Gilded Needles by Michael McDowell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Tale of Two Families—and Revenge—in 1882 NYC On one side are the Shanks, living in a pair of adjoining houses on West Houston Street in the Black Triangle, a notoriously sordid and crime-ridden neighborhood in NYC. Led by 5’3” 200-pound Black Lena Shanks, an illiterate, one-eared German immigrant widow, ex-con, and fence, the Shanks, comprised of Lena’s daughters Louisa and Daisy and her twin grandkids Rob and Ella, are all involved in the family businesses: providing (usually safe) illegal abortions, running a pawn shop as a front, and fencing stolen goods brought by women (Lena refusing to do business with men). Included among the Shanks is Maggie, a refined octoroon prostitute who receives only gifts of jewels and clothes for her services and is married to Lena’s brother (currently being held in Sing Sing). On the other side are the Stallworths, living in well-appointed manses in tony Gramercy Park and Washington Square. The Stallworths are comprised of the patriarch grandfather Judge James Stallworth, his son the Presbyterian Pastor Edward Stallworth, his two children Helen (a deeply religious young lady who abhors New Year’s Day as a pagan festival) and Benjamin (a mentally weak young man with small ears and an egg-shaped head, too gormless to be a true black sheep), the Judge’s daughter Marian Phair and her husband, the up and coming lawyer Duncan Phair, and their two little kids Edwin and Edith. The paths of the two families were set on a collision course when, near the end of the civil war, Judge Stallworth sentenced Lena’s husband to death for arson and Lena to seven years in prison on Blackwell’s Island for pickpocketing. She’s forgotten neither his cold blue eyes nor his merciless judgments. In addition to those characters, we have supporting players like the Sapphic Pugilist Charlotta Keego, who tattoos on her body the jewels she cannot wear in the ring; the prostitute Weeping Mary, who is good at crying and at posing as an Irish nursemaid to rich kids; and the veiled widow Mrs. General Taunton, who brings succor to the sick and impoverished in the Black Triangle and staffs her house completely with mutilated or handicapped servants because her husband was a one-legged man before he died in a Civil War battle. As the Stallworths target the Black Triangle and the Shanks in their campaign against vice in NYC as a means to advance their political and social ambitions, they have no idea that they’re provoking a dish best served cold. As the Shanks receive blow after blow against their members and livelihoods and lives, we have no idea how they’ll survive, let alone eat a dish best served cold. Our sympathies are with the Shanks because, although criminals, they are spunky and female-oriented rogues (Lena helping poor women in trouble, Daisy helping her abortion clients), while the ostentatiously law-abiding Stallworths, are, apart from Helen and the little kids, arrogant, entitled, cruel, smarmy, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing thugs. Throughout, McDowell’s depiction of late 19th-century NYC is vivid and appalling. I like little touches like how people refer to the abortionists as “angel makers.” The political motivation of the Stallworth clan is interesting: a fanatical drive to bring down the Tammany Hall democratic political system dominating the city. The themes on gender seem a bit ahead of the novel’s time of publication (1980). One reason Judge Stallworth is so inveterately hostile to the Shanks is that they are a family of criminal women. One reason Helen’s father is so unable to listen to her desire to alleviate crime by alleviating poverty is because she’s a young lady. The women fighters are probably same-sex partners, though McDowell sketches their relationships with a light touch. There are plenty of neat lines, some ironic, some straight, like, “No city has a shorter memory than New York,” or “There was something distasteful about victims,” or “Moral turpitude in a high place was at least as interesting as corruption in a low one, and there was no one could not feel satisfaction at the overthrow of a hypocrite, especially one of standing and influence.” Audiobook reader R. C. Bray is capable and appealing, though his style is pretty monotone. Gilded Needles is an entertaining novel! It is also at times violent, with some graphic scenes, which break out unexpectedly and take the story in unforeseen directions, but the violence is more appalling than gratuitous. I am impressed by how different the book is from McDowell’s The Elementals, and I will read other books by him. View all my reviews
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