Chicago by Brian Doyle

Chicago Reviews

• 
  Diane S ☔

  The 1970's, a young man moves to Chicago, fresh out of college to write for Catholic Magazine. He moves into an apartment complex on the North side of the city, close to the lake and falls in love, with the city, with the many characters living in his apartment. I came to love many of them too, oh and the dog. An amazing dog.
  
  It is always special to read about places you are familiar with and I was raised in Chicago, lived there for 28 years. Knew all the places mentioned, but seeing them through this young man's eyes, I remembered things I had forgotten. The street gangs, the Gaylords and the Latin Kings, the wonderful restaurant Bergoffs, where we had many lunches, the snow storm of 1979, which paralyzed the city and ultimately cost a mayor his job. All vividly depicted , spotlights of an amazing city, and so many other places. Of course I am a Cubs fan and this young man became a White Sox fan. No accounting for taste. The greed and corruption, Bishop Cody and the political machine. The young man makes a statement in the book about how even when one leaves the city, the city never leaves them. So true.
  
  Of course, like many cities violence has become the norm, the city I knew back in the seventies, the city of neighbor helping neighbor, of safety in your own neighborhood, is no more. And that's just sad.
  
  
• 
  Billie

  I have never finished a Brian Doyle novel before this one. I have friends who would sing his praises to me and so I tried, gods know I tried, but he just never worked for me. I've enjoyed his short works, but the novels defeated me every time.
  
  And then Chicago came along and I fell in love--with the language, the characters, the city of Chicago as seen through the narrator's eyes--and I finally understood what my friends had been trying to tell me. What was different this time? Maybe it's simply that this is a city book and I am a city girl. Maybe it's that the narration was in first person and so took on a more personal, confessional tone, which lent an intimacy to the reading experience. Whatever mystical alchemy was at work here, this novel just clicked for me. I want to live in Miss Elminidies's apartment building. I want to ride the Sound Asleep Bus. Mostly, though, I want Edward to be my friend, forever and ever.
• 
  Brad Lyerla

  I am unable to give Brian Doyle’s CHICAGO anything less than five stars. Like him, after graduating from college, I spent much of the 1970s as a denizen of the north side of Chicago. I was young, unmarried and still largely working out the kind of man who I wanted to be when I arrived at maturity.
  
  Chicago was a magical place in which to begin the painting that would become my life. I experienced Chicago in many of the same ways that Doyle recalls in his memoir. His book is a lyrical and poetic capsule of a time and place that I will always treasure.
  
  For those who are curious to understand why Chicagoans (and former Chicagoans) are so devoted to their unique and wonderful city, Doyle shares his insights, while entertaining you greatly.
• 
  Donovan

  
  
  Okay, so I'm not finished with this book. Maybe my opinion would change if I got to the end. But therein lies the problem. I don't want to finish it. And that's too bad. Because I really dig Doyle's style. The writing is poignant and imagistic and poetic. But this may just be me and I can't read this right now in my life. Then again, maybe it isn't.
  
  What strikes me as weird is how the first person narrator basically isn't real. I can't remember his name, if that's any indication. I know he's a journalist, he lives in what is essentially a boarding house in Chicago, he likes dribbling a smooth shiny wet basketball around town and by the lake. And I know he leaves Chicago at some point and is very sad about it, but he does so for a woman he loves, whom we know nothing about. But that's all I know. Like a journalist would write, the writing is fairly objective in the sense that the writer is missing. There's opinion in the narrator's observations, because it's obvious he loves the city and its people, but he doesn't really talk about himself all that much, which is weird for a first person narrator, right? I mean, I'm writing a book in first person and it's all about the narrator. Why else tell it in first person if the person doesn't matter? I dunno, because it's more personal, it's ground floor, in the streets? To be nothing like those huge literary tomes New York and Paris which I'm sure read like historical fiction, like you're seeing things from the moon. So the focus of the book is everything BUT the main character. That's like having a play called Thomas and it's about Thomas' roommates as told by Thomas. Know what I mean? Yes, this book is called Chicago and is about Chicago. But you can't just have a book about a city, can you?
  
