A comedy of manners: short stories set around USA
Novel set around the building of the Empire State Building, MANHATTAN
12th February 2025
Grace of the Empire State by Gemma Tizzard, novel set around the building of the Empire State Building, Manhattan.
1930 New York and the Depression is in full swing. People are scrabbling around for food and jobs and life for most is hard. Nevertheless “The city was bustling, as always, fully of people, cars street-cars, bright colours and a cacophony of different languages”, contrasted with “Families on the streets, men desperate for work, children in rags, women going through the trash looking for food”. It has always been a city of contrast and contradiction.
The O’Connell family – Mum and several off-spring – is holding it all together because Grace and Patrick are bringing in some money. Grace is a dancer at Dominic’s, whilst her twin brother is working on the construction of the Empire State Building in Midtown on 34th Street and 5th Avenue. The skeletal structure of the building is growing ever upwards as the workers risk life and limb to complete the 102 storey building. On the very same day that Dominic’s is shut down unexpectedly for good, Patrick has a construction accident and comes home with a broken arm. With no income from the two young people, the family will be destitute and out on the street in no time, especially as rents are about to go up. How will they care for younger, ailing sister Connie? How will they put food on the table?
If Patrick isn’t able to work, his small team on the site will all be unceremoniously booted off the ‘steel’. Grace rises to the challenge and resolves to take his place, and so a meet-up with his men is arranged. Before anyone can register what is happening, she is scaling a fire escape in her Spanish heeled shoes, clambering up to the 4th floor of the adjacent building. Quite the female version of spider man, it turns out, but she clearly had to do something spectacular to prove that she is up to the job.
It is, of course, hard to keep up the pretence as she doubles for her brother: the men around her won’t look too closely, she hopes, as they will see what they expect to see. But Bergmann (oh oh, stereotyping the bad German) will have to be put in his place if she is going to maintain her disguise. Threats lurk everywhere, and one worker suggests that Patrick (Grace, of course, in actuality) is perhaps a “cross-dresser” (oh dear, that term didn’t come into proper use until the later 20th Century).
2 novels set in Manhattan
The author states in the Author’s Notes that she did a lot of research into the building of the Empire State, and she does create a great sense of the danger, as the steel girders swing and shift at towering heights. But I don’t feel she quite got the sense of the time, because descriptions were all a little superficial and fleeting. Grace, of course, is a plucky and fit young woman, who, against all kinds of odds, cleaves her way through the story. It was, however, refreshing to read about a bold and fearless heroine set in New York rather than the more usual backdrop of a gruelling mining community or factory nightmare.
I also so wanted to discover that this story was based on true events, but the author explains (in the Author’s Note) that she was fired by the question: “Where were the women?” The construction did not, according to her research, involve any women (but that’s not really a surprise, is it?).
The publishers could do the author a real favour and drop the ghastly AI designed book cover and find something better.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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