Author: Mary Costello
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1782116028
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
An elderly schoolteacher recalls the single act of youthful passion that changed her life forever. A young gardener has an unsettling encounter with a suburban housewife. A teenage girl strikes up an unlikely friendship with a lonely bachelor. In these twelve haunting stories award-winning writer Mary Costello examines the passions and perils of everyday life with startling insight, casting a light into the darkest corners of the human heart.
The China Factory
Author: Mary Costello
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1782116028
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
An elderly schoolteacher recalls the single act of youthful passion that changed her life forever. A young gardener has an unsettling encounter with a suburban housewife. A teenage girl strikes up an unlikely friendship with a lonely bachelor. In these twelve haunting stories award-winning writer Mary Costello examines the passions and perils of everyday life with startling insight, casting a light into the darkest corners of the human heart.
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1782116028
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 166
Book Description
An elderly schoolteacher recalls the single act of youthful passion that changed her life forever. A young gardener has an unsettling encounter with a suburban housewife. A teenage girl strikes up an unlikely friendship with a lonely bachelor. In these twelve haunting stories award-winning writer Mary Costello examines the passions and perils of everyday life with startling insight, casting a light into the darkest corners of the human heart.
Factory Girls
Author: Leslie T. Chang
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0385520182
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China. China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta. As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation. A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0385520182
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
An eye-opening and previously untold story, Factory Girls is the first look into the everyday lives of the migrant factory population in China. China has 130 million migrant workers—the largest migration in human history. In Factory Girls, Leslie T. Chang, a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Beijing, tells the story of these workers primarily through the lives of two young women, whom she follows over the course of three years as they attempt to rise from the assembly lines of Dongguan, an industrial city in China’s Pearl River Delta. As she tracks their lives, Chang paints a never-before-seen picture of migrant life—a world where nearly everyone is under thirty; where you can lose your boyfriend and your friends with the loss of a mobile phone; where a few computer or English lessons can catapult you into a completely different social class. Chang takes us inside a sneaker factory so large that it has its own hospital, movie theater, and fire department; to posh karaoke bars that are fronts for prostitution; to makeshift English classes where students shave their heads in monklike devotion and sit day after day in front of machines watching English words flash by; and back to a farming village for the Chinese New Year, revealing the poverty and idleness of rural life that drive young girls to leave home in the first place. Throughout this riveting portrait, Chang also interweaves the story of her own family’s migrations, within China and to the West, providing historical and personal frames of reference for her investigation. A book of global significance that provides new insight into China, Factory Girls demonstrates how the mass movement from rural villages to cities is remaking individual lives and transforming Chinese society, much as immigration to America’s shores remade our own country a century ago.
Made in China
Author: Pun Ngai
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386755
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
As China has evolved into an industrial powerhouse over the past two decades, a new class of workers has developed: the dagongmei, or working girls. The dagongmei are women in their late teens and early twenties who move from rural areas to urban centers to work in factories. Because of state laws dictating that those born in the countryside cannot permanently leave their villages, and familial pressure for young women to marry by their late twenties, the dagongmei are transient labor. They undertake physically exhausting work in urban factories for an average of four or five years before returning home. The young women are not coerced to work in the factories; they know about the twelve-hour shifts and the hardships of industrial labor. Yet they are still eager to leave home. Made in China is a compelling look at the lives of these women, workers caught between the competing demands of global capitalism, the socialist state, and the patriarchal family. Pun Ngai conducted ethnographic work at an electronics factory in southern China’s Guangdong province, in the Shenzhen special economic zone where foreign-owned factories are proliferating. For eight months she slept in the employee dormitories and worked on the shop floor alongside the women whose lives she chronicles. Pun illuminates the workers’ perspectives and experiences, describing the lure of consumer desire and especially the minutiae of factory life. She looks at acts of resistance and transgression in the workplace, positing that the chronic pains—such as backaches and headaches—that many of the women experience are as indicative of resistance to oppressive working conditions as they are of defeat. Pun suggests that a silent social revolution is underway in China and that these young migrant workers are its agents.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822386755
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Book Description
As China has evolved into an industrial powerhouse over the past two decades, a new class of workers has developed: the dagongmei, or working girls. The dagongmei are women in their late teens and early twenties who move from rural areas to urban centers to work in factories. Because of state laws dictating that those born in the countryside cannot permanently leave their villages, and familial pressure for young women to marry by their late twenties, the dagongmei are transient labor. They undertake physically exhausting work in urban factories for an average of four or five years before returning home. The young women are not coerced to work in the factories; they know about the twelve-hour shifts and the hardships of industrial labor. Yet they are still eager to leave home. Made in China is a compelling look at the lives of these women, workers caught between the competing demands of global capitalism, the socialist state, and the patriarchal family. Pun Ngai conducted ethnographic work at an electronics factory in southern China’s Guangdong province, in the Shenzhen special economic zone where foreign-owned factories are proliferating. For eight months she slept in the employee dormitories and worked on the shop floor alongside the women whose lives she chronicles. Pun illuminates the workers’ perspectives and experiences, describing the lure of consumer desire and especially the minutiae of factory life. She looks at acts of resistance and transgression in the workplace, positing that the chronic pains—such as backaches and headaches—that many of the women experience are as indicative of resistance to oppressive working conditions as they are of defeat. Pun suggests that a silent social revolution is underway in China and that these young migrant workers are its agents.
