The City (with bonus short story The Neighbor)

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Includes Dean Koontz’s short story “The Neighbor”—first time in print!

Dean Koontz is at the peak of his acclaimed powers with this major new novel.
 
A young boy, a musical prodigy, discovering life’s wonders—and mortal dangers.
His best friend, also a gifted musician, who will share his journey into destiny.
His remarkable family, tested by the extremes of evil and bound by the depths of love . . . on a collision course with a band of killers about to unleash anarchy.
And two unlikely allies, an everyday hero tempered by the past and a woman of mystery who holds the key to the future.

These are the people of The City, a place where enchantment and malice entwine, courage and honor are found in the most unexpected quarters, and the way forward lies buried deep inside the heart. Brilliantly illumined by magic dark and light, their unforgettable story is a riveting, soul-stirring saga that speaks to everyone, a major milestone in the celebrated career of #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz and a dazzling realization of the evergreen dreams we all share.

Praise for The City
 
“Beautifully crafted and poignant . . . The City is many things: serious, lighthearted, nostalgic, courageous, scary, and mysterious. . . . [It] will have readers staying up late at night.”—New York Journal of Books
 
“[Koontz] can flat-out write. . . . The message of hope and depiction of how the choices you make can change your life ring true and will remain with you once the book has been closed.”—Bookreporter

Acclaim for Dean Koontz
 
“Perhaps more than any other author, Koontz writes fiction perfectly suited to the mood of America: novels that acknowledge the reality and tenacity of evil but also the power of good . . . that entertain vastly as they uplift.”—Publishers Weekly

“A rarity among bestselling writers, Koontz continues to pursue new ways of telling stories, never content with repeating himself.”—Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Tumbling, hallucinogenic prose. ‘Serious’ writers . . . might do well to examine his technique.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“[Koontz] has always had near-Dickensian powers of description, and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“Koontz is a superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition.”—USA Today
 
“Characters and the search for meaning, exquisitely crafted, are the soul of [Koontz’s] work. . . . One of the master storytellers of this or any age.”—The Tampa Tribune
 
“A literary juggler.”—The Times (London)Praise for The City
 
“Beautifully crafted and poignant . . . The City is many things: serious, lighthearted, nostalgic, courageous, scary, and mysterious. . . . [It] will have readers staying up late at night.”—New York Journal of Books
 
“[Koontz] can flat-out write. . . . The message of hope and depiction of how the choices you make can change your life ring true and will remain with you once the book has been closed.”—Bookreporter

Acclaim for Dean Koontz
 
“Perhaps more than any other author, Koontz writes fiction perfectly suited to the mood of America: novels that acknowledge the reality and tenacity of evil but also the power of good . . . that entertain vastly as they uplift.”—Publishers Weekly

“A rarity among bestselling writers, Koontz continues to pursue new ways of telling stories, never content with repeating himself.”—Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Tumbling, hallucinogenic prose. ‘Serious’ writers . . . might do well to examine his technique.”—The New York Times Book Review
 
“[Koontz] has always had near-Dickensian powers of description, and an ability to yank us from one page to the next that few novelists can match.”—Los Angeles Times
 
“Koontz is a superb plotter and wordsmith. He chronicles the hopes and fears of our time in broad strokes and fine detail, using popular fiction to explore the human condition.”—USA Today
 
“Characters and the search for meaning, exquisitely crafted, are the soul of [Koontz’s] work. . . . One of the master storytellers of this or any age.”—The Tampa Tribune
 
“A literary juggler.”—The Times (London)Dean Koontz, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.

1. Jonah recounts his story beginning when he’s eight years old, but in present time, he’s an older man reflecting on and retelling the story of his childhood self. How do you think time and distance have affected Jonah’s retelling of his story? Do you find that the more time you are removed from experiences in your own life, your story—or your view of it—changes? If so, how? What advantages, and challenges, might telling the story from such a perspective bring to an author?

2. Jonah begins his story asserting: “The last thing I am is a closet pessimist. I’m an optimist and always have been. Life’s given me no reason to expect the worst.” As you read, you learn that Jonah’s life hasn’t exactly been easy and he’s experienced real tragedy. Why do you think he’s such an optimist? Which relationships in his life contribute to that? Do you find that your own difficult life experiences make you more optimistic, or conversely, more pessimistic?

