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Review title: pleasant yet very tame
Product review: This is a nice enough book. The time and the place are recreated miticulously, from throw-away references to popular items and ideas of the day, to sprawling detail of monuments and individuals. All this is fine and good and it's very well written. But the plot is just so damn tame. It's all too gushy and feel-goody and nostalgia for the "good ole days" that were obviously hell, the depression looming, war on the horoizon, people with nothing to do and nowhere to go and we're given this teary-eyed, Spielbergian child's eye view of the world. Again, it's wrapped up neatly and told pretty vividly, but I just wish there were some real sort of conflict, not just 'what will mother think?' Doctorow was much better in The Book of Daniel and Ragtime. Read this only if you're a fan, and you've run out of his better works, or have some strage attachment to the 1939 World's Fair.