The Next Factory of the World
Author: Irene Yuan Sun
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633692825
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
A Best Business Book of 2017 -- The Financial Times China is now the biggest foreign player in Africa. It's Africa's largest trade partner, the largest infrastructure financier, and the fastest-growing source of foreign direct investment. Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding into the continent, investing in long-term assets such as factories and heavy equipment. Considering Africa's difficult history of colonialism, one might suspect that China's activity there is another instance of a foreign power exploiting resources. But as author Irene Yuan Sun vividly shows in this remarkable book, it is really a story about resilient Chinese entrepreneurs building in Africa what they so recently learned to build in China--a global manufacturing powerhouse. The fact that China sees Africa not for its poverty but for its potential wealth is a striking departure from the attitude of the West, particularly that of the United States. Despite fifty years of Western aid programs, Africa still has more people living in extreme poverty than any other region in the world. Those who are serious about raising living standards across the continent know that another strategy is needed. Chinese investment gives rise to a tantalizing possibility: that Africa can industrialize in the coming generation. With a manufacturing-led transformation, Africa would be following in the footsteps of the United States in the nineteenth century, Japan in the early twentieth, and the Asian Tigers in the late twentieth. Many may consider this an old-fashioned way to develop, but as Sun argues, it's the only one that's proven to raise living standards across entire societies in a lasting way. And with every new Chinese factory boss setting up machinery and hiring African workers--and managers--that possibility becomes more real for Africa. With fascinating and moving human stories along with incisive business and economic analysis, The Next Factory of the World will make you rethink both China's role in the world and Africa's future in the globalized economy.
Publisher: Harvard Business Press
ISBN: 1633692825
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
A Best Business Book of 2017 -- The Financial Times China is now the biggest foreign player in Africa. It's Africa's largest trade partner, the largest infrastructure financier, and the fastest-growing source of foreign direct investment. Chinese entrepreneurs are flooding into the continent, investing in long-term assets such as factories and heavy equipment. Considering Africa's difficult history of colonialism, one might suspect that China's activity there is another instance of a foreign power exploiting resources. But as author Irene Yuan Sun vividly shows in this remarkable book, it is really a story about resilient Chinese entrepreneurs building in Africa what they so recently learned to build in China--a global manufacturing powerhouse. The fact that China sees Africa not for its poverty but for its potential wealth is a striking departure from the attitude of the West, particularly that of the United States. Despite fifty years of Western aid programs, Africa still has more people living in extreme poverty than any other region in the world. Those who are serious about raising living standards across the continent know that another strategy is needed. Chinese investment gives rise to a tantalizing possibility: that Africa can industrialize in the coming generation. With a manufacturing-led transformation, Africa would be following in the footsteps of the United States in the nineteenth century, Japan in the early twentieth, and the Asian Tigers in the late twentieth. Many may consider this an old-fashioned way to develop, but as Sun argues, it's the only one that's proven to raise living standards across entire societies in a lasting way. And with every new Chinese factory boss setting up machinery and hiring African workers--and managers--that possibility becomes more real for Africa. With fascinating and moving human stories along with incisive business and economic analysis, The Next Factory of the World will make you rethink both China's role in the world and Africa's future in the globalized economy.
