Summary | Author | Reviews | Discussion Questions


City of Light
Lauren Belfer
503 pp.

In Brief
It is 1901 and Buffalo, New York, stands at the center of the nation's attention as a place of immense wealth and sophistication. The massive hydroelectric power development at nearby Niagara Falls and the grand Pan-American Exposition promise to bring the Great Lakes "city of light" even more repute. Against this rich historical backdrop lives Louisa Barrett, the attractive, articulate headmistress of the Macaulay School for Girls. Protected by its powerful all-male board, "Miss Barrett" is treated as an equal by the men who control the life of the city. Lulled by her unique relationship with these titans of business, Louisa feels secure in her position, until a mysterious death at the power plant triggers a sequence of events that forces her to return to a past she has struggled to conceal, and to question everything and everyone she holds dear. (From the publisher)

top of page


About the Author

• Birth—Buffalo, New York, USA
• Education—Columbia University
• Currently—lives in New York, NY


Lauren Belfer grew up in Buffalo, New York. She received her M.F.A. in fiction from Columbia University in New York City, where she now lives with her husband and son. City of Light is her first novel.

top of page


Critics Say. . .
with color at its center....What matters...is the vivid sense of the time and place that Ms. Belfer has created...[including] the weight of a social order in which commerce alone conferred power....Whether we've progressed from those times remains highly debatable. But in her powerfully atmospheric book Ms. Belfer makes them seem real and very far away, and at the same time eerily familiar and relevant to the present.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt - The New York Times


[A] huge, sprawling portrait of the United States at the turn of the last century....At its heart is a brilliantly realized set piece that is wickedly relevant to the headlines of that era, as well as to this one....An ingenious first novel.
Ellen Feldman - The New York Times Book Review


City of Light is like the Niagara River, which is so central to the story. All appears calm as the book begins. By the time you realize you've been pulled into its swift currents, the story moves urgently through its 518 pages. It is long but fast...[I]t's breathtaking in its achievement. Belfer's first novel is a remarkable blend of murder mystery, love story, political intrigue and tragedy of manners.
Eriak Brady - USA Today


This book is part mystery and part historical melodrama, fluently mixing fact and fiction, with the sort of Victorian plot devices that gaurantee a straight-through, sleepless read. The novel is no Ragtime, but it's close-an operatic potboiler, fat with romance, politics and scandal. Even the considerable length of Lauren Belfer's City of Light can't prepare the reader for all the novel holds. In turn-of-the-century Buffalo, she illuminates (among other concerns) the struggles of women, blacks, immigrants and lesbians, labor unions and socialists; the birth of environmentalism; the back-room dealings of industrialists; and the illegitimate children of predatory U.S. Presidents.
Time

The novel truly contains multitudes, yet it finds its heart in, and its focus through, Louisa Barrett. The headmistress of the Macauley School for Girls, Louisa is "tall, slender, almost-blond, sensitive, and basically shy — though sometimes appearing on the surface bossy and a know-it-all." A salon of noted intellectuals convenes at her home, and she enjoys the protection of the powerful men who sit on the school's board. She is considered "one of the boys," yet Louisa merely enjoys proximity to power and must still struggle with the strictures society places on her gender. In hope that there might be a future in which women of equal intellect will enjoy true equality, she exposes her students to all things (e.g. poverty, hydroelectricity) under the cover of producing marriageable young women.

One student, Grace Sinclair, occupies her more than the others. She is Louisa's godchild and has been acting strangely, frightening other girls with her morbidity; this in itself is not surprising, as Grace's mother, Margaret, has recently died. Her father, Thomas, attempts to understand his daughter while simultaneously directingthenew hydroelectric project at Niagara Falls. A true believer in industry's possibilities, Thomas is hoping to "change the world with electricity" and is impatient with any resistance to this new source of energy. Electricity is still little understood by Buffalo's society, but expectations run high: "it seemed like magic, but it was science. Magic had become science, science had become magic, anything was possible and the future was ours."

At the Sinclairs' home one evening, Louisa overhears Thomas arguing with an engineer, Karl Speyer; when Speyer turns up dead the next morning, Louisa begins to suspect Thomas. His surprise gift of one million dollars to the Macauley School exacerbates her suspicions — she wonders if he's trying to buy her silence. The world these characters inhabit is fraught with intrigue, every action fueled by old secrets and whispers, hopes of profit. Louisa seeks the truth, the light that casts the shadows; at the same time, she strives to protect those she loves and to keep her own dark secret hidden.

In the world of City of Light , to know someone's secrets is to determine his or her actions. This is a book about control, and about forces that can only be controlled at some cost. Just as men restrain and channel those women who seek knowledge and access to power, they harness the force of Niagara Falls and the labor of the underclass. Belfer's writing is also characterized by control; her narrator, Louisa, is ingeniously selective in how she reveals herself, while at the same time exposing (and drawing the reader into) her own blind spots. The prose is taut and precise, rich but rarely too rich, rife with surprising insights. Here's Louisa, entering a room illuminated by electricity: "the air itself seemed clear, vibrant, and somehow invigorating. All at once I knew why: Gaslight consumed the oxygen in a room; electricity did not." Later, taking leave of a man she fears, she wonders "Could he possibly have formed a romantic attachment to me, or did he simply regret losing the opportunity to torture me? Or were the two the same to him?"

