Complete article at the following URL:  http://www.nysun.com/article/56433  

   

 

The Good Doctor

By NATHAN WARD
June 13, 2007

New York City plays a strong supporting role in most of Pete Hamill's work, from the decades-long pub crawl remembered in "A Drinking Life" to his celebration of the man whose voice filled so many of those saloon hours in "Why Sinatra Matters." His 10th novel, "North River" (Little, Brown; 341 pages, $25.99), digs deep into the hard details of the city's life in 1934, five years buried under the Depression and at the beginning of the administration of Fiorello La Guardia.

 

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Vladimir Nabokov once confessed that the main theme of his novel "Bend Sinister" was "the beating of Krug's loving heart," and that "it is for the sake of the pages about David and his father that it was written and should be read." While certainly not the literary achievement of Nabokov, the most memorable and original passages of "North River" flow from the relationship between the doctor and his unexpected grandson. Clearly it is for the beating of Delaney's heart that it was written and should be read.

Mr. Ward last wrote for these pages on the 1936 Olympics. His book,"The War for the Waterfront: Mike Johnson & the Mob" is forthcoming ( Farrar, Straus & Giroux).