Call It Sleep
by
main characters
David Schearl, Schearl family
Rip's impressions
Another novel in which I felt like I curled up in the main character's home, a slum apartment, and watched and listened to everything going on. I was there with David on the train tracks. I felt everything he felt right, to the end. Another skillful use of dialogue from the vernacular street talk of children, in New York City early 20th century.
first line
The small white steamer, Peter Stuyvesant, that delivered the immigrants from the stench and throb of the steerage to the stench and throb of New York tenements, rolled slightly on the water beside the stone quay in the lee of the weathered barracks and the new brick buildings of Ellis island.
last lines
(spoiler alert)
One might as well call it sleep. He shut his eyes.
literary tidbits
Pair reading this with the Stud Lonigan Trilogy, which is about the Irish immigrant experience in Chicago. Why are the Jewish kids always the one to be beaten up by other street gangs?
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