I've been told how great Doctorow is but have never read anything by him. After reading Homer & Langley I'm going to have to pick up another by the author. What a great story about two misfit, shut in's. One blind, the other addicted to collecting-EVERYTHING. There have been some negative reviews of the book because Docotorow plays with time. The brothers died in the 1940's but Doctorow allows them to live nearly to current day. Why? In my humble opinion it's to show the reader that no matter how hard you try to shelter yourself from the events of the day they will barge in. We are all affected directly or indirectly by the goings on of our neighbors next door of across the globe. ( )

Homer and Langley Collyer are brothers-the one blind and deeply intuitive, the other damaged into madness, or perhaps greatness, by mustard gas in the Great War. They live as recluses in their once grand Fifth Avenue mansion, scavenging the city streets for thing they think they can use ( )

E.L. Doctorow’s most recent novel, Homer & Langley, is an epic history of twentieth century America as it was experienced by two brothers living in a Fifth Avenue brownstone in New York City. Homer, the blind brother, narrates the story and describes how the brothers become ever more eccentric and reclusive over the decades. Their home becomes a repository for everything the brothers pick up on their wanderings through the city—including gangsters, hippies, and even a jazz trumpeter from New Orleans—and eventually becomes a destination for curiosity seekers and reporters.

Doctorow is a master at capturing the zeitgeist of a particular period in just a few sentences, like this view of the Prohibition era: “Some of the clubs were rather elegant, with a pretty good kitchen and a dance floor, others were basement dives where the music came from a radio on a wall shelf broadcasting some swing orchestra from Pittsburgh. But where you went didn't matter, you could die of the gin in any of these joints, and the mood was the same everywhere, people laughing at what wasn't funny.”

Such conciseness is necessary since, in just over 200 pages, Homer & Langley takes us through the twentieth century’s most transformative moments in America, including the transition of silent films to talkies to television, the development of jazz, the Great Depression, World War II, the Vietnam War and its opposition, and the Civil Rights Movement. Homer explains: “It was as if the times blew through our house like a wind, and these were the things deposited here by the winds of war.”

At times, Homer & Langley feels too much like a contrived stage for the organized parade of history (compare Forest Gump). Mostly, however, the compassion and sensitivity with which Doctorow presents the brothers, along with Homer’s unique voice, make this novel a joy to read.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License. ( )

I knew little about the Collyer brothers when I began reading this book except to know that they died in their home, buried in trash. What E.L.Doctorow has done is humanized these two so that for a long time you feel that everything that happens is understandable in some way, and a logical result of what happens before. Homer's lyrical voice draws you in, as he is the narrator of the story. Langley is (as the real Langley was not) a casualty of the first world war, physically and emotionally harmed, but still brilliant, and caring of his brother. Various interesting people come into the brothers' lives that open their world for a time, but they disappear, and the brothers are more alone than before. As the novel progresses, I was seduced into thinking that somehow Homer, at least, would survive and find solace and comfort at the end of his life. But instead Doctorow inexorably leads you to the appallingly tragic conclusion.

There's no way I'd recommend this book for anyone who gets depressed easily! But the writing is gorgeous, as is all Doctorow's, and to be reminded of the commonality of us all, even "eccentrics", is a gift. ( )

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