One Night, New York: 'A page turner with style' (Erin Kelly)

I was attracted to this by a mini review in the Guardian and it didn't disappoint. Engaging characters and a fast moving plot set in the turbulence of New York in the 1930s kept me entertained for a whole lockdown weekend. It also sent me off Googling the iconic photography of New York at the time and the political intrigue and social tensions around the City. Entertained and educated, I would strongly recommend this terrific novel.

An easy read and engaging characters.

This book is beautifully crafted. The plot twists and unfolds through exquisite use of period detail, creative characters and scenes described with truly imaginative use of vocabulary. It has a depth and pace that leaves you wanting more.Lara is an inventive wordsmith with hopefully more books awaiting their launch from within the labyrinth of her imagination .

Fantastic book! I'm not a big reader but I kept this on my bedside until it was finished and loved every chapter. Suspense and action in a believable old school NYC.. let's hope Lara writes another novel soon as clearly she has found her calling.

This was bought as a present - the recipient loved it.

I thought that this was a wonderful novel, and all the more impressive given that it is, as far as I am aware, Lara Thompson’s first book.It would be difficult to offer much of a synopsis without running the risk of spoilers, and it is far too good a book to mar carelessly. Basically Frances leaves her brutal existence in poverty stricken Hays, Kansas to join her brother Stanley, who has established himself in 1930s New York. The train journey takes days rather than hours, and en route Frances encounters Dicky and Jacks, two relatively wealthy New Yorkers. They find Frances as alien as they seem to her, but establish a vague relationship, and Frances promises to contact them once she has settled in the city. Stanley is taciturn byt well meaning, although he won’t tell Frances any details about the job that he has landed. She gradually comes to realise that he is involved in some way with a night club, although details emerge only gradually.The story flits around in time, opening with almost the final scene, with preceding events coming in the form of flashbacks. The cast of characters is wonderful, taking in affluent society figures, jazz musicians, and all sorts of figures involved in one way or another with the club, including the Mayor. The occasional scenes from Frances’s and Stanley’s former life in Kansas are heartrending, and offer a stark contrast to the vitality of the city. I found the portrayal of post-Crash New York very convincing.This book made me recall The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, which was one of my favourite novels of last year. They are set in different decades, but offered the same feeling of wide-eyed astonishment of country folk displaced to the big city. As a simple country boy myself, that is always a winning formula for me.There are grim incidents throughout, but this is a beautiful book, and one that deserves a wide readership.

This is a enthralling historical fiction debut from Lara Thompson that plunges the reader into the melting pot that is 1930s New York seen through the eyes of recent arrival from remote Hays in Kansas, young Frances, to live with her older brother, Stan, in a dilapidated overcrowded tenement. Frances ran away from the dust bowl that is Kansas and home, where there is no future, the depression and the dust storms have destroyed lives, families and futures, and in addition, her family to say the least, is problematic. On the train to New York, she bumps into the glamorous and cool Jacks (Jacqueline) and photographer, Richard 'Dicky' Sampson, a well known photographer, interested in doing articles, with photographs and interviews, on her, depicting her pre-New York, the impact of moving to the big city, wearing new, exquisitely beautiful, urban clothing.It is the character of Frances that holds centre stage, unable to read and write, wanting to learn, determined and feisty, there is much she doesn't know as a poor country girl in the big bad city, yet she can cut through to the heart of an issue, she is forbidden by her brother, Stan, to go out alone, but this will not stop her. Her curiosity and excitement takes her into dangerous and traumatic situations, having to control the fears, grief and trauma that threaten to overwhelm her. It soon becomes clear to Frances that Stan is not the brother she knew from home, he has lost weight, and he is less than forthcoming about what he does for a living, and she is surprised that he is friends with black veteran sax player, Ben, who helps improve her literacy skills. The story begins with Frances and Agnes, a photographer, at the top of the Empire State Building in December, 1932, waiting for a man that is the cause of much grief and misery, yet untouchable, with their plans of revenge. The narrative then goes back and forth in time to explain how they reached this point in their lives.Thompson provides a scintillating sense of location and time, a New York where you can be both exposed and invisible, on the cusp of great changes, its diverse population, the distinctly different districts, the extreme inequalities, racism, sexism, sexuality and poverty, the art, the jazz clubs, the brutality and casual violence, the bribery and blackmail, grubby corrupt politicians and cops, the glamour girls, the scandals, mobsters and their molls, and the drugs trade. Through the eyes of Dicky and Agnes, who has dreams of being a great photographer, the city and its people are depicted as if through the lens of a camera, stylised, manipulated and natural, the skyscrapers that dominate, the ever diminishing skies and horizons. This is a beautifully written debut that is likely to appeal to fans of historical fiction, along with crime and mystery readers. Many thanks to Virago and Little, Brown for an ARC.

1932年秋カンサス州の田舎から逃げ出した娘フランシスは兄スタンが住むNYの部屋に転がり込んだ。その年の暮れに仲良しアグネスと共に出来たばかりのエンパイアステートビルの展望台から遥か下を眺めて良からぬ相談を始めたのが巻頭部で、話は前の秋に戻って当時のNY事情が詳細に語られる。大恐慌のアメリカは政情不安もありで若者たちが希望を失い怪しげな酒場やボヘミアンを気取る連中などでごった返しており、田舎娘フランシスはそのなかでもみくちゃにされながらも強く生きていく。ミステリに分類されていたので手に取ったがそれは期待外れで、このデビュー作家は丹念に当時の世情を描いてうまくやってくれている。ということで普通の小説として受け止めれば良い出来だと思う。

I'm struggling to rate this between 1 and two stars so I put two but it's really 1.5.This was a VERY slow burn and such a promising story but ended in a huge let down. The time jump was so close together that I felt disoriented between chapters which took me out of the story. The LGBTQ parts felt one dimensional. If you are going to go there then go there but it felt so glossed over that I kept forgetting we were in the 1930s and not 2022. It's like the author was scared to really get into the nitty gritty of being LGBTQ in that time era. Either go for it or don't do it at all. Even the hesitation with Ben in regards to his skin color was pretty superficial. And then the reveal of a baby (that I think her father might have harmed/killed? I couldn't tell it was so badly put together) was completely out of pIace, random, with no relevancy what so ever to anything. I found myself not caring about the characters and nearly stopped at 90% but powered through. I thought this was going to be an interesting historical fiction/thriller/whodunnit type but it was boring, superficial, and a bit of a mess.