  Chicago is a love letter to...Chicago. From Brian Doyle. It's obvious he loves the city and lived there, and met some very interesting and quirky people there. Do their stories have intrinsic value? Sure. But I guess I'm missing Why it matters to the journalist and Why it should matter to me. What's he care? Is he writing a book about Chicago? And even if he were, what does it mean? Why is he doing it? Because the city lacks books written about it unlike New York City and Paris? I have a lot of questions and there don't seem to be answers. Now, if you're okay just enjoying the scenery like the early morning bus where everyone is asleep, that's cool. But I wanna know who the fuck these people are I'm riding with and where this bus is going.
• 
  Steve

  I was flummoxed by this one. It's the kind of book that makes me glad I'm not a critic, because I wouldn't know what kind of verdict to render. It's strange and yet also old-fashioned and classic, and it ultimately charmed me. And when the writer's love for the Windy City (and city life in general) shines through, as it often does, it can be dazzling. At other times this quick read is very improvisational and breezy and a bit repetitive. It's a bit like a sweeter, slightly more naive version of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (apartment building filled with quirky, lovable characters).
  
  It's a lightly fictionalized, lightly plotted memoir set in the Jane Byrne era (late 70s/early 80s) of Chicago and it's about spending a magical period of your youth (your twenties) in a big city. It also happens to be set within a block I spent time in during a similar period of my life in Chicago, so I may be a bit biased. (I figured it was Stratford and Lake Shore Drive or maybe Cornelia and Lake Shore Drive.)
  
  And then there's Edward the dog. Yep, and that's where I throw up my hands. It worked for me, and I kept marveling that it did. It won't work for some readers, and here's my advice: if it doesn't work for you in the opening chapters, I don't think it will work for you period, so move on. If you can accept it right away, you'll enjoy it for what it is. There's no great mystery to it. This is not a complicated novel. It's very simple and pure of heart and definitely not for the cynical.
• 
  Brigid

  This book totally charmed me. Quirky and sweet and slow-paced and wise, a beautiful tribute to my beloved hometown. I often found myself smiling while reading, and I cried when it was over. I kept thinking of friends I could recommend it to, but I think maybe I want to keep it to myself instead because I am afraid no one will love it quite like I did.
• 
  Dianah

  Brian Doyle's exuberant novel, Chicago, is an account of both a young man's trepidatious steps into manhood, and a heartfelt love letter to the city itself. Based on the author's own year living there, the narrator comes to understand the immense and profound importance of story. Doyle brings his typical rollicking and tumbling but tender prose style to Chicago. He weaves together his stories of friendship, home and belonging with his wide-eyed love of life, along with a hefty dose of humor. Bottom line: stories make us human. Don't miss it.
• 
  Jeanette

  Having lived in or near (very) the city for 70 plus years? Well, what can I say about this book and these "eyes".
  
  It's a mild and nostalgic look at a year spent in the 1970's lived with lake view (Michigan- at just a sliver) within walking area to downtown. He's supposed to be 22 years old. He sounds /reads/ emotes more like 18, IMHO. Very much mild, observer far more than doer.
  
  So familiar are the names and some of the places- so small the crossover experiences. Maybe at old Comiskey- and also a few of his bus rides. But even they are so different coming from the other direction. Not just in length but in type.
  
  It's a mild and canine read. Some of the particulars re weather and habits do still exist. But getting money from tenant inheritances or donations to pay the bills in this type of building- pure fiction. Now and then. I also can't understand how a roaming dog could "get away with it" as Edward did. Come on! It's like the errant coyote last week- he would be toast with more than just the bee bee in its chest.
  
  An energy he tried to describe a few times in this story was petering then and has since been lost. But I have to admit the downtown workers (less by far in numbers) still walk as fast as they ever did. But most are train warriors that do.
  
