cover image Electric City

Electric City

Elizabeth Rosner. Counterpoint, $26 (304p) ISBN 978-1-61902-346-8

In her structurally flawed multigenerational tale, Rosner (Blue Nude) explores the history of "Electric City," the New York town along the Mohawk River where Thomas Edison chose to relocate Edison Machine Works (later General Electric), his research and manufacturing enterprise "that would light up the world." The bulk of the novel alternates between two eras of the company town. The first begins in 1919 and focuses on Charles Proteus Steinmetz, a physically deformed mathematician known as the "Wizard of Electric City." Steinmetz is conducting cutting-edge research on manmade lightning generators while developing a spiritually rewarding friendship with a Native American named Joseph Longboat. The narrative then switches to the latter half of the 1960s when the company embarks on series of layoffs that harbinger Electric City's decline. We meet Sophie Levine, a high school student whose Dutch-Jewish father works for the famous company begins a romance with Henry Van Curler, the privileged son of a storied Electric City family. Sophie is also intrigued by Martin Longboat, the rebellious grandson of Joseph Longboat who is interested in Steinmetz's life and works. The novel fails to achieve a balance between the earnest but stale teenage love story and the portrait of Steinmetz, which is informative but often dramatically inert. Throughout, the writing is flooded with countless electrical metaphors, which generate thematic unity if not a particularly galvanizing tale. (Oct.)