The Christmas Kid: And Other Brooklyn Stories

by Pete Hamill

Overview

A collection of short stories about a long-gone Brooklyn from the legendary New York writer Pete Hamill. 

Pete Hamill's collected stories about Brooklyn present a New York almost lost but not forgotten. They read like messages from a vanished age, brimming with nostalgia: for the world after the war, the days of the Dodgers and Giants, and even, for some, the years of Prohibition and the Depression.

The Christmas Kid is vintage Hamill. Set in the borough where he was born and raised, it is a must-read for his many fans, for all who love New York, and for anyone who seeks to understand the world today through the lens of the world that once was.

"Hamill, a master raconteur, mines his own roots in this enchanting new anthology." —New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316232746
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	10/29/2013
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.22(h) x 0.83(d)

About the Author

Pete Hamill (1935-2020) was a novelist, journalist, editor, and screenwriter. He was the author of twenty-two books, including the bestselling novels Tabloid City, North River, Forever, and Snow in August, and the bestselling memoir A Drinking Life. 

Hometown:

New York, New York, and Cuernavaca, Mexico

Date of Birth:

1935

Place of Birth:

Brooklyn, New York

Education:

Mexico City College, 1956-1957; Pratt Institute

Website:

http://www.petehamill.com

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR PETE HAMILL:

"Few people have written quite so beautifully about New York as Hamill has in recent years."—Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

"With his reporter's eye for detail and a tough-but-tender lyricism, the Brooklyn-bred Hamill brings modern-day New York to life by illuminating its colorful past."—Scott Stephens, Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Hamill sees a world almost gone by. Those who would dismiss that world as nostalgia might consider what in today's NewYork will they have to lovingly evoke years from now."—Sherryl Connelly, New York Daily News

"New York City is the lead actor in the best of Hamill's writing...and it steals the show."—Julie Wittes Schlack, Boston Globe

"Hamill tells a good yarn and has a knack for drawing empathetic portraits of rogues and rule benders....Even a bicycle ride to the store to pick up the Daily News is a good read in Hamill's hands."—Michael Hill, San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher

"Hamill tells a good yarn and has a knack for drawing empathetic portraits of rogues and rule benders....Even a bicycle ride to the store to pick up the Daily News is a good read in Hamill's hands."

Michael Hill - San Francisco Chronicle

"New York City is the lead actor in the best of Hamill's writing...and it steals the show."

Julie Wittes Schlack - Boston Globe

"Hamill sees a world almost gone by. Those who would dismiss that world as nostalgia might consider what in today's NewYork will they have to lovingly evoke years from now."

Sherryl Connelly - New York Daily News

"With his reporter's eye for detail and a tough-but-tender lyricism, the Brooklyn-bred Hamill brings modern-day New York to life by illuminating its colorful past."

Scott Stephens - Cleveland Plain Dealer

PRAISE FOR PETE HAMILL:

"Few people have written quite so beautifully about New York as Hamill has in recent years."

Tim Rutten - Los Angeles Times

Hamill’s latest is a collection of love stories of a sort. First published as fiction in THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, these stories are easy to absorb and often fun—even enlightening. But behind each tale is a longing for times past, for chances missed and hardships endured. The overwhelming tone that rings through these stories is one of nostalgia for a place that long ago formed its inhabitants and, presumably, Hamill himself. Henry Leyva embraces the voices of Brooklyn wholeheartedly, sometimes going overboard with characters that sound more like caricatures but overall delivering a colorful and adept performance. The stories also can go too far to create the prototypical Brooklyn of legend, but the overall effect is worth a listen. L.B.F. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

JANUARY 2013 - AudioFile

Little slices of decades-old melancholy from Hamill (Tabloid City, 2011, etc.). This collection of 36 short stories is largely culled from a series called Tales of New York that ran in the New York Daily News in the early '80s. Like most of Hamill's fiction, it's a mix of nostalgia and cynicism. As the author explains in an elegant foreword, this is the world, "without personal computers, cell phones, tweets, digital cameras, or iPads. A world where ‘friend' was not yet a verb." And yet, the stories remain surprisingly timeless, full of regular joes, gangsters, lost souls and the cold, cold rain. There's plenty of nostalgia, remembrances of that awe-inspiring feeling of the world being new, but also the harsh reminders of New York's hard times, not least the wave of heroin and crack that swept the city in that time. From the title story, which finds the neighborhood teens forming a protective circle around a Holocaust survivor who is their age, to "The Book Signing," the tale of an elderly writer returning home, the message is the same. As the writer explains: "I've never really left. Or, to be more exact: those streets have never left me." In addition to that lovely last story, don't miss the other anomaly, "The Men in Black Raincoats," a noir story that feels right at home among its companions in this fine collection. Lost treasures from a time gone by, brimming with affection for old New York.

Kirkus Reviews