  One thing I do heartily agree upon with Doyle is the Dominican nuns. And my Dad picked up Koko Taylor's garbage and was a good friend to her- she was often coming home and had a beer for him very early in the morning run.
  
  Ironic that I've lived in Chicago as long as I have and Brian probably saw more of the lake than I ever did total. And in just over his year of residence.
  
  The biggest connection for me in this story at all? It would be me there in the basement 6 days a week helping her baking the empanadas to afford the rent.
• 
  Barbara Bryant

  If you've never been to Chicago, you're in for a treat. And if you *have* lived in or visited Chicago, this is an even better treat. Brian Doyle captures the rhythms, sights, streets and architecture, screech of trains, broad sidewalks, shady and decent souls, animals and trees, the movement and scent of sunlight and air, the vast Lake Michigan--and if that's not enough, he tells the stories with joyful magical realism.
  
  Written as if Walt Whitman had taken part in the conversation, this book captures Chicago's broad-swept rhythms within evocative details:
  
  "I could see where the city ended to the west, and turned to fields of snow and stubble; I could see north and south where the city vaguely morphed into Indiana and Wisconsin; and best of all I could see how the tremendous lake, stretching far out of sight to the east, held the city in its immense cold gray hands. I had expected to be amazed by the incredible welter and shapely chaos of the city below me, the countless jostling structures shouldering and crowding against each other, veined by streets and alleys, stitched by train lines, dotted with floating gulls and crows like scattered grains of salt and pepper, but I had not expected to be so stunned by the lake. It had never occurred to me that something could be far bigger and stronger than the city, but this was inarguably so, and I walked home that night along the lake, marveling at it, and a little frightened too."
  
  
• 
  Linda

  Chicago: A Novel. If “: A Novel” hadn’t been included I would have sworn this was a page out of the life of author Brian Doyle, and I still think it probably is just because this is who Brian Doyle is or would have been somewhere along the way in his earlier days, fresh out of college and new to the world of journalism, finding a life outside of NYC. The story is about living in and absorbing the city to which the author is newly arrived, firstly among his own neighbors and neighborhood and then beyond, along the way discovering and introducing the reader to the soul of the town and its people, doing so in a way that is delightful and insightful. A highlight for this reader was finding a recollection of columnist Mike Royko within the pages; an author who knows to conjure up a recollection of Mike Royko obviously knows Chicago. Written in the style and with the voice that is uniquely his own and one that I love. An excellent read. Of course I own a copy - it is a book to pick up and thumb through and read again for the pure pleasure of the words.
• 
  Simon Robs

  Doyle chronicles the early 70's North Side lakefront neighborhood through his character's escapades a few years during Chicago's transition from "Boss" Daley's reign into newly snowstorm elected Mayor Jane Byrne. He captures some of the goings-on culturally and politically and weaves them into a light gloss of what makes Chi-town a melting pot of diversity on those wind-blown shores. He gets a little extra mileage out of "Edward" the precocious (magical realism) canine who really steals the show but otherwise lays out a typical cast of Chicago-like characters who resonate believability. The other nod to incredulousness is having a North Sider attending and supporting the "South Side Hit Men" (Chicago White Sox) which is uncommon to say the least. The Blues figure heavy into the mix and that's a good thing. All in all a fun read for anyone who knows the "City of Big Shoulders."
• 
  Elizabeth

  In the late 1970's, author Brian Doyle, newly graduated from college, lived for a brief period in Chicago. Like the unnamed narrator of his novel, Doyle lived simply in a small apartment, and worked as a journalist for a Catholic publication. It is clear that the short time of his life in Chicago left an indelible impression and this novel is an outpouring of those impressions and experiences.
  This novel is much more of a character study than a plot-driven story. Doyle shares portraits of the apartment building inhabitants, the gang members he meets on the city basketball courts, the parishioners at the Catholic churches he visits, all interwoven with the sights, and smells of Chicago at the time...the sounds in smoky blues clubs, the green grass and orange dirt of Comiskey Park during White Sox games, the smells off the lake at alewife season. Because Chicago the city is the most important character and how the character of the narrator comes to know the city.
  
