Publishers Weekly
05/01/2017
Platzer’s earnest and well-meaning, if superficial, debut novel centers on a single day of unrest in Brooklyn’s rapidly gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvestant neighborhood. Aaron, a former rabbi forced to abandon his synagogue in the wake of a loss of faith and (more critically) an ethical misstep, his girlfriend Amelia, and their infant son are among the vanguard of wealthy young white families moving into this historically black, architecturally rich neighborhood. Days after a police shooting of a preteen boy, racial tensions come to a head, and Aaron and Amelia find themselves and their historic brownstone in the crosshairs of their neighbors’ previously restrained resentments. The perspectives of secondary characters—including Aaron’s antisocial white tenant, their black nanny, the N.Y.C. police commissioner, and others—are ostensibly included to provide a diversity of voices. In reality, however, these multiple perspectives primarily serve to showcase the narrative’s lack of depth and failure to engage with social issues and urban complexity on anything more than a surface level. Perhaps readers largely unaware of discriminatory policing, economic injustice, or economic displacement will find the narrative enlightening, but those hoping for the novel to really grapple with these issues will be largely disappointed, as it descends into melodrama instead. (July)
Jewish Week
[An] engaging first novel... As the story unfolds in a cinematic style, themes of self-reflection, repentance and new beginnings emerge. This is a novel of New York’s streets, set in Brooklyn, at the intersection of race, culture, class, religion and real estate.
Open Letters Monthly Steve Donoghue
[Lean], powerfully-constructed . . . The unassuming bloodlessness of all this is the most daring thing Platzer does in his debut, and he does it so often and so smoothly that you’re sailing along at page 100 or so before you realize that virtually all of the interesting people being so brightly and engagingly described are themselves faintly revolting. And in many ways the most revolting character in the book is gentrification itself, creeping everywhere, soldiered by people just like Aaron, who pat themselves on the back for willingly surrounding themselves with people who don’t look like themselves, especially if it gets them a nice return on their initial investment. There’s a breathless cleanliness in Platzer’s depiction of how thoroughly disconnected the world of Aaron and Amelia is from the world of young Derek, a world boiling with rage at the stepped-up 'stop and frisk' policies of the omnipresent police.
Paste
An engaging, provocative read [with] a brilliant false ending that complicates the story’s outcome...The unexpected second ending brings a sense of balance to the book, concluding Bed-Stuy Is Burning with fitting ambiguity.
Electric Literature
A triumphant story...Bed-Stuy is Burning, with its diverse voices and sincere depiction of the fight for social equality, is a mighty fine debut from a writer to watch.
The Purist
"If you’re looking for the novel everyone will be talking about ... Bed-Stuy Is Burning by Brian Platzer."
David Gilbert
"Thirty years ago Tom Wolfe tackled New York excess with The Bonfire of the Vanities, and now Brian Platzer strikes his own match with Bed-Stuy Is Burning, the results just as timely and bright. Instead of Manhattan in the Eighties, Platzer turns his sharp eye onto present day Brooklyn: the simmering tensions of race and privilege, of cultural appropriation and identity politics, and of course real estate. The story gives voice to multiple characters in search of their American home – even police commissioner William Bratton has a supporting role – and Platzer has the confident novelistic chops to find the beating heart of humanity in everyone's struggle and striving. Bed-Stuy Is Burning is a wonderful debut. I look forward to whatever Brian Platzer might light up next."
Rafael Yglesias
In Bed-Stuy is Burning, Brian Platzer’s funny, socially acute intelligence combines with his empathetic heart to reveal how faith, violence and real estate speculation shape contemporary life. It is the debut of a fully mature literary voice that has the mordant wit of Franzen, the dazzling smarts of Roth, and the compassion of Tolstoy.
Ann Packer
"Brian Platzer has written a thrilling debut novel about marriage, gentrification, parenthood, race, and the dangerous bargains we make with ourselves. At once a heart-stopping portrayal of a day of violence and a deeply realized portrait of the five people at its center, Bed-Stuy is Burning marks the arrival of a tremendously accomplished young writer. I can’t wait to see what he does next."
New York Times bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves - Matthew Thomas
"Platzer writes insightfully about political isues while providing a panoramic take on New York that embraces the city's enormous complexity. This deeply moral book avoids easy conclusions and courts that ambiguity that is the hallmark of all great fiction."
