Following the panoramic scope of The March (2005), Doctorow creates a microcosmic and mythic tale of compulsion, alienation, and dark metamorphosis inspired by the famously eccentric Collyer brothers of New York City. Born to wealth in the 1880s, Homer and Langley became recluses and hoarders barricaded inside their Fifth Avenue brownstone, which was crammed with more than 100 tons of moldering junk. Altering facts and tinkering with time, Doctorow has Homer, who is blind, narrate with deadpan humor and spellbinding precision. Homer is devoted to music, and his brother is devoted to him, but Langley, off-kilter after a gas attack in the Great War, is beyond strange. He rebuilds a Model T in the dining room, collects everything from pianos to army surplus, and amasses newspapers to assemble a "forevermore" edition, Doctorow's sly enactment of the fall of print and the rise of the Internet, a realm as chaotic and trash-filled as the Collyer mansion. Over the decades, people come and go —lovers, a gangster, a jazz musician, a flock of hippies, but finally Homer and Langley are irrevocably alone, prisoners in their fortress of rubbish, trapped in their warped form of brotherly love. Wizardly Doctorow presents an ingenious, haunting odyssey that unfolds within a labyrinth built out of detritus of war and excess.
—Booklist (starred review)

Doctorow, whose literary trophy shelf has got to be overflowing by now, delivers a small but sweeping masterpiece about the infamous New York hermits, the Collyer brothers. When WWI hits and the Spanish flu pandemic kills Homer and Langley's parents, Langley, the elder, goes to war, with his Columbia education and his "godlike immunity to such an ordinary fate as death in a war." Homer, alone and going blind, faces a world "considerably dimmed" through "more deliciously felt" by his other senses. When Langley returns, real darkness descends on the eccentric orphans: inside their shuttered Fifth Avenue mansion, Langley hoards newspaper clippings and starts innumerable science projects, each eventually abandoned, though he continues to imagine them in increasingly bizarre ways, which he then recites to Homer. Occasionally, outsiders wanter through the house, exposing it as a living museum of artifacts, Americana, obscurity and simmering madness. Doctorow's achievement is in not undermining the dignity of two brothers who share a lush landscape built on imagination and incapacities. It's a feat of distillation, vision and sympathy. (Sept.).
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

This brilliant, touching story takes place and is shaped by the epic events of the 20th Century — from the Jazz Age of the '20s to the hippies of the '60s. It is a book of profound intelligence and humanity which will delight E.L Doctorow's many fans.
—The Book Abyss (Australia)

Homer and Langley, by E.L. Doctorow is a beautiful story of love between two brothers, a compact history of the changes in the world that overtakes them, and how they survive with their disabilities to rail against the outside trying to break into their sanctuary—the home that shelters them from all of life’s storms. It is one of my favorite reads of the year and one that I recommend heartily.
—Susan K. Barton, Gather.com

Doctorow has a tight grip on the flow of history, as evinced not only in this book but with Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, March, and a host of others. In each we get to see the individual confronting the larger issues of the era they live in. With Homer & Langley Doctorow lets the timeframe breathe out a bit, encompassing the events of nearly the entire 20th Century. It’s fun to read how the house fills up with each new invention Langley becomes enamored of, the house serving as a repository for dozens of typewriters, television sets, automobiles and computers, a museum collection in the offing. A really quick read, Homer and Langley is definitely worth the reading and one that makes me think I need to explore more of Doctorow’s works.
—Goodreads.com

Excerpted from Homer & Langley by E. L. Doctorow Copyright © 2009 by E.L. Doctorow. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.