  There is a passage beginning on page 230, where Doyle writes, "All these years later, I think I was too young, when I was living in Chicago, for any number of things." Over the next three pages he elucidates all the things he was too young to fully comprehend. Something I think many of us realize when we are no longer young adults. We are so busy living, taking in all the things that are new to us, and miss aspects of the bigger picture because we just don't have the experience to comprehend. It isn't a new idea, but Doyle share is so eloquently and beautifully.
  
  The book is deliberately slow paced, as it should be, but at times there is a level of repetitiveness that renders it stagnant, and not just slow-moving and I found it hard to push on.
• 
  Campbell

  This was wonderful. A lyrical, whimsical, romantic love letter to a city seen through a rose-tinted rear-view mirror. Doyle does for Chicago what Auster does for New York or Roberts for Bombay.
  
  It brings to mind Zafon's opening sentence of 'Marina': "Marina once told me that we only remember what never really happened. It would take me a lifetime to understand what those words meant.".
  
  Sometimes it takes a lifetime of experience to hear the notes that were not played.
  
  Glorious.
• 
  Laura

  What a complete disappointment. I had absolutely no connection with the main character and felt the desperation for it to be a literary gem - with a predictable assortment of one dimensional quirky secondary characters (including a dog) an even more one dimensional dream girl. i gave it 50 pages worth of effort and gave up. Blarg!
• 
  Carol Bakker

  Upon graduation from college, Brian Doyle moved to Chicago to work for a Catholic magazine. Years later he wrote an autobiographical novel (with some magical realism — Edward, the talking dog) that is high-octane delight. Doyle explores the alleys, the lakeshore, blues clubs, fire escapes. When he writes of the groan and sigh of buses coming I can hear those hydraulic brakes.
  
  That, alone, would make this a five star read. But he writes about stories and I swoon.

  Stories were the true seeds of relationships.

  Miss Elminides invites Doyle to speak to her second grade class at St. Demetrius School.

  My job, I said, was to catch and share as many good stories as I could, because stories are what we are, what we are made of, and if we don't share good stories, then we will drown in poor stories, thin and shallow ones, stories told by people who only want power or money.
  The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who...are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress and holding hands against the darkness, and finding new ways to solve old problems, and being attentive and tender and kind to every sort of being, especially dogs and birds, and of course children, who are the coolest beings of all, and of course children in second grade are the coolest of the cool, especially if they have a teacher as cool as Miss Elminides, am I right?
• 
  Sharon

  Absolutely charming, as usual. I love this author's writing. A young man just out of college goes to Chicago to live and work for a few years. He falls in love with the city and its host of characters. The dog steals the show and is the subtle "magic" that seems present in each of Doyle's books. The reader will want to go live in a big city after reading this, if he/she is a people person. I'm not a city person but I do enjoy people so I love Doyle's fine observations.
  
  Some stories are about adventures or a series of events. Some are about people and everyday life. This is one of those but it's never boring. The author has a gift for making the normal day seem special in every way.
  
  If you haven't read this author and you enjoy literary reads, you need to find any book by him and read it.
• 
  Heather

  Love this book. Beautifully written and reverent of the people and stories that make up cities. Reminds me of a book I read in college...the lives of unknown Americans (or something to that effect). It will be my next staff pick!
• 
  Janis

  Ten years ago, while moving from Chicago to the west coast, we were halfway through Nebraska when Iris Dement’s Our Town played on the radio. I cried all the way to the Wyoming border. Brian Doyle’s novel Chicago killed me in the same way. The author captures the city’s great heart and soul in this story of a young man and the friendships he makes as he finds his way through the city and to the next stage of his life. I love this poignant and beautiful and surprising story, and it has made me very, very homesick.
• 
  Pam

  This is both a sentimental read (if you are fond of Chicago) and a good fictional memoir if you like to imagine a place’s impact on who you are.
  
