Stolen This Month From Barnes & Noble
By Jane Zane


City of Light
By Lauren Belfer
If City of Light were a 16 oz. steak, youÕd be furiously cutting away at the fat in effort to get to the lean meat. Set in turn of the century Buffalo, (which is akin to setting a novel at an intersection) City of Light already has one strike against it.

Louisa Barrett, bluestocking, is headmistress of the Macaulay School for Girls. Accepted as an equal by Buffalo's wealthy and powerful leaders, who make up the members of the schoolÕs board, Barrett enjoys the same freedoms as men by pretending to be a lesbian. The logic behind this, apparently, is that the menÕs wives wonÕt find her a threat, and therefore she can walk the streets alone, or talk to any man she wants without injuring her reputation. I know, I donÕt get it either.

The storyÑwhich is thinner than an ounce oÕ crinolineÑswitches from murder mystery to love story to social commentary depending on the authorÕs whim. The book attempts to tackle too many issues, picking up each in turn like a distracted matron in BergdorfÕs, only to discard one for the next without bothering to really look at it. In one scene, our schoolmarm Miss Barrett witnesses a black man being beaten for crossing a picket line. She does not help the man, or entice anyone else to help him, nor does this scene have any bearing later on. Barrett doesnÕt change in any way for having witnessed this, since she has made it painfully clear, ad nauseaum, that she knows this kind of behavior takes place in her city. So you ask, why the hell is it included in the book? To let us know racism is bad and we should take a stand against it? Well, duh.

Another problem is that none of these subplots is ever fully resolved. The murder mystery that so promisingly starts off the book is never explored for the reader. Instead, ˆ la Dragnet, the perp confesses to all towards the end of the book and gives a completely ridiculous rationale for committing the murders, which leads one to believe that the author had to tie up loose ends somehow, and randomly chose this particular character to be the murderer.

City of Light works best when the author weaves historical facts against the backdrop of plot, but sadly, even this seems overdone. The pacing of the novel is glacial, and at 600-odd pages, it seems as though the author is playing a game of chicken with the reader, daring us to wade through the constantly repeated editorial commentary, thick and deep as the prodigious snow drifts of a Buffalo winter.

Rating: Avoid at all costs.