3. Both Jonah’s grandfather and Mr. Yoshioka serve as father figures to him. How are their ways of relating to him similar? How different? What are the most important lessons and examples that each impart? What scenes best captured these central relationships? Describe Jonah’s relationship with his mother. What makes their relationship so special? What scenes between them did you find most telling? Most affecting? Do you see such a  mother-child relationship reflected in other works of literature? In your experience?

4. Jonah calls his narration an “oral history,” as he’s recording himself “shooting off his mouth.” How do you feel about Jonah as a narrator? Did knowing that his recitation is meant to be more conversational than formal color your relationship with the story in any way? Do you feel more affected by a story told from such an intimate point of view, rather than a story told at a remove, say by an omniscient narrator? How would the story have changed, told from another perspective? Jonah also admits that he plans to edit his recording to “spare the reader all the you-knows and uhs and dead-end sentences, also to make myself sound smarter than I really am.” He says this in jest, but in what ways might we all be guilty of editing our own stories? Consider the way we present ourselves through social media and online profiles. Did this admission make Jonah any less trustworthy as a narrator, considering the things we might leave out of our own narratives? Or did it make him more authentic?

5. Music is such a powerful, pervasive, magical part of this story, and there’s a scintillating soundtrack in the background, transporting us to another time. How did this contribute to your reading experience? What types of music do you envision might reflect Jonah’s later life? Consider what music means to you. What songs or styles of music might comprise the score for the movie of your life?  

6. Thinking back, Jonah says, “all children are prone to voodoo thinking because they’re essentially powerless and because they lack so much knowledge of how the world works….” Jonah, of course, believes in juju to some extent, deeming his pendant capable of providing the “ultimate protection,” and safeguarding treasured objects in the La Florentine box. Did you have any of your own superstitions as a child? Ones that may seem silly now or that you still cling to in whatever way? Did you have your own “La Florentine box” and if so, what are some of the objects you valued most dearly? How did Jonah’s beliefs play out thematically in the book? Is there a connection between these so-called “childish” beliefs and belief of a deeper nature, as reflected by Miss Pearl?

7. The “all-seeing eye” is a major theme throughout the novel. There’s the faux eye that must have sprung from a stuffed toy, which Jonah keeps, sensing it has “some ominous significance”; there’s the magazine clipping that Fiona Cassidy contributed to Jonah’s box, having drawn in the eyes with a color that matched her own; and there’s the Fabritius painting, The Goldfinch, the eye of which Jonah feels all of nature peering through, seeing all sides of him and all the lies he’s ever told. In each case, Jonah feels equally unnerved, as though these eyes are portals through which some presence can analyze and judge him. Does he seem to feel the same anxiety when being viewed through each set, or is there an important difference between them? In some ways, do you think he’s attributing his own self-reflection to these “artificial eyes?” Have you ever encountered a set of “eyes” that provoked something in you in the same way? That made you uncomfortable or brought you face-to-face with a truth you wouldn’t have seen  otherwise? Can you name similar symbols in other works of literature?  

8. What did you make of the haikus strewn throughout the novel? Were you surprised by how moments of great joy and sorrow are captured so sparingly? How did this help put order and simplicity in Jonah’s world, as he was coming of age during a time of such turmoil? What lessons did they instill? Was there one poem in particular that stood out as especially inspirational or beautiful? 

9. Jonah remarks on the fact that there weren’t many heroes for him to emulate growing up, as most prominent African Americans in pop culture were either sports stars or musicians, never the champions who took down the bad guys, and “taking down bad guys is fundamentally what you want in your model of a hero.” That definition changes for him over time, and the everyday heroes he comes to worship include his mother, his grandfather, Mr. Yoshioka, and Vermeer, to name a few. How do these figures influence the person he becomes, enabling him to persevere in the face of hardships and ultimately inspiring him to maintain his optimism where others might have given up under the circumstances? Do you have your own unsung heroes who’ve inspired you to do the same? In what ways does the influence of such individuals ripple outward, extending beyond their immediate circles to the wider world, in the novel and in reality?

10. Consider the role of race and identity throughout the narrative, and what it means to different characters. Think about Jonah’s narration as an African American boy coming of age during a time of national unrest, when race riots were the norm. What special insights into the era did you gain from Jonah’s unique perspective? Did anything about his attitude or his family’s attitude about race surprise you? What did you make of Mr. Yoshioka’s Manzanar “posse” and the relationships among them? How did the core values of the various characters inform their approach to this element of their lives? 

