Customer Reviews

Heyday: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I was torn between giving this book 4 stars or only 3. There are lots of negatives that distracted me from really enjoying this book, but, when I got to the end, I realized that it was worth the read.

I won't describe the plot - plenty of others have done that, and the book's summary is sufficient. Suffice it to say that the plot itself is one of the book's weaknesses: other reviewers mentioned the coincidences that forced me to suspend disbelief over and over again, but I think, as the book progresses, you get so used to these coincidences that it doesn't matter. In the end, the book is a kind of fairy tale, and coincidence is essential for such stories.

What bothered me most, however, is the author's need to flex his historical muscles at every turn. He clearly did lots of research, and wants to make sure you know it. He almost uses Tom Swifties - bits of exposition that go overboard to explain what he's presented - when tossing around "authentic" elements from the time. Inventions, clothing, food, and anything else he can present, Andersen keeps reminding us that he did his homework. Yet this ends up more distracting than if he simply mentioned these things in passing, or, rather, _didn't_ mention them all.

I read a lot of 19th century fiction, and Heyday does fit well into that style (though clearly it is contemporary, ie 21st century, 19th century fiction.) It's a fun read, full of interesting characters, and only a few tics mar its overall effect.

Novelist Kurt Andersen has hit the jackpot with "Heyday." This big book
(over 600 pages) turns the page of history back to that pivotal year of 1848. Steam was replacing sail in shipping; telegraph wires were buzzing; Womens' Rights activitist were meeting at Seneca Falls, New York and the California Gold Rush was pushing the new nation westward to the Pacific Ocean. Charles Darwin was challenging traditional biblical beliefs regarding creation; France and other European nations were embroiled in mass revolts in which the poor cried for justice and the Victorian world was moving into the modern industrial world as seen in the huge factories of Manchester and Birmingham. America was a big adolescent as ethnic groups fought loved and were learning to co-exist in the land of the free and home of the brave!
Giants were walking the American and world stage. In the USA there was Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. Edgar Poe was a popular lecturer and author. Elizabeth Cady Stanton a champion for Womens' Rights while Frederick Douglass demanded the slaves be freed. Such men as John Charles Fremont were opening up California to statehood through their pioneering efforts. In Europe it was the time of Marx and Engles. Great English authors such as Charles Dickens were in their prime. The novel alludes to a stage work of "Dombey and Son" evincing the interest on this side of the Atlantic in Mr. Dickens works.
Andersen has read thousands of articles, books and newspapers to take the reader back to this crucial time. He has also written a popular, exciting adventure story featuring murders, prostitutes, army deserters, 49ers, theatrical folk and a vast assemblage of the average citizen of that colorful era. You will learn such arcana from the time as the use of condoms; the effects of cholera epidemics; fashion of the day; how to pan for gold; what Paris, London, New York and San Francisco were like at the time, the rise of Mormonism...the list of what interesting facts you will learn is mind boggling
The fast paced tale begins with the wealthy English aristocrat Benjamin Knowles emigrating to America. He falls in love with a prostitute/actress the beguiling Polly Lucking. We meet her insane pyromaniacal murdering brother Duff Lucking who was a deserter in the Mexican War. We also become acquainted with Timothy Skittles an author of cheap novels, photographer and man about New York town. These three have their lives entwined as together they set out for a new life in the West.
Little do they know that Benjamin and his friends are being pursued by an evil French police officer named Drumont who seeks to murder Benjamin whom he blames for his brother's death in a Paris riot.
Andersen writes best about 1848 life in New York while the part dealing with the California gold rush is a bit slower. Nevertheless this novel is reminiscent of an updated Dickens novel in its character potrayals, mystery and colorful descriptions. It is a fine book which will stand the test of time. You will enjoy it!

This is one of the broad scope of 19th century history stories coloring the lives of the family and friends who make up the main characters of the book. It is not really historical fiction, but more in the line of one of the John Jakes type of novel where the characters are witnesses to the birth of modern times rather than the agents of the historical events.

