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Will Carthy is luckier than most in Depression era New York City. He came to America a few years before from Ireland, and has managed to find and hold on to a building job. His younger sister Isobel is coming out to join him, and Will has kept some money to buy her a new dress. On the day her ship is due in, though, Will is late. At Ellis Island, there is no Isobel. In seeking to find out what has happened to her, Will is about to learn more about the city he now lives in than he ever wanted to know. Then Will's foreman sends him on an errand, for some extra cash, and so he meets Jonas and Lily Trichardt. Jonas describes himself as a 'populace engineer', and is a wealthy man who can afford to hire the company Will works for on a mysterious building project. Will doesn't ask more at this stage, as he is more interested in opportunities to see more of Lily, Jonas's beautiful, sexy Southern belle wife. While there is a mystery and an investigation, this historical novel doesn't fit entirely into the crime fiction genre as such, though I think it would appeal to historical crime readers. The plot provides an opportunity for lots of description of 1930s New York -- particularly Ellis Island and the Lower East Side. Will lives in a tenement room on Orchard Street, though unlike many of his neighbours he has his own room. I visited the Lower East Side Tenement Museum just a few months ago in this very area, and this helped to bring this aspect of the novel alive to me. Other settings portrayed include the busy, dangerous building site, the wealthy Trichardt household, and the scary Ellis Island, where Will badgers indifferent officials to find out what could have happened to his sister. Jamieson's writing about character is less successful than that about places. Will's personal history makes him a rather reserved and withdrawn character who prefers not to let most people get too close, and although he is convincingly portrayed this does distance the reader from him. Some of the other characters are quite unsympathetic and/or rather clichéd, and the women are two dimensional at best. I found Rose Marie, the landlord's daughter who has a crush on Will, rather annoying and didn't understand why she thought so highly of him. Lily seems to be a compilation of screwed-up literary southern belle clichés. Still, this could well be an effort to engage with the main character's viewpoint -- it is a plausible perspective. Overall, I thought THE GOLDEN DOOR was an interesting, thought-provoking and disturbing read. This is the first novel by an author who has published several short stories and has a postgraduate screenwriting qualification, and I would like to know more about her other past and future writing.
Reviewed by Luci Davin, February 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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