11. The question of fate versus free will takes center stage in this novel, with Jonah coming to believe that “There is no fate, only free will.” Consider the instance in which he decided to see for himself who Tilton was eating lunch with at The Royal, and wondered what course his life would have taken if he had followed his instinct to run instead. Have you ever been at a crossroad in your life where events could have gone very differently had you taken the road untraveled? Do you consider the outcome of these instances fate, or like Jonah, do you believe that it was one of the times that you listened to the “small voice” that “wants only what is best for us?” What are other critical moments of decision in the novel? How did you feel about the fates of the various characters? What did you make of Miss Pearl’s special relationship with Jonah and her actions toward him at the end of the novel in terms of the question of destiny?

12. On the interpretation of art, Amalia says, “when it comes to what it means, no stuffy expert in the world has a right to tell you what you should think about a painting. Art is subjective. What­ever comfort or delight you get from a painting is your business.” Do you agree with this? Do you think there’s a tendency for people to find art intimidating or prohibitive because they’re supposed to take a specific meaning away from it, or arrive at it with some type of context? Is it liberating to embrace this idea that art should stand on its own and that we gravitate toward certain pieces for a reason? Are there works that you’ve found particularly evocative or moving based on your own experience at any given time? Has there been someone in your own life responsible for introducing you to beauty in the same way that Amalia does for Jonah? Do you see the world of art, or music, or architecture, or other forms of artistic expression, any differently because of this story?

chapter 1

My name is Jonah Ellington Basie Hines Eldridge Wilson Hampton Armstrong Kirk. From as young as I can remember, I loved the city. Mine is a story of love reciprocated. It is the story of loss and hope, and of the strangeness that lies just beneath the surface tension of daily life, a strangeness infinite fathoms in depth.

The streets of the city weren’t paved with gold, as some immigrants were told before they traveled half the world to come there. Not all the young singers or actors, or authors, became stars soon after leaving their small towns for the bright lights, as perhaps they thought they would. Death dwelt in the metropolis, as it dwelt everywhere, and there were more murders there than in a quiet hamlet, much tragedy, and moments of terror. But the city was as well a place of wonder, of magic dark and light, magic of which in my eventful life I had much experience, including one night when I died and woke and lived again.

2

When I was eight, I would meet the woman who claimed she was the city, though she wouldn’t make that assertion for two more years. She said that more than anything, cities are people. Sure, you need to have the office buildings and the parks and the nightclubs and the museums and all the rest of it, but in the end it’s the people—­and the kind of people they are—­who make a city great or not. And if a city is great, it has a soul of its own, one spun up from the threads of the millions of souls who have lived there in the past and live there now.

The woman said this city had an especially sensitive soul and that for a long time it had wondered what life must be like for the people who lived in it. The city worried that in spite of all it had to offer its citizens, it might be failing too many of them. The city knew itself better than any person could know himself, knew all of its sights and smells and sounds and textures and secrets, but it didn’t know what it felt like to be human and live in those thousands of miles of streets. And so, the woman said, the soul of the city took human form to live among its people, and the form it took was her.

The woman who was the city changed my life and showed me that the world is a more mysterious place than you would imagine if your understanding of it was formed only or even largely by newspapers and magazines and TV—­or now the Internet. I need to tell you about her and some terrible things and wonderful things and amazing things that happened, related to her, and how I am still haunted by them.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I tend to do that. Any life isn’t just one story; it’s thousands of them. So when I try to tell one of my own, I sometimes go down an alleyway when I should take the main street, or if the story is fourteen blocks long, I sometimes start on block four and have to backtrack to make sense.

Also, I’m not tapping this out on a keyboard, and I tend to ramble when I talk, like now into this recorder. My friend Malcolm says not to call it rambling, to call it oral history. That sounds pretentious, as though I’m as certain as certain can be that I’ve achieved things that ensure I’ll go down in history. Nevertheless, maybe that’s the best term. Oral history. As long as you understand it just means I’m sitting here shooting off my mouth. When someone types it out from the tapes, then I’ll edit to spare the reader all the you-­knows and uhs and dead-­end sentences, also to make myself sound smarter than I really am. Anyway, I must talk instead of type, because I have the start of arthritis in my fingers, nothing serious yet, but since I’m a piano man and nothing else, I have to save my knuckles for music.

Malcolm says I must be a closet pessimist, the way I so often say, “Nothing serious yet.” If I feel a phantom pain in one leg or the other and Malcolm asks why I keep massaging my calf, I’ll say, “Just this weird thing, nothing serious yet.” He thinks I’m convinced it’s a deep-­vein blood clot that’ll break loose and blow out my lungs or brain later in the day, though that never crossed my mind. I just say those three words to reassure my friends, those people I worry about when they have the flu or a dizzy spell or a pain in the calf, because I’d feel relieved if they reassured me by saying, “Nothing serious yet.”

