From Publishers Weekly
At 72, Ducovny (author of 10 nonfiction books, including David Ben Gurion; playwright; journalist; and father of X-Files star David) debuts as a novelist with a coming-of-age memoir set in the seedy underworld of Coney Island in the late 1930s. Fifteen-year-old Harry Catzker learns to think about life through Brooklyn-accented, imaginative Platonic dialogues with his family's Polish boarder, Yiddish poet Aba Stolz. The teenager also becomes familiar with life's seamier pursuits riding his bike along Coney Island's tawdry midway, befriending the local sideshow freaks and observing the dog pack that patrols the boardwalk. A midget named Woody, owner of a bike rental and repair shop, introduces Harry to Luna Park's illegal trades. Woody starts Harry off as a small-time bagman, but soon involves him in the biggest arson scam in Coney Island history. The pervasive atmosphere of sleaze and fraud also draws in Harry's father, Moishe, a Yiddish journalist whose serialized novels engage a loyal audience of Orthodox Jews, and Harry's mother, Velia, a Polish refugee with secrets of her own. Even the intellectual Aba falls victim to blackmail and worse. Ducovny captures the range of New York immigrant experiences: Aba's trips to Harlem jazz clubs contrasts with the stubborn ethnicity of Harry's grandmother, Bama, who came to America in 1919, never learned English, and returns to the old country a widow on the eve of WWII. Characters like the wheelchair-bound crime boss Vic Menter, cruising in his 1939 black chauffeur-driven Packard, counterpoint nostalgic scenes of Aba, recalling the crime he committed in Poland or giving a poetry reading. Most of all, however, there's the specter of the European genocide taking place at the same time as these Coney Island adventures, shedding a somber shadow on this colorful, compassionate story. Agent, Andrew Blauner. 30,000 first printing.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In this first novel, Ducovny (educator, father of actor David Duchovny, and author of ten books of nonfiction) portrays three groups living in 1930s Coney Island: immigrant Polish Jews fleeing persecution, gangsters, and carnival sideshow attractions. Teenager Harry Catzker runs errands for the thugs and finds a surrogate mother in Fifi, the carnival's fat woman. The horror of events unfolding in Europe informs the lives of Harry's parents, Moses and Velia, and their friend, Yiddish poet Aba Stolz. A secret from Aba's Polish past leads to the tragic deaths of the three adults. While the fears and dreams of the Jews are movingly portrayed, Ducovny keeps too many story lines moving simultaneously (Aba's love for an African American singer, the gangsters' arson scheme, Velia's adultery, and the histories of the various "freaks"). A scene of the carnival workers having group sex while Harry watches may be intended to show the humanity of the characters but comes off as merely gratuitous. Recommended for large fiction collections and where there is interest in Jewish or New York City history.DJudith Kicinski, Sarah Lawrence Coll. Lib., Bronxville, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ducovny, a veteran nonfiction author (and father of actor David Duchovny), has written a first novel with a perfectly realized setting: Coney Island in 1939, a heady mix of immigrants, carnival freaks, and gangsters. The coming-of-age of 15-year-old Harry Catzker touches all three groups. The immigrants are his loved ones--his father, an impoverished intellectual and the author of a serialized Yiddish novel; his mother, embittered over the family's failure to get ahead; and their boarder, Aba, a Yiddish poet with a distinctly melancholy soul. The carnival freaks--fat, thin, bearded, and blue--are Harry's alternate family, and they teach him the lessons his parents never learned. Finally, there are the gangsters, who bring all the groups together in a disastrous yet inevitable climax. Ducovny's characters are nearly as vivid as his setting, especially Aba and Harry's father, and use wit as a way of protecting themselves from the world ("always with the jokes," sneers Harry's mother). Unfortunately, Ducovny never met a simile he didn't invite home for dinner; despite the too-rich prose, however, there is much here to savor. Bill Ott
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About the Author
Amram Ducovny is the author of ten nonfiction books as well as the Broadway play The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, which was adapted into an award-winning TV movie. He has lived mainly in New York City and Boston, where he was Vice President of Public Affairs for Brandeis University. He now lives in Paris. Coney is his first novel.
