Warning: spoilers ahead
The Town and The City was Jack Kerouacs first novel, written almost ten years prior to On The Road.
It is a story which has a large scope. It is the story of a family, living in the milltown of Galloway. (in reality Kerouac had lived in Lowell, Massachusetts).
It is somewhat autobiographic, but the scope goes beyond one life: It starts in the milltown, with George and Marguerite Martin living with their children in Galloway, but it tells a story which starts with the courtship between the two of them, and it only end after the death of George.
I is a story about how a life consists of highs and lows, and how one can survive those lows. How one dusts of his boots and starts walkig again after falling down.
But besides the story of George Martin, it is also a story of the coming of age of his sons, Joe, Peter and Francis.
Joe isperhaps the simplest person, who simply works, and is always working, even though sometimes he likes to roam around, and get drunk. Peter is somewhat of a loser, hanging around the highschool football teamn not even having a team outfit. Untill the day when he get's his chance. And he takes it and becomes a star player, through a scholarship becoming a great college football player, only to drop college at the onset of the war. Francis on the other hand goes to Harvard. It shows how people coming from the same background can end up in very different positions of life, but it also tells of the importance of sticking together as a family, even when it's not always as easy.
The story is ong and good, and breathes of life. It is not a horrortale, and neither is it a fairytale, it is life as it is, sometimes nice and sweet, and sometimes rough.
The Town and The City evolves throughout the book in style. The last part, which is set in New York, is stylistic very similar to On The Road, whereas the beginning of the book is a lor less high paced, yet there is no break. The pace just gradually picks up.
You should read this book because of this, because of it's realism. but you should also read it in order to get a very interesting insight into wartime America.
There are countless novels about the guys at the front, the guys who fought, be it on the ships, on the beaches or in the air.
Whereas some of the sons become soldiers, the battles are not shown, what is shown, is Peter, who works in the merchant marine, not a military role, but who is witness to the sinking of a vessel similar to him.
It also offers an insight to life in America durig the war. Evertything keeps going on less or more as normal. There is not the fear and the derpressive mood so omnipresent in Europe during the war time, but below that surface it tells a story of the thousands of soldiers on leave, tramping through the USA, not knowing where to go, or how to spend their leave. It tells the story of the countless women, whose boyfriends fought in the war, and who made their wy independently in America, moving around, working, hoping forever trying to find "something". It is a side of the war which I've never read in another book.
As a whole, this book is a very valuable precursor to On The Road (many of the characters of On The Road already appear in the later half of the book, albeit under different names). in the style of Alexander Panos, we find a first version of Dean Moriarty.
As a whole, I give this book 8,5/10