The last thing I am is a closet pessimist. I’m an optimist and always have been. Life’s given me no reason to expect the worst. As long as I’ve loved the city, which is as long as I can remember, I have been an optimist.

I was already an optimist when all this happened that I’m telling you about. Although I’ll reverse myself now and then to give you some background, this particular story really starts rolling in 1967, when I was ten, the year the woman said she was the city. By June of that year, I had moved with my mom into Grandpa’s house. My mother, whose name was Sylvia, was a singer. Grandpa’s name was Teddy Bledsoe, never just Ted, rarely Theodore. Grandpa Teddy was a piano man, my inspiration.

The house was a good place, with four rooms downstairs and four up, one and three-­quarter baths. The piano stood in the big front room, and Grandpa played it every day, even though he performed four nights a week at the hotel and did background music three afternoons at the department store, in their fanciest couture department, where a dress might cost as much as he earned in a month at both jobs and a fur coat might be priced as much as a new Chevy. He said he always took pleasure in playing, but when he played at home, it was only for pleasure.

“If you’re going to keep the music in you, Jonah, you’ve got to play a little bit every day purely for pleasure. Otherwise, you’ll lose the joy of it, and if you lose the joy, you won’t sound good to those who know piano—­or to yourself.”

Outside, behind the house, a concrete patio bordered a small yard, and in the front, a porch overlooked a smaller yard, where this enormous maple tree turned as red as fire in the autumn. And when the leaves fell, they were like enormous glowing embers on the grass. You might say it was a lower-­middle-­class neighborhood, I guess, although I never thought in such terms back then and still don’t. Grandpa Teddy didn’t believe in categorizing, in labeling, in dividing people with words, and neither do I.

The world was changing in 1967, though of course it always does. Once the neighborhood was Jewish, and then it went Polish Catholic. Mr. and Mrs. Stein, who had moved from the house but still owned it, rented to my grandparents in 1963, when I was six, and sold it to them two years later. They were the first black people to live in that neighborhood. He said there were problems at the start, of the kind you might expect, but it never got so bad they wanted to move.

Grandpa attributed their staying power to three things. First, they kept to themselves unless invited. Second, he played piano free for some events at Saint Stanislaus Hall, next to the church where many in the neighborhood attended Mass. Third, my grandma, Anita, was secretary to Monsignor McCarthy.

Grandpa was modest, but I won’t be modest on his behalf. He and Grandma didn’t have much trouble also because they had about them an air of royalty. She was tall, and he was taller, and they carried themselves with quiet pride. I used to like to watch them, how they walked, how they moved with such grace, how he helped her into her coat and opened doors for her and how she always thanked him. They dressed well, too. Even at home, Grandpa wore suit pants and a white shirt and suspenders, and when he played the piano or sat down for dinner, he always wore a tie. When I was with them, they were as warm and amusing and loving as any grandparents ever, but I was at all times aware, with each of them, that I was in a Presence.

In April 1967, my grandma fell dead at work from a cerebral embolism. She was just fifty-­two. She was so vibrant, I never imagined that she could die. I don’t think anyone else did, either. When she passed away suddenly, those who knew her were grief-­stricken but also shocked. They harbored unexpressed anxiety, as if the sun had risen in the west and set in the east, suggesting a potential apocalypse if anyone dared to make reference to that development, as if the world would go on safely turning only if everyone conspired not to remark upon its revolutionary change.

At the time, my mom and I were living in an apartment downtown, a fourth-­floor walk-­up with two street-­facing windows in the living room; in the kitchen and my little bedroom, there were views only of the sooty brick wall of the adjacent building, crowding close. She had a gig singing three nights a week in a blues club and worked the lunch counter at Woolworth’s five days, waiting for her big break. I was almost ten and not without some street smarts, but I must admit that for a time, I thought that she would be equally happy if things broke either way—­a gig singing in bigger and better joints or a job as a waitress in a high-­end steakhouse, whichever came first.

We went to stay with Grandpa for the funeral and a few days after, so he wouldn’t be alone. Until then, I’d never seen him cry. He took off work for a week, and he kept mostly to his bedroom. But I sometimes found him sitting in the window seat at the end of the second-­floor hallway, just staring out at the street, or in his armchair in the living room, an unread newspaper folded on the lamp table beside him.