This is an enjoyable tale, but not a book with a definable plot. It would be a great book to make into one of those television mini-series with a "Winning of the West" type of theme. In this story, you follow the adventures of the main characters through a period of not much more than a couple of years when the world was changing. This book takes you from one of the many revolutions (or maybe just revolts) in France through an enlightenment period in England and the growing pains of a growing immigrant population in New York City to the gold fields of California.

There are some spots in the book where the story was somewhat stretched to bring the main characters into contact with famous people or historical events. It is hard for me to fathom that four diverse people at that time in history would be personally acquainted with Abraham Lincoln, Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Alexis de Tocqueville and John C. Fremont. The four characters consist of the son of a wealthy, titled peer in England, an often fired reporter in New York, an "actress" and her obsessively religious, Mexican War veteran brother. I was sort of expecting the last page of the book would close with "And they lived happily ever after" since there was no real ending to the book,

I wanted a good long summer read, so I bought this one. 620 pages. I was not disappointed. It has a large cast of characters who meet, separate, and reunite in various countries as the years pass. Epic in scope. Unlike a lot of novels, this one has a lot of realistic detail, a lot of it unpleasant. (Forgive me for giving away just one, but I loved the bit about how the Manhattan drag-queens tied raw pork chops to their upper thighs in order to fool drunk johns during dark-alley standups. You don't get detail like that in most novels!) There are also a lot of famous people who make cameo appearances. Since I had no idea how things were going to end (I deliberately avoided reading plot synopses of it), I got caught up in the spirit and sweep and became very interested in the lives and fates of these characters. It's a very good read. I was going to allow myself about 20 pages per day, but I soon found myself going for 40 or 50 per day. One of the great things about historical fiction is when you can say that you're glad you live in the clean and modern world of 2007 and not the filth and squalor of 1849. And it makes me appreciate what my ancestors went through to survive the entire 19th century. I can fully recommend this one if you want a good complex adult read.

*The excellent reviews lead me to be first interested in Mr. Andersen's new epic American novel. Overall the book's epic themes cover nothing less than the story of Manifest Destiny, revolution, slavery, freedom of individualism vs. both cults of religion and politics, experiments of rigid capitalism vs. the "romantic" democracy of socialism... all manifested against the just recently completed popular US war of choice with Mexico. Andersen's focus is on the American experiment as told through an adventure in the period 1848 and 49. He thus provides the reader an interesting perspective upon the state of society, politics, culture, celebrity, mass media, and communications. Andersen's detailed and rich setting of scene provides the reader a dense narrative which follows chronologically from location to location, from character to character. For much of the book the four characters have separate stories and these individuals are wildly dissimilar and yet become friends and undertake a long journey (perhaps better described as a chase) of discovery together. Two members of the groups also fall in love. But none of these stories are told in more than a real life matter of fact tone and pace. Nothing is rushed or forced on the reader and in time one slowly gets to know these people and their times. Along the way we also meet some minor characters, subplots as well as real historic figures (why mention them by name and upset the surprise... just to say none of them distracts from the main story.) The characters are all interesting and real if not compelling. The lead character is a young Englishman (second born so he loses out) who we meet as he is in Paris swept up with a friend in the French Revolution. In Paris an explosive incident happens that catapults the story to England and on to New York. In New York we meet a brother and sister. She is an actress that on a part time bases "rents herself" to men, and the brother is a scared veteran of the Mexican war. It still bothers me that the two main female characters are prostitutes with hearts of gold. The group is held together by the glue of friendship with a personable newspaper man who has a keen interest in photography and astronomy. In some reviews the book is compared to a modern day Dickens. For me the book reminded me, but was far more epic, of Jane Smiley's book "The All True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton". Kurt Andersen HAYDAY is quite an achievement and I recommend the book, especially if you have an interest in American history of this period.