Alice McDermott
"Brian Platzer's first novel is a savvy, heartfelt and utterly engaging examination of gentrification, love, race, ambition, money, parenthood and even faith. A Bonfire of the Vanities for millennials, it is a marvelous, and daring, debut."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Platzer clearly knows his turf. A Bed-Stuy resident himself, he convincingly sketches out how thin the neighborhood's peaceful veneer is.
Booklist
"Platzer, a writer and educator who lives in Bed-Stuy, is aiming high here, addressing race-related violence, the Black Lives Matter movement, gentrification, and other volatile topics. He succeeds in presenting multiple perspectives of dramatic yet familiar situations."
New York Post
A debut novel about class conflict, race and gentrification. Reminiscent of Bonfire of the Vanities.
Shelf Awareness
"Brian Platzer's first novel captures a violent day in the uneasy life of a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood where the fragility of love, parenthood, class and race is put to the test. A bad day in Bed-Stuy is a vivid microcosm of the United States, but the hope Platzer suggests with his characters' healthy unmasking offers optimism for the whole country's days ahead."
Jewish Book Council
Heart pounding and relentless...Bed-Stuy is Burning offers a suspenseful, well written, and empathetic story filled with wit, wisdom, and hard truths....An engaging, timely, and provocative read.
Wall Street Journal
Riveting, full of cliffhanger chapter endings and surprise twists... Mr. Platzer deftly swivels among the clashing points of view, and the climax, in which Aaron returns to disperse the crowd with an improvised sermon, is powerfully done.
Vanity Fair
Platzer’s take on race, religion, class, and politics—all the subjects you’re not supposed to discuss—is sure to get people talking.
Library Journal
07/01/2017
From the front lines of gentrification, income disparity, and racial tension in New York City comes this dramatic first novel that imagines a riot and its aftermath told by those involved on all sides. Aaron is a former rabbi and now successful Wall Street trader who owns a mansion in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with Amelia, a writer, and their infant son. A neighborhood youth has recently been killed by police, tensions are escalating, and when more young people are arrested, a mob forms and targets the nicest houses that are owned by white outsiders, ending up at Aaron's place while he is not there. Several people are shot, and the mob is attacking the house as Amelia and Antoinette, their nanny, are locked inside, incommunicado. Multiple story threads converge as a standoff takes place on Aaron's front porch. VERDICT The author effectively creates a tense, realistic situation, and although some of the multiple narrators are occasionally long-winded, the prose is energetic, and Platzer is obviously committed to exploring these contemporary urban issues.—James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Kirkus Reviews
2017-05-02
The city is burning indeed in New Yorker contributor Platzer's debut novel, sometimes with fire and sometimes with much-compounded shame.Aaron was once a rabbi, at least until he got caught with his hand in the synagogue's bank account, desperately trying to settle a gambling debt that involved organized crime, death threats, and suchlike mishegoss. Now, supposedly on the straight and narrow, though filled with epic doubts—"Belief had never been at the core of his rabbinical path," Platzer writes, though Aaron is fully certain of an inner rottenness that has kept God from stepping in on his behalf—he is the father of a baby son born to his girlfriend, Amelia, who writes service journalism pieces well below her capabilities. As the book opens, Aaron, now an investment banker, is contemplating just how fortunate he is to have found his way to this place—this place in life, that is, but also Bed-Stuy, in a beautiful home with nice neighbors. Others are not so lucky: a 12-year-old African-American boy is slain by a police officer in a nearby park, an event all too close to real life for so many citizens of Brooklyn and other cities. As protests and upheaval shake the streets, Amelia is called down for white privilege, Aaron gets caught up between cops and kids, and their carefully reconstructed life threatens to fall apart. Platzer is very good at doling out details of Aaron's tightly wound character and Amelia's reciprocal doubts, finding redemptions for both that, though not unlikely, do have a certain deus ex machina feel, given the distances each has to travel. In a story tinged with biblical allegory, Platzer also serves up some delicious set pieces for his supporting players. One of the best of them involves a young black woman recently escaped from arrest at an anti-police demonstration and wandering from store to store in the neighborhood trying to cash an improbably large check that she's come into. (And therein hangs a tale.) She can't, less because of the broken handcuffs trailing from her wrists than because she doesn't have proper ID. Notes a bemused clerk, "And they tell me gentrification isn't changing the neighborhood!" Expertly paced, eminently readable, and a promising start.