Poorly Made in China
Author: Paul Midler
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118004205
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
An insider reveals what can—and does—go wrong when companies shift production to China In this entertaining behind-the-scenes account, Paul Midler tells us all that is wrong with our effort to shift manufacturing to China. Now updated and expanded, Poorly Made in China reveals industry secrets, including the dangerous practice of quality fade—the deliberate and secret habit of Chinese manufacturers to widen profit margins through the reduction of quality inputs. U.S. importers don’t stand a chance, Midler explains, against savvy Chinese suppliers who feel they have little to lose by placing consumer safety at risk for the sake of greater profit. This is a lively and impassioned personal account, a collection of true stories, told by an American who has worked in the country for close to two decades. Poorly Made in China touches on a number of issues that affect us all.
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118004205
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Book Description
An insider reveals what can—and does—go wrong when companies shift production to China In this entertaining behind-the-scenes account, Paul Midler tells us all that is wrong with our effort to shift manufacturing to China. Now updated and expanded, Poorly Made in China reveals industry secrets, including the dangerous practice of quality fade—the deliberate and secret habit of Chinese manufacturers to widen profit margins through the reduction of quality inputs. U.S. importers don’t stand a chance, Midler explains, against savvy Chinese suppliers who feel they have little to lose by placing consumer safety at risk for the sake of greater profit. This is a lively and impassioned personal account, a collection of true stories, told by an American who has worked in the country for close to two decades. Poorly Made in China touches on a number of issues that affect us all.
42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China (2nd Edition)
Author: Rosemary Coates
Publisher: Happy About
ISBN: 1607730979
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 133
Book Description
Doing business in China is tougher than you think. Not only is the culture vastly different, but China's experience in manufacturing is still developing. It will be a few years before the majority of manufacturers are up to world standards. In the meantime, quality, contract laws, schedules and logistics must be closely monitored. As a result, the things Westerners must do to be successful are far different from dealing with American or European manufacturers. The best way to quickly come up to speed on these differences and how to handle them is to learn from the experience of others. Through over 20 extraordinary executive interviews, Rosemary Coates captured the essence of sourcing and manufacturing in China. '42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China (2nd Edition)' is a pragmatic approach that every businessperson headed to China must read. For business people who are experienced in doing business in China, or for first-time visitors, this book will provide valuable insights from real executives and experts. These executives offer their personal experiences and recommendations about sourcing and manufacturing in China. Going beyond simple cultural do's and don'ts, you will discover: how business is really done how you can make things happen in China the mistake westerners often make, and how to avoid them what made these executives successful Based on her 25 years of supply chain experience, much of it spent living and working across Asia, Rosemary Coates has become an expert on doing business in China. Her own personal experiences in China are interwoven into this book.
Publisher: Happy About
ISBN: 1607730979
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 133
Book Description
Doing business in China is tougher than you think. Not only is the culture vastly different, but China's experience in manufacturing is still developing. It will be a few years before the majority of manufacturers are up to world standards. In the meantime, quality, contract laws, schedules and logistics must be closely monitored. As a result, the things Westerners must do to be successful are far different from dealing with American or European manufacturers. The best way to quickly come up to speed on these differences and how to handle them is to learn from the experience of others. Through over 20 extraordinary executive interviews, Rosemary Coates captured the essence of sourcing and manufacturing in China. '42 Rules for Sourcing and Manufacturing in China (2nd Edition)' is a pragmatic approach that every businessperson headed to China must read. For business people who are experienced in doing business in China, or for first-time visitors, this book will provide valuable insights from real executives and experts. These executives offer their personal experiences and recommendations about sourcing and manufacturing in China. Going beyond simple cultural do's and don'ts, you will discover: how business is really done how you can make things happen in China the mistake westerners often make, and how to avoid them what made these executives successful Based on her 25 years of supply chain experience, much of it spent living and working across Asia, Rosemary Coates has become an expert on doing business in China. Her own personal experiences in China are interwoven into this book.
Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory
Author: Jaesok Kim
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804786127
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Chinese Labor in a Korean Factorydraws on fieldwork in a multinational corporation (MNC) in Qingdao, China, and delves deep into the power dynamics at play between Korean management, Chinese migrant workers, local-level Chinese government officials, and Chinese local gangs. Anthropologist Jaesok Kim examines how governments, to attract MNCs, relinquish parts of their legal rights over these entities, while MNCs also give up portions of their rights as proxies of global capitalism by complying with local government guidelines to ensure infrastructure and cheap labor. This ethnography demonstrates how a particular MNC struggled with the pressure to be increasingly profitable while negotiating the clash of Korean and Chinese cultures, traditions, and classes on the factory floor of a garment corporation. Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory pays particular attention to common features of post-socialist countries. By analyzing the contentious collaboration between foreign management, factory workers, government officials, and gangs, this study contributes not only to the research on the politics of resistance but also to how global and local forces interact in concrete and surprising ways.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804786127
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Book Description
Chinese Labor in a Korean Factorydraws on fieldwork in a multinational corporation (MNC) in Qingdao, China, and delves deep into the power dynamics at play between Korean management, Chinese migrant workers, local-level Chinese government officials, and Chinese local gangs. Anthropologist Jaesok Kim examines how governments, to attract MNCs, relinquish parts of their legal rights over these entities, while MNCs also give up portions of their rights as proxies of global capitalism by complying with local government guidelines to ensure infrastructure and cheap labor. This ethnography demonstrates how a particular MNC struggled with the pressure to be increasingly profitable while negotiating the clash of Korean and Chinese cultures, traditions, and classes on the factory floor of a garment corporation. Chinese Labor in a Korean Factory pays particular attention to common features of post-socialist countries. By analyzing the contentious collaboration between foreign management, factory workers, government officials, and gangs, this study contributes not only to the research on the politics of resistance but also to how global and local forces interact in concrete and surprising ways.
The Myth of Chinese Capitalism
Author: Dexter Roberts
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250089387
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
The “vivid, provocative” untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world’s largest economy (Evan Osnos). Dexter Roberts lived in Beijing for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today’s financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered. He focuses on two places: the village of Binghuacun in the province of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest regions that sends the highest proportion of its youth away to become migrants; and Dongguan, China’s most infamous factory town located in Guangdong, home to both the largest number of migrant workers and the country’s biggest manufacturing base. Within these two towns and the people that move between them, Roberts focuses on the story of the Mo family, former farmers-turned-migrant-workers who are struggling to make a living in a fast-changing country that relegates one-half of its people to second-class status via household registration, land tenure policies and inequality in education and health care systems. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter Roberts brings to life the problems that China and its people face today as they attempt to overcome a divisive system that poses a serious challenge to the country’s future development. In so doing, Roberts paints a boots-on-the-ground cautionary picture of China for a world now held in its financial thrall. Praise for The Myth of Chinese Capitalism “A gimlet-eyed look at an economic miracle that may not be so miraculous after all.” —Kirkus Reviews “A clearheaded and persuasive counter-narrative to the notion that the Chinese economic model is set to take over the world. Readers looking for an informed and nuanced perspective on modern China will find it here.” —Publishers Weekly “A sophisticated and readable take of China’s triumphs and crises. . . . A first-hand witness to China’s transformation over the past quarter century, Roberts credibly challenges the myth of China’s inevitable rise and global dominance.” —Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Beijing-based correspondent “A potent mix of personal stories and deft analysis, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism takes a hard look at China’s migrants and rural people.” —Mei Fong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most RadicalExperiment
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250089387
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183
Book Description