Louisa seems to possess a political sensibility of the 1990s, yet she must continually hold herself back. "[I]f I lost my reputation," she reasons, "I would lose everything I had worked for." While the reader chafes along with her, this is not the only frustration that finds its expression in Louisa. Certainly, as its narrator, she is responsible for the novel's greatest delights; however, she must also be held accountable for its often confounding tone. The wealth of historical information sometimes threatens to overwhelm the narrative's dramatic momentum; early on, especially, the novel can feel more like an education than an entertainment. Louisa speaks with great historical precision for pages at a time, invoking names, dates, architects, and other obscure details, and this works against the process of identifying with her, of bringing her into proximity. The return from such encyclopedic flights to more personal dramas is not always an easy one, and occasionally we get stilted sentiment where heat might be desired. The effect on the reader is a strange combination of longing, frustration, and fascination — Louisa often calls us closer only to hold us away. It is easy to understand why so many of the novel's characters seek to form attachments with her.

City of Light could be a slicker, smoother book, but it would be less of one. The novel's ambition can't be denied and must be acknowledged and appreciated. If the sheer range of all Lauren Belfer attempts to include leads to some awkwardness, it's a small price to pay. Through ingenious storytelling, she does not merely re-create a world, she creates one, and populates it with finely textured characters — some historical, some fictional, some a mixture: all real. Just when the plot begins to seem too carefully set up, the characters too choreographed, and the mysteries too perfectly explained, another level of secrets is exposed. This book unfolds. And in the end, the story turns in a way that explains the reason behind its telling, the force behind its shape and tone. The result is a novel that is alive, haunted, and large in every sense of the word.
Barnes and Nobel - Editors


An ambitious, vividly detailed and stirring debut novel offering a panorama of American life at the beginning of the 20th century. Louisa Barrett, the bright, outspoken, handsome but rigidly proper headmistress of the exclusive (and progressive) Macaulay School for Girls in Buffalo, where the city's elite send their daughters, seems at first an unlikely heroine. In fact, she harbors an astounding secret: she's been the mistress of a powerful national politician and has given birth to a daughter. The child was adopted by a wealthy local couple, Louisa's best friends, and Louisa owes her position partly to political influence: the elite have joined to protect the President's reputation by sheltering Louisa. All of that is threatened, though, when the adoptive father, Tom Sinclair, is implicated in the death of the chief engineer at the new Niagara power station. Tom, a technological visionary, is director of that same electricity-generating station. Louisa, in an attempt to save him (and her daughter, an affectionate child who assumes that her mother is simply a good family friend), begins to investigate. Louisa's persistent inquiries offer Belfer an opportunity to create a cross-section of American society in a turbulent time; ranging from the slums to the grand houses of a city then very much in the ascendant, her narrative encompasses everything from labor turmoil and the struggles being waged by minorities (women, immigrants, blacks) for a voice, to the dazzling dreams of visionaries like Tom Sinclair, who imagines that technology will bring equality in its wake. Belfer keeps a large, fascinating, exuberant cast well in motion, and Louisa, who manages to resolve the murdermystery but loses much in the process, is a vulnerable, complex, and believeable heroine. Belfer's portrait of the nation at a hard if ebullient time, while likely to remind some readers of Doctorow's Ragtime, is less chilly and more subtle than that work, and very gripping. A remarkably assured and satisfying first novel.
Kirkus Review

top of page


Book Club Discussion Questions

1. In City of Light, the upper echelons of Buffalo society all get what they want by cultivating an "acceptable" image under which they can do what they want, regardless of its moral implications. How does this rationalize their behavior, as well as hide it?

2. Faced with a social order that demanded this "acceptable" behavior, was there any other way Louisa could react when faced with a crisis -- such as Millicent's abduction or the vandalization of her school?

3. Are there any main characters in this story who don't follow society's code? Who and why?

4. Louisa likes to think of her students as "a generation of subversives who took up their expected positions in society and then, day by day, bit by bit, fostered a revolution." Do you think that this is what she achieved with her students? Was it the best way she had to help the social progress of women?

5. Why do none of the members of Buffalo society become involved with the faction that is worried about the affects of the power plant on the environment?

6. In protecting Grace, was Louisa doing the right thing? Did her focus on the little girl blind her, impairing her judgement, as with her decision to not turn Susannah Riley in?

7. Would Louisa have been better off moving away from Buffalo and merely keeping in touch with the Sinclair family? Would Grace have been better off?

8. If Abigail's mother wanted to keep her daughter's child far away from Abigail and from scandal, why didn't she have him adopted in a family far away, instead of sending it to the asylum?

9. Why does Mr. Rumsey let Louisa know that he planned her meeting with Cleveland? Would she have been better off never knowing?

10. Why does Mr. Rumsey seem surprised that Louisa might have suffered from her experience of conceiving Grace -- or that she feels badly about her "loss of innocence?"

11. In 1901, Buffalo is one of the richest, most sophisticated cities in the nation. How does this influence Louisa's life, and the lives of the wealthy citizens of the city? What do they hope to achieve on the brink of a new century?

Bonus questions:

What motivates Tom Sinclair's dreams of electrical power? Is it the vision of industrial progress, the hope of personal fame and wealth, or something else?

Why was Francesca Coatsworth able to maintain her "alternative" lifestyle and still be such an influential member of society?

Why do you think Francesca allowed Sarah to disappear into Singapore after she confessed her crimes?