The Girl in the Glass: An Edgar Award Winner

by Jeffrey Ford

Book Overview

The Great Depression has bound a nation in despair -- and only a privileged few have risen above it: the exorbitantly wealthy ... and the hucksters who feed upon them. Diego, a seventeen-year-old... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060936193
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Fantastical flight of fancy

This is the story of three con men working the rich but gullible in the depression years of 1930s Long Island: it is told through the eyes of seventeen year old Diego who, along with his mentor Schell and sidekick/bodyguard Anthony, provides séances to contact their recently departed loved and not so loved ones. During a routine scam in some millionaire's mansion Schell actually does see the `ghost' of a girl gone recently missing and puts their 'normal' work schedule on hold while he and his two accomplices set out to solve the mystery of the girl's whereabouts. Ford has conjured up a wonderful confection with echoes of Faulkner's The Reivers; evoking the time if not the place. It's a funny, sad, lyrical but above all beautifully written coming of age tale that also manages along the way a quick detour into the heart of darkness! No mean feat! This book could quite easily be read in one sitting - if you ever decide to give yourself a real treat - buy it, take the phone of the hook and lock yourself away!

All the right chords

It is rare to find an author that strikes every chord right, but Jeffrey Ford did that for me in this book. It's engaging, intelligent, well-written, and funny as hxll. This is the first book of Ford's that I have read; but, happily, will not be the last. Do yourself a favor. Just read the first page. You will be captured.

A book That Never Bores

I absolutely adored this book a whole bunch. It's about con men who trick people to believe they are talking to a dead lost relative inorder to make a living and Jeffrey Ford does a really good job on giving an excellent background throughout the entire book. Soon though one of the con men see's "the girl in the glass" during one of their schemes and investigates the girl. The excitement never dies down through the book even when the main chracter (an immigrant) isn't getting chased down by some type of crook. There's relationships also in the book which is always good to have when your dealing with the criminalish atmosphere the book gives. A DEFINITE buy for almost everyone.... This book has a lot of drug content and one sexual scene one point in the book so don't get it unless your atleast in your later teens.

SCAMS AND BUTTERFLIES

Writing this, I'm torn between describing the strengths of this elegant and compelling novel or just telling you that there are still a few weeks of summer left and that The Girl In The Glass will be the beach book of your dreams. Ford catches the spirit of The Thin Man, both Hammett's novel and the Powell/Loy movies that followed, and mixes that with deft dashes of magic and some darker tones. Set in the bitter Depression year of 1932 on a Long Island from which the Great Gatsby would have only recently departed, the novel catches the special mystery of a lost time and place where rural back roads, led to lavish beach-front estates and liquor smuggling was a local industry. Young Diego, a Mexican immigrant, is a wonderfully engaging narrator. Through him we see Thomas Schell and Anthony Cleopatra, a master con man and his assistant, making hay among the well to do and easily fooled. Then, in the middle of a phony séance, Schell, a dealer in sleight-of-hand, a collector of exotic butterflies sees the inexplicable reflection of a girl on a pane of glass. Against a backdrop of kidnapping and murder, both Diego and Schell find romance and the fly underworld of carnival freaks and flim-flam collides with the deeply disturbing one of eugenics cults. I came to love this little band of scam artists enough that I was sorry when the pages ran out and the book ended. In summer or in any other season, I think you'll love them too.

Jeffrey Ford strikes again

Jeffrey Ford is on my short list of authors for whom I'll put down whatever else I'm reading when they have a new book out. His Well-Built City trilogy is fantastic, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque is wonderful, and his short stories are routinely first-rate -- The Fantasy Writer's Assistant is one of my very favorite story collections. That said, I was a little worried about Ford's latest novel, The Girl in the Glass. Published under Harper's suspense imprint, Dark Alley, this novel promised to be less overtly fantastical than Ford's previous outings, which did not bode well, as my taste runs toward fantasy. I needen't have worried. The Girl in the Glass was a delight from start to finish, or rather a non-stop deluge of delights. I read it in one sitting, then immediately wished I hadn't, because I wanted to keep on reading it. Set in Depression-era New York, the story is narrated by a young Mexican immigrant who's been adopted by a con man and is posing as a Hindu to avoid repatriation -- and to add a bit of the exotic to his mentor's act. The mystery kicks in when, on a con, his mentor sees a ghostly girl in the glass, and makes it his mission to find out who she is and what's going on. As our characters work to unravel the mystery of the girl, we meet a variety of wonderful characters, from carnies to Klansmen, and get embroiled in all sorts of grotesque, wonderful events. I'm not so good at plot summary or book reviewing, I think, so I'll say this: it's worth your time to give this novel and this author a try. Almost every page offers up some new beauty or wonder, the characters are a treat, and the prose goes down smooth. This is probably not the best book you will read this year, but it is a gem that you would do well not to overlook.