You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by qtpieash3
Homer & Langley by E.L. Doctorow
1.0
A story loosely based on the real life Collyer brothers who lived in a Fifth Avenue brownstone. One brother is blind, both a bit paranoid and eccentric and after the death of their parents, they slowly became reclusive and started hoarding.
They died in their home in 1947, one asphyxiated by a pile of junk (the house was booby trapped to foil intruders) and the other - who by that point was paralyzed - starved to death a few days later. It's a gruesome story and after their death 120 tons of trash was removed from the residence. The site was later razed and is now home to a pocket park.
The story is told from the POV of Homer, the blind, younger brother with musical talents though it seems the author took a whole lot of liberties with him and his older brother, Langley. In real life, their birth order was opposite, Doctorow sets the book later in time, etc.
I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why I didn't care for this one - it was interesting, but the time I spent reading up on the brothers online was more interesting to me. It was just also very ho-hum when in reality this is a crazy story! It was basically a recounting of what their days might have been like and while it does depict how things started off relatively normal and then devolved into really, really bad it just didn't do it for me.
They died in their home in 1947, one asphyxiated by a pile of junk (the house was booby trapped to foil intruders) and the other - who by that point was paralyzed - starved to death a few days later. It's a gruesome story and after their death 120 tons of trash was removed from the residence. The site was later razed and is now home to a pocket park.
The story is told from the POV of Homer, the blind, younger brother with musical talents though it seems the author took a whole lot of liberties with him and his older brother, Langley. In real life, their birth order was opposite, Doctorow sets the book later in time, etc.
I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why I didn't care for this one - it was interesting, but the time I spent reading up on the brothers online was more interesting to me. It was just also very ho-hum when in reality this is a crazy story! It was basically a recounting of what their days might have been like and while it does depict how things started off relatively normal and then devolved into really, really bad it just didn't do it for me.