The Flaw in the Sapphire

Dennis Muldoon makes his living buying old clothes from strangers on the street. It's an odd trade, and Dennis is an odd man: cheerful in the face of rejection, persistent beyond propriety, unapologetically unusual. His father ran a respectable clothing business, the kind that builds a family name, but Dennis wanted no part of it. After a falling out that remains raw throughout the novel, he leaves for New York City with nothing but his peculiar talents and one stubborn aspiration: to work in a publishing house, surrounded by books instead of castoff coats. What follows is a young man's education in the cruelties and possibilities of the city. Snyder renders turn-of-the-century New York with affection and clear eyes: its foremen and its editors, its systems of patronage and its random cruelties. Dennis navigates it all with a resilience that borders on the absurd, his cheerful persistence either endearing or infuriating depending on who you ask. The novel captures something essential about the particular American dream of reinventing oneself, the dignity in odd work, and the long odds of making a life on one's own terms. It's a story about being different enough to stand out in a city full of people trying to stand out. For readers who love early 20th-century novels about outsiders, immigrants, and the particular loneliness of big-city ambition, this is a quiet gem. Snyder writes with humor, warmth, and an eye for the small humiliations and small triumphs that make up a life.