PositiveThe Atlantic... feels like the first since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that captures the mood of New York right now, describing a wounded city where, rather than holding on to what’s gone, residents are eager to rid themselves of the recent past ... a book of ideas, a book of fathers and sons, a magical-realist mystery, and a revenge story ... Earth’s mightiest heroes often make their homes in New York, and the brothers, with their preternatural talents, leap off the book’s pages. With the gift of gab in multiple languages, Dayo embodies the city’s quest for wealth ... isn’t all darkness. Its cynicism is countered by the incredible warmth with which Khalid writes about his city ... Its contradictions make it glow. It’s thick with ideas, imagination, wordplay, name-dropping, notable NYC cameos (Argosy! The 13th Step!), and casual acts of writerly daring, which occasionally go overboard. Read it with a pen and you’ll expend more ink than a zealous NSA redactor ... Would that the rest of Brother Alive were as strong as its first act. When the book leaves the city, it tumbles off its axis. The street scenes, the density, the atmospheric reality undergirding Khalid’s fantasy disappears...without the backdrop of New York, the abstractions pile up and the churning plot ceases to satisfy ... This book, so focused on the past, sometimes seems to have little optimism for the future. But some of Khalid’s best writing comes when he has Youssef wax eloquent about whatever’s on the horizon. Even though Brother Alive is far from hopeful, wrestling with intellectual and political energies that seem to have no appropriate outlet, Youssef, and his author, maintain a sense of delirious wonder throughout. It’s a very New York quality: Every so often, the cynicism falls away and the sentiment—the affection that keeps us in this worn-out city—shines through.