The “vivid, provocative” untold story of how restrictive policies are preventing China from becoming the world’s largest economy (Evan Osnos). Dexter Roberts lived in Beijing for two decades working as a reporter on economics, business and politics for Bloomberg Businessweek. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Roberts explores the reality behind today’s financially-ascendant China and pulls the curtain back on how the Chinese manufacturing machine is actually powered. He focuses on two places: the village of Binghuacun in the province of Guizhou, one of China’s poorest regions that sends the highest proportion of its youth away to become migrants; and Dongguan, China’s most infamous factory town located in Guangdong, home to both the largest number of migrant workers and the country’s biggest manufacturing base. Within these two towns and the people that move between them, Roberts focuses on the story of the Mo family, former farmers-turned-migrant-workers who are struggling to make a living in a fast-changing country that relegates one-half of its people to second-class status via household registration, land tenure policies and inequality in education and health care systems. In The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, Dexter Roberts brings to life the problems that China and its people face today as they attempt to overcome a divisive system that poses a serious challenge to the country’s future development. In so doing, Roberts paints a boots-on-the-ground cautionary picture of China for a world now held in its financial thrall. Praise for The Myth of Chinese Capitalism “A gimlet-eyed look at an economic miracle that may not be so miraculous after all.” —Kirkus Reviews “A clearheaded and persuasive counter-narrative to the notion that the Chinese economic model is set to take over the world. Readers looking for an informed and nuanced perspective on modern China will find it here.” —Publishers Weekly “A sophisticated and readable take of China’s triumphs and crises. . . . A first-hand witness to China’s transformation over the past quarter century, Roberts credibly challenges the myth of China’s inevitable rise and global dominance.” —Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Beijing-based correspondent “A potent mix of personal stories and deft analysis, The Myth of Chinese Capitalism takes a hard look at China’s migrants and rural people.” —Mei Fong, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author of One Child: The Story of China’s Most RadicalExperiment
Factory Man
Author: Beth Macy
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316231568
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 469
Book Description
The instant New York Times bestseller about one man's battle to save hundreds of jobs by demonstrating the greatness of American business. The Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, Virginia. But beginning in the 1980s, the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately Bassett was forced to send its production overseas. One man fought back: John Bassett III, a shrewd and determined third-generation factory man, now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of more than $90 million. In Factory Man, Beth Macy brings to life Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry that was as cutthroat as it was colorful. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, and sheer grit and cunning to save hundreds of jobs, she also reveals the truth about modern industry in America.
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316231568
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 469
Book Description
The instant New York Times bestseller about one man's battle to save hundreds of jobs by demonstrating the greatness of American business. The Bassett Furniture Company was once the world's biggest wood furniture manufacturer. Run by the same powerful Virginia family for generations, it was also the center of life in Bassett, Virginia. But beginning in the 1980s, the first waves of Asian competition hit, and ultimately Bassett was forced to send its production overseas. One man fought back: John Bassett III, a shrewd and determined third-generation factory man, now chairman of Vaughan-Bassett Furniture Co, which employs more than 700 Virginians and has sales of more than $90 million. In Factory Man, Beth Macy brings to life Bassett's deeply personal furniture and family story, along with a host of characters from an industry that was as cutthroat as it was colorful. As she shows how he uses legal maneuvers, factory efficiencies, and sheer grit and cunning to save hundreds of jobs, she also reveals the truth about modern industry in America.
Academy Street
Author: Mary Costello
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374712751
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely—a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving reencounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile. The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force. It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy. It shows how the signal events of the last half century affect the course of a life lived in New York City. Anne Enright has said that Costello's first collection of stories, The China Factory, "has the feel of work that refused to be abandoned; of stories that were written for the sake of getting something important right . . . Her writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand" (The Guardian). Academy Street is driven by this same urgency. In sentence after sentence it captures the rhythm and intensity of inner life.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374712751
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161
Book Description
A vibrant, intimate, hypnotic portrait of one woman's life, from an important new writer Tess Lohan is the kind of woman that we meet and fail to notice every day. A single mother. A nurse. A quiet woman, who nonetheless feels things acutely—a woman with tumultuous emotions and few people to share them with. Academy Street is Mary Costello's luminous portrait of a whole life. It follows Tess from her girlhood in western Ireland through her relocation to America and her life there, concluding with a moving reencounter with her Irish family after forty years of exile. The novel has a hypnotic pull and a steadily mounting emotional force. It speaks of disappointments but also of great joy. It shows how the signal events of the last half century affect the course of a life lived in New York City. Anne Enright has said that Costello's first collection of stories, The China Factory, "has the feel of work that refused to be abandoned; of stories that were written for the sake of getting something important right . . . Her writing has the kind of urgency that the great problems demand" (The Guardian). Academy Street is driven by this same urgency. In sentence after sentence it captures the rhythm and intensity of inner life.