5 star rating

My Review:

I hated reading it! That's an odd thing to say about a book that I am giving 5 stars. Jerome Charyn dragged me kicking and screaming through the hellish landscape that is his version of Manhattan's Lower East Side during the very beginning of the 1900's. The world he builds is dark, violent and very scary. I felt like I was walking beside his fully fleshed out characters trying to keep my head down, terrified to interact with the bad element scattered like landmines throughout this book. I went through a slew of emotions line to line, chapter to chapter.

This one was a far cry from the cozy mysteries and popcorn thrillers I was reading at the time. I read this quite a while ago and it has stayed with me. If you are looking to challenge yourself outside your usual genre and want to be gripped by the beautiful, sad and scary prose of a fantastic book give Ravage & Son a try.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for free access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

Blurb:

Ravage & Son reflects the lost world of Manhattan’s Lower East Side—the cradle of Jewish immigration during the first years of the twentieth century—in a dark mirror.

Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, serves as the conscience of the Jewish ghetto teeming with rogue cops and swindlers. He rescues Ben Ravage, an orphan, from a trade school and sends him off to Harvard to earn a law degree. But upon his return, Ben rejects the chance to escape his gritty origins and instead becomes a detective for the Kehilla, a quixotic gang backed by wealthy uptown patrons to help the police rid the Lower East Side of criminals. Charged with rooting out the Jewish “Mr. Hyde,” a half-mad villain who attacks the prostitutes of Allen Street, Ben discovers that his fate is irrevocably tied to that of this violent, sinister man.

A lurid tale of revenge, this wildly evocative, suspenseful noir is vintage Jerome Charyn.

This is one of those books where there is a significant disconnect between how good the book is and how much I actually liked it. This was significantly, um, nastier than what I might enjoy, though well written nonetheless. Sort of a more visceral and gross version of the Gangs of New York and its ilk.

The book fully advertises itself as a Noir and that’s accurate. It’s a good story but very violent, and includes far too much torture and sexual violence for my liking. The story itself is a good one, focused specifically on the Jewish are of the city and the lives of its citizens, while also taking a broader look at the issues plaguing the city as a whole at the time.

I wish the story had been less depressing, particularly regarding the fate of the principal characters, but it’s compelling and well written.

Not a spare word in this tough and cruel story. The book centers primarily on tough Jewish immigrants and their stories of survival. Characters are sharp and brutal. The story line is dark and hopeless. There’s not a happy ending in sight, but the tale is vivid with details and characters. It is a story that grabs - one can’t look away.

The novel “Ravage & Son” is best described as “vintage noir”. It’s about the confluence of power and poverty of immigrant Jews on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s and contains several historical figures like Abraham Cahan, one of the founders of the Forward. The writing is compelling, the story engaging, and I really liked the narrator, Stephen Jay Cohen, but I’m certain I would have gotten more out of reading than I did listening.

4 ⭐️ for the story
3 ⭐️ for audio book

3.5 ⭐️ overall

Thank you to NetGalley for my review copy.