  It is a work of fiction but the setting and time are true to life. It is fanciful as the dog, Edward, has his own personality and storyline.
  And it also rings true as a young man comes of age with his first job after college, finding his place in the world and in his neighborhood.
  
  Excellent!
• 
  Julie

  I absolutely loved this book. What incredible writing - so alive and lyrical. The stories within the novel were so funny and touching, with great insight and commentary on the human race. And the center of it all, the city of Chicago, was described in all its glory, squalor, and uniqueness by an author that loved his short tenure there.
• 
  Kim

  I love Doyle's style, but this book is lacking a plot, or at least a major conflict. I enjoyed the book in the beginning, but had a hard time picking it up as it went on. This was definitely a love story to Chicago and maybe if it had been about my own city I would've felt more affection for it.
• 
  Julie

  Another delightful novel by my new favorite author, Brian Doyle. Doyle has written a love letter to the Chicago of the 1970s, and infuses it with a bit of magic. A delightful, beautifully written book. It's richly deserving of each one of the five stars I've given it.
• 
  Kate

  Beautiful, lyrical writing, as usual - this time as a love letter to Chicago - with an acknowledgement that this is autobiographical. It reads like a memoir.
• 
  Erica

  Doyle's novel is a fictional memoir of his own time in the Second City and can only be described as a romance between a twenty-something journalist and the city of Chicago. His book depicts a life in an apartment building off of Broadway, between Belmont and Addison, during the late 70s/early 80s-- before
  Boystown became Boystown. Most of the novel is a rose-colored depiction of his fling with the city and the colorful characters he became friends with along the way.

  
  
  

  He speaks of a neighbor that makes empanadas so delicious I'm convinced she's the woman that inspired
  Cafe Tola; a dog that is almost human; and a poetic ex-Navy man fascinated by President Lincoln. He plays basketball with gangsters and drug lords; scales skyscrapers just to get a better view of the city; and is as obsessed with the White Sox as I find myself this year-- never entering Wrigley Field out of superstition. For a man that only allegedly spent a year in Chicago, Brian Doyle understands the city's juxtaposition that has kept me enticed with this town even after three years.

  
  
  

  This city encompasses East Coast urgency with Midwestern hospitality. There's moments of feeling completely out of place and completely at home, simultaneously. You can go into a neighborhood and feel like you've left the city, even with the Willis Tower still in view. Chicago is mysterious and wonderful and keeps you on your toes always. And Doyle perfectly shows how Chicago is both giving and relentless-- and quite easily the only city in the United States that has ever made me (or him) feel whole.

  
  
  For the full review, go to
  The Book Nook Chronicles.
• 
  Dan

  Blurbs on the back call this book a "paean to Chicago," a "moving ode to the City of Chicago."
  
  If you, like Brian Doyle (and like some of the blurb writers, evidently) love Chicago, then you may very well love this book.
  
  On the other hand, if you, like I do, love the writing of Brian Doyle.... Well, it's no guarantee you'll love this book.
  
  Like it, sure. Because it's got the lyricism, the wit and the whimsy that make us love Doyle's writing in the first place. There's no resisting that. I found myself hard-pressed to resist reading choice passages aloud to my wife who hasn't read the book yet and intends to (and to be honest, I didn't always resist).
  
  This is a book that's pleasurable to read while reading it -- aloud or otherwise.
  But this is not a book you can't put down. This is not a book you avidly anticipate getting back to.
  
  Unless, I suppose, you love Chicago the way Brian Doyle loves Chicago.
  
• 
  Laura McHale Holland

  I was enthralled while reading this book and keep it by my bed so I can re-read portions of it for inspiration. Brian Doyle created a fictional world where miraculous and ordinary things are coexist seamlessly, and he nails the goodness that is at the core of Chicagoans. It's the first work of Brain Doyle's I've run across and has so much heart. I lived in Chicago as a very young child and again as a young adult, and it was a wonder for me to read a novel that recaptures so much of the inner life of the city as it was in the 1970s.