SOURCE: "Where Our Troubles Began," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 19, 1994, pp. 1, 8.

In the following review, Franzen discusses the setting, character and plot of The Waterworks and compares the book to Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and The Book of Daniel.

The imaginative universe of E. L. Doctorow is as unbounded in time as it is spatially restricted by his love and hatred of New York. He travels through history by means of inference, from old buildings. His characters are like genies conjured up by the mental stroking of New York City landmarks—the Morgan Library in Ragtime, Bathgate Avenue in Billy Bathgate, the fairgrounds in World's Fair, P.S. 70 in The Book of Daniel.

His new book, The Waterworks, seems to have been inspired by the reservoir and dam at Croton, just north of New York City. (I venture this guess in part because Croton appears in the...