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    The City Beautiful
    The City Beautiful
    The City Beautiful
    Audiobook12 hours

    The City Beautiful

    Written by Aden Polydoros

    Narrated by Maxwell Glick

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Would you sacrifice your soul to stop a killer?

    Chicago, 1893. For Alter Rosen, this is the land of opportunity. Despite the unbearable summer heat, his threadbare clothes, and his constantly empty stomach, Alter still dreams of the day he’ll have enough money to bring his
    mother and sisters to America, freeing them from the oppression they face in his native Romania.

    But when Alter’s best friend, Yakov, becomes the latest victim in a long line of murdered Jewish boys, his dream begins to slip away. While the rest of the city is busy celebrating the World’s Fair, Alter is now living a nightmare: possessed by
    Yakov’s dybbuk, he is plunged into a world of corruption and deceit, and thrown back into the arms of a dangerous boy from his past. A boy who means more to Alter than anyone knows.

    Now, with only days to spare until the dybbuk takes over Alter’s body completely, the two boys must race to track down the killer—before the killer claims them next.

    Editor's Note

    Stunning imagination…

    “The City Beautiful” is a historical fiction work of stunning imagination: Part murder mystery, part queer romance, all infused with Jewish folklore and lots of heart. It follows Alter in 1893 Chicago as he tries to figure out who killed his best friend Yakov, whose dybbuk (a spirit of the dead) possesses Alter. “Although the events in this book are fictionalized, I hope that readers might become more aware of how the Holocaust was not a freak accident — it was the result of centuries of antisemitism,” Polydoros told We Need Diverse Books in response to a question about what he hopes readers will learn from the book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateOct 5, 2021
    ISBN9781705049112
    The City Beautiful
    Author

    Aden Polydoros

    Aden Polydoros is an award-winning author who transitioned from female-to-male when he was 14. After going 'stealth' for over 10 years, he came out as transgender in order to support trans youth and vocalize how transitioning saved his life. His YA gothic fantasy novel, The City Beautiful, won the Sydney Taylor Book Award and was a finalist for the Lambda Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Cybils Award, the South Carolina Book Award, and the 2022 World Fantasy Award.

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    Reviews for The City Beautiful

    4.5/5

    47 ratings3 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I lost count of how many times I cried while listening to this book. I am gay, Jewish, grew up in Chicago, and come from a family who had to leave their homes in Europe behind because violent acts of hate sanctioned by their country. This book may be historical fiction with a mystic twist, but, so much of what is written here is accurate, raw, and powerful. It was hard for me to get into the book initially because the narrator uses what seems to me like a slightly over the top European Jewish accent, but the emotions he conveyed ultimately helped me to move past my initial pet peeve. As the book progressed, it became clear that his voice acting abilities were the perfect compliment to the written emotions and dialogue that make up this heart wrenching story of struggle, love, vengeance, and redemption. Considering what is going on in Ukraine and the US, listen to this book today, just have some Kleenex handy!
    • 4/5
      The pacing on this is a bit slow and uneven and the plot succumbs to a unnecessarily Dickensian level of contentedness, but the majority of the characters are well designed and activated and the the reader is relentlessly blanketed in the setting, it's shabby walls and overwhelming odors. The author describes it as a fantasy, but it's fantasy elements are of haunting and dark knowings, not the gleams of elfland.
    • 5/5
      I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.My Review: I think there's nothing more delightful to me than queer representation in historical fiction. We were there, too, and deserve to be written into the zeitgeist.This is Young Adult queer representation in the 19th century, and in my ongoing quest not to die above the neck before I do below it, I got the DRC. I'm really very glad that I did...this read was a great pleasure to me. The use of Jewish folk cultural touchstones...matchmakers, dybbuks being the most horrifying...the sprinkings of Yiddish, the focus...fierce focus...on family and loyalty, were all tastes of delight for this reader. The author doesn't spend inordinate time explaining things but he does provide context and some factual stuff for the more, um, ethnocentric stuff.It is a sheer joy to see the story being set away from a) World War II, b) New York's Lower East Side, or c) the shtetl somewhere in Eastern Europe. The Jewish population of Chicago has never been teensy...the Great Lakes ports were as much a destination as New York, but they get less play. I'm also, since I read The Devil in the White City and read The Man Who Made Parks: The Story of Parkbuilder Frederick Law Olmsted by Frieda Wishinsky to my oldest grandson, a big aficionado of the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition (aka "the White City") in Chicago. That venue plays quite a role in this murder mystery, though exactly how and why shall remain a secret lest I be set upon by spoilerphobes next time I go grocery shopping.What I will say is that the squeamish should not pick the book up. There are graphic moments of bloodyness, there are awful physical violences, and of course the element of supernatural possession can't be left out. There are more 21st-century concerns like homophobia and anti-semitism (this last pervades the end of the book to a sometimes uncomfortable degree), but this is Spooktober! A few scares, some terrible spooky goins-on, that is what this month is for! Be prepared, also, for the politics of the book. It's solidly anti-capitalist, despite MC Alter's determination to earn earn earn so he can bring his mother and sisters to the Promised Land...Chicago! imagine...because that's really situational not aspirational capitalism. And Alter's failed match-cum-bestie, young Raizel from downstairs in his apartment building, is there to keep him from falling *too* deep into capitalism's cess pit. (She is, in fact, one of the book's most delightful characters, propensity to splash tea onto laps notwithstanding.)Putting on my YA-unlover's hat, the usual prolixity...why say in ten words what can make an entire chapter?...is fully present, the stakes are APOCALYPTIC ZOMG THE UNIVERSE WILL END!! and that gets really tiring to an old fart like me who knows that, after I and you and the author are all dead the planet will keep spinning on. Probably all the better for our absence.But that is an elderly person speaking, the audience that's here for YA is going to *eat*this*up* because every one of the elements are handled with aplomb and without the edge of tweeness I've reacted to in other YA books like they're coated in cat dander. I don't at all recommend giving this to a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old. The realities of sexual abuse aren't in any way soft-pedaled. The realities of sexual desire, that it doesn't obey rules or orders, are best left to the older end of the YA spectrum, which I think of as sixteen and up. I know y'all know y'all's kids better than I do, so understand I'm speaking in generalities and not prescribing anything.The mystery aspect of the story, the resolution to the murders and disappearances of Jewish boys, is very well-handled and was solidly made in serious mystery form. If you're up for it, match wits with the author; if you're not, read the spooky book or the coming-out (sort of!) book or the immigrant-makes-it book. They're all here.I think my point should be clear: Read The City Beautiful. It will please at least 80% of the folks who read my reviews.