When I tried to talk to him, he would lift me into his lap and say, “Let’s just be quiet now, Jonah. We’ll have years to talk over everything.”

I was small for my age and thin, and he was a big man, but I felt greatly gentled in those moments. The quiet was different from other silences, deep and sweet and peaceful even if sad. A few times, with my head resting against his broad chest, listening to his heart, I fell asleep, though I was past the age for regular naps.

He wept that week only when he played the piano in the front room. He didn’t make any sounds in his weeping; I guess he was too dignified for sobbing, but the tears started with the first notes and kept coming as long as he played, whether ten minutes or an hour.

While I’m still giving you background here, I should tell you about his musicianship. He played with good taste and distinction, and he had a tremendous left hand, the best I’ve ever heard. In the hotel where he worked, there were two dining rooms. One was French and formal and featured a harpist, and the décor either made you feel elegant or made you ill. The second was an Art Deco jewel in shades of blue and silver with lots of glossy-­black granite and black lacquer, more of a supper club, where the food was solidly American. Grandpa played the Deco room, providing background piano between seven and nine o’clock, mostly American-­standard ballads and some friskier Cole Porter numbers; between nine and midnight, three sidemen joined him, and the combo pumped it up to dance music from the 1930s and ’40s. Grandpa Teddy sure could swing the keyboard.

Those days right after his Anita died, he played music I’d never heard before, and to this day I don’t know the names of any of those numbers. They made me cry, and I went to other rooms and tried not to listen, but you couldn’t stop listening because those melodies were so mesmerizing, melancholy but irresistible.

After a week, Grandpa returned to work, and my mom and I went home to the downtown walk-­up. Two months later, in June, when my mom’s life blew up, we went to live with Grandpa Teddy full-­time.

3

Sylvia Kirk, my mother, was twenty-­nine when her life blew up, and it wasn’t the first time. Back then, I could see that she was pretty, but I didn’t realize how young she was. Only ten myself, I felt anyone over twenty must be ancient, I guess, or I just didn’t think about it at all. To have your life blow up four times before you’re thirty would take something out of anyone, and I think it drained from my mom just enough hope that she never quite built her confidence back to what it once had been.

When it happened, school had been out for weeks. Sunday was the only day that the community center didn’t have summer programs for kids, and I was staying with Mrs. Lorenzo that late afternoon and evening. Mrs. Lorenzo, once thin, was now a merry tub of a woman and a fabulous cook. She lived on the second floor and accepted a little money to look after me when there were no other options, primarily when my mom sang at Slinky’s, the blues joint, three nights a week. Sunday wasn’t one of those three, but Mom had gone to a big-­money neighborhood for a celebration dinner, where she was going to sign a contract to sing five nights a week at what she described as “a major venue,” a swanky nightclub that no one would ever have called a joint. The club owner, William Murkett, had contacts in the recording industry, too, and there was talk about putting together a three-­girl backup group to work with her on some numbers at the club and to cut a demo or two at a studio. It looked like the big break wouldn’t be a steakhouse waitress job.

We expected her to come for me after eleven o’clock, but it was only seven when she rang Mrs. Lorenzo’s bell. I could tell right off that something must be wrong, and Mrs. Lorenzo could, too. But my mom always said she didn’t wash her laundry in public, and she was dead serious about that. When I was little, I didn’t understand what she meant, because she did, too, wash her laundry in the communal laundry room in the basement, which had to be as public as you could wash it, except maybe right out in the street. That night, she said a migraine had just about knocked her flat, though I’d never heard of her having one before. She said that she hadn’t been able to stay for the dinner with her new boss. While she paid Mrs. Lorenzo, her lips were pressed tight, and there was an intensity, a power, in her eyes, so that I thought she might set anything ablaze just by staring at it too long.US

Additional information

Weight	11.6 oz
Dimensions	1.1500 × 4.2000 × 7.4700 in
Imprint	Bantam
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780345545954
ISBN-10	0345545958
Author	Dean Koontz
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC019000, FIC027030
Subjects	paranormal suspense, love story, science fiction and fantasy, FIC027030, mystery books, thriller books, coming of age novel, mystery thriller suspense, best sellers list new york times, fantasy romance, new york times best sellers, psychological thrillers books, supernatural thriller, paranormal fantasy, dean koontz books, dean koontz, musical prodigy, horror, fantasy books, mysteries, thrillers, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, science fiction, FIC019000, romance books, fantasy, supernatural, paranormal, mystery, suspense, thriller, romance