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Hard times in laboratory of nightmare exploitation

The Boston Castrato
by Colin W Sargent
(Barbican Press £9.99)

TO SAY that The Boston Castrato is Colin W Sargent’s interpretation of the great American novel writ small is no criticism.

By focusing largely on a specific location in a single year, and compressing the narrative into less than 300 pages, Sargent amplifies the tumult of individual lives as a reflection of the dominating forces of migration, crime and cultural experimentation that define them.

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