation, especially since I was so surprisingly disappointed by my reception of this book, so I shall endeavor to provide one…

I loved the premise – the revisiting, even only conceptually, of Dr. Laszlo Kreizler from The Alienist/Angel series was very encouraging. I loved those books and that character and always lamented that there were not more of them. So any chance to bring him back, even tangentially as an influence for a contemporary character in a contemporary story, held tremendous promise. When I started reading, that promise seemed like it was about to be well realized. The first pages could have been progeny of the Kreizler books. The language felt comfortable and familiar coming from Carr’s pen (computer, whatever). I’ve seen other reviewers slam him for the formality of the language. Admittedly, it is unusual in a contemporary novel to find formal, nineteenth century-feeling, language for descriptions and scene-setting. That didn’t bother me though, because it felt like Carr – and once I got far enough in to get a good feel for Dr. Trajan Jones, it felt altogether appropriate. What to many seems to have felt like jarring dissonance felt, to me, like an homage – and a particularly relevant one, given Jones’ particular methods and personality. It was slow-going, but that was not necessarily a problem – until, rather suddenly, it was.

I can’t point my finger to the issue I had, or explain it very well. All I know is that I have now opened and closed this book no less than a half-dozen times – and not because I’ve run out of reading time, but because I keep losing the story – and I’m not even to page 100. Each time I start reading, hit a rough spot, push through, hit a point that feels like the Carr I so enjoy, then suddenly find myself veering into a rather rambling exegesis on something that loses me entirely… Each. Time. Frustrating, to say the least. There is fabulous bone structure here, but it’s lost in a tangle that I just can’t push past… It feels as though Carr wasn’t quite sure what book he was trying to write. On one hand, it is a mystery. On another, it is history. On a third, it is an explication of the challenges of being unconventional in a thoroughly (and downright depressingly) conventional world. On a fourth… Get the picture yet? If not I’ll short-hand it for you: it is a book that defies easy categorization, because it is (attempting to be) many things at once. The problem for me was that it felt like those things were disparate, and layered together like a sandwich, rather than patiently interwoven.

And that’s where it kept losing me.

Despite repeated attempts and much frustrated confusion on my part, I simply could not work my way through the entire thing or gin up enough interest to keep trying after the fourth or fifth time I found myself setting it aside for something else. I got about six inches into the mystery, but already felt like I was wandering out of my depth – and couldn’t gin up the interest to forage further in. It was just too much work, fighting for every inch… I will come back to it. There is a lot of very great stuff here – some that feels familiar but with the twist of new presentation, some that feels utterly original. Plus there’s Carr’s reputation, which is both deserved and substantial. But for right now, I’m afraid I had to finally call a halt to it.