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THE WORLD OF TOMORROW

Brendan Mathews

An exciting new voice with a most promising first novel.

THE WORLD OF TOMORROW is set during the course of a week during New York's 1939 World's Fair that connects a vivid ensemble cast of high and low society, and culminates in an assassination plot against King George and Queen Elizabeth during their visit to the US.

June 1939. With Europe on the brink of another World War, Francis Dempsey and his deaf-mute and shell-shocked brother, Michael, are en route to New York City, masquerading as minor Scottish nobles aboard a luxury ocean liner, having absconded with a small fortune stolen from the IRA. Their destination is the house of their older brother, Martin, a jazz musician, in the Bronx. But when Tom Cronin, a retired henchman seeking redemption through a final job, tracks the brothers down, Francis must capitulate to blackmail or have his family suffer fatal consequences.

New York, meanwhile, is suffused with an electric feeling of hope, caught up in the fervor of the World's Fair that will host King George and Queen Elizabeth, the first time in history a reigning British monarch has set foot on American soil. Over the course of one tumultuous week, THE WORLD OF TOMORROW brims with conmen, politicians, artists, musicians, mobsters, and molls -- characters haunted by their pasts and connected by blood, love, and chance.

Brendan Mathews brings old timey New York to vivid, pulsing life. The sweeping and intricate storytelling of this remarkable debut is set against the resonant backdrop of an America that blithely hoped it could avoid the war and focus instead on the promise inherent in the slogan of the World's Fair: a peaceful, prosperous "World of Tomorrow."

Brendan Mathews writes fiction and teaches at Bard College at Simon's Rock. A 2011 finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Prize, he has published in Best American Short Stories, Cincinnati Review, Glimmer Train, Virginia Quarterly Review, and others. Mathews’ stories have been selected twice for Best American Short Stories and we also have a story collection signed up for 2018.

Available products
Book Published 2017-09-05 by Little Brown
Book Published 2017-09-05 by Little Brown

Comments

Mathews deftly handles a large cast of characters in The World of Tomorrow. . . Perhaps the most vibrant character of all, however, is New York itself. In hard-boiled prose that ranges from gossipy to poetic, Mathews takes us from humble Bronx homes to rowdy Manhattan jazz clubs, from grimy back alleys to palatial Fifth Avenue estates . . .The World of Tomorrow is a sweeping, impressive accomplishment . . . Mathews has written an insightful immigrant epic, not to mention a first-class literary thriller.

Mathews writes extraordinarily well . . . His plot, rife with geopolitical intrigue, is nicely calibrated . . . His characters are likable and clever . . . They're Depression-weary, ready to transcend 'the sordid history of the Old World and looking boldly to the future.' This is an expansive theme, and from it, the first-time author has carved a commendable novel.

Australia and New Zealand: Simon & Schuster Australia

Masterful….This novel is a remarkably fast and exhilarating read, reminiscent of Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay….With the wit of a ’30s screwball comedy and the depth of a thoroughly researched historical novel, this onegrabs the readerfrom the beginning to its suspenseful climax.

As everything rolls toward an adrenaline-fueled finale, Mathews brilliantly creates characters who embody the esprit de corps of immigrants and movingly explores themes of class, society, race, and family. For fans of Michael Chabon and E. L. Doctorow.

The origin story of the cover of THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. Read more...

It's rare to read a book whose range and ambition so aptly fit its title. Page after page, "The World of Tomorrow" lives up to its notable name. Read more...

In this sweeping book of slippery secret identities, Brendan Mathews invites us to sink deeply into the hearts and minds of a score of colorful characters. For a single week, we too become the gangster, the photographer, the musician, the socialite; we too become these three inextricably bound brothers, each trying in his way to connect his past to his future. Magically constructed and methodically researched, The World of Tomorrow is a vastly entertaining novel about the powerful pull of family, the weight of history, and the allure of escaping into a better life—all set against a vivid and unforgettable New York.

Entertaining . . . outsized . . . The World of Tomorrow views its teeming cast of characters as though from the observation deck of one of the city skyscrapers that seem to 'burst from the pages of a comic book.' . . . Reveling in bold twists and fantastic coincidences, Mathews's big, expressive debut inhabits a world that's neither of the past nor the future but wholly of the imagination.

What a book! The World of Tomorrowis a panoramic tour-de-force, a huge undertaking peopled with convincing characters and animated by a persuasive historical accuracy. But beyond all that, my fascination was with the way Mathews assembled the novel, sifting and endlessly resifting his characters like sand, as life itself piled up right in front of me. The grim realities of America on the cusp of a second World War will be recognizable, but in this capable writer’s hands, the individual characters—passionate, secretive, naïve, lucky, unlucky, and sometimes hapless—remain full of surprises to the last. They exist not against the backdrop of history, but tangled up in its complex, cruel, or absurd demands, desperate to find whatever space is allowed them for intimacy.

THE WORLD OF TOMORROW by Brendan Mathews made Entertainment Weekly’s roundup of “Fall’s 20 Must-Read Books”

Brash, bold, completely entertaining, and dazzling in its evocation of time and place, Brendan Mathews’s splendid debut offers pleasures on every page.

Mathews’ colorful debut novel examines the legacy of Irish political violence for a family in both the old country and New York during one busy week in 1939…. Among the many splashes of New York atmosphere, the strongest are snapshots of the city’s prewar musical frenzy…. Mathews’ debut shows impressive control of this narrative cornucopia. Read more...

Mathews’s first novel is all you could want in a piece of popular fiction.The tension never lets up, and the story is fast and mind-spinningly complicated….There’s suspense, humor, love, of both the doomed and requited varieties….This novel should prove irresistible to anyone wanting a diverting read.It’s quality stuff—and fun.

A promising writer . . . Mathews is an able prose stylist, and breathing life into so many diverse characters is no mean feat . . . The possibility of dramatic transformation amid historical ferment is at the heart of The World of Tomorrow, a fat novel stuffed with well-drawn characters grappling with different versions of themselves . . . Mathews has a flair for bringing street scenes to life, and his hopscotching narrativefrom a Harlem jazz joint to a Bowery art studio to a Fifth Avenue palacemakes for an enjoyable tour of a vanished city . . . An affable debut novel.

Check out Brendan's interview on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday Read more...

What a beguiling debut Brendan Mathews has given us in The World of Tomorrow: clever, smart, ambitious, richly textured, and moving.