It's 1848 and young Englishman Benjamin Knowles feels drawn to the spirit of freedom, especially as he believes it to be epitomized in America. He takes a side trip to France to meet a like-minded friend, and their accidental incursion into the revolutionary happenings there ends tragically. Ben escapes back to England and then departs for America, unaware that a wrathful killer from France is bent on revenge. In New York, Ben strikes up a friendship with three enterprising Americans; Timothy Skaggs, a journalist/ daguerreotypist/ brash man-about-town; Duff Lucking, a fireman with a damaged soul; and Polly, Duff's lovely sister, who is a forward-thinking woman whose part-time work as a prostitute allows her to live as she wishes. Benjamin acknowledges that with the addition of himself to their circle, the foursome resemble a new version of the Four Musketeers. Ben falls for the charming Polly, but soon enough, and for individual reasons, all of them decide to leave New York and travel west. Polly and her companion Priscilla Christmas (a name right out of Dickens!) leave first, to find a new community among the many new "Utopias" scattered across the Midwest. The men follow them, until the four are once again reunited and making for the gold recently discovered in California. All along the journey, they are trailed by the murderous Frenchman.
This book is a marvel of invention. 600+ pages of a thoroughly engaging narrative. The characters are compelling, flawed and sympathetic, and the plot is rich with period detail that never feels forced, but rather rises organically from events. There are cameos from the famous faces of the time, like Charles Darwin and Walt Whitman, but none intrude like `look at me' moments that could distract from our main characters.

This is a loooong novel (640 pages), and as the editorial review from Publishers Weekly notes, one with a "slowish" beginning. The book opens in April 1948 with young Englishman Ben Knowles' arrival in America. On his first day in the new world, he encounters two of the other main characters, the beautiful actress Polly Lucking and her firefighting brother, Duff (the fourth main character, Timothy Skaggs, is introduced a bit later). However, the timeline then reverts back to six months before, when Ben has traveled to Paris to visit a friend. Although the events that occur in Paris are integral to the story that follows (including the introduction of another major character, Sergeant Drumont), I think that the author's use of a flashback here is the reason the first 100 pages or so of this novel tend to drag somewhat.

Once the book returns to the present time, however, the story begins to pick up. Author Andersen provides a fascinating glimpse of life in the mid-1800s, from dietary staples to the newspaper boom to brothels and bathroom habits. He's clearly done his research--for example, he often makes a point of incorporating more colloquial terms in describing "modern" life at that time. Andersen also uses several major historical events as vehicles for his plot, such as France's "February Revolution" and the California gold rush. Major historical figures appear as well--Charles Darwin, Walt Whitman, and others are actual characters in the book, while Abraham Lincoln and similar famous personage receive prominent mentions.

Each of the four main characters--Ben, Polly, Duff, and Skaggs--is afforded with plenty of time and a point of view voice. Early on, the focus is more on Ben's experiences in France and Polly's checkered history, but as the novel progresses, we learn more of Duff's secret past and Skaggs' aspirations; Drumont's perspective is given as well. Heyday is a book is full of both tragedy and humor, although with more of an emphasis on the latter. At the novel's conclusion, I felt that my extended stay in the nineteenth century was time well-spent, and I believe that you will too.

You can tell that the author spent a lot of time reading old newspapers and periodicals from the period, because there was a lot of historical writing that was beyond the norm for good historical fiction, as though there is a history professor telling us about things happening in the period that don't really go with the story. However, one of the great reasons to read this book is to get a feeling for the attitudes of the time about such things as prostitution, drug consumption, alcohol consumption, slavery, life in early NYC, early Mormonism, and the general feeling in the air in this time period as steam powered ships and trains as well as telegraph are changing the landscape of the world.

There is a nice little love story, a bit of "Les Miserable" and some of the French Revolution, an idealistic son of a tough rich Englishmen running away to America for adventure and to escape a boring life. There is also death, war, big fires in NYC and San Francisco, the sad tale of the Native Americans and slavery of the time, and a lot about the "49ers" and the California gold rush and the crazy times in San Francisco. I learned more about some of the horrible things the U.S. did to Mexico in this time period.

The book is a good a solid read and I will remember the feeling of the era and the great characters and their lives. The author deserves a lot of credit for his exhaustive study of history of the era.

"Heyday" presents the reader with a totally impossible plot, in the sense of one filled with outrageous coincidences plus main characters that somehow manage to meet almost every prominent figure and participate in every major event or historical movement on two continents in the middle of the 19th century. The resulting incredulity almost turns the story, despite the intense violence and mayhem, into a comedy.
Then there are the characters themselves, as flat and static as can be. They move around a lot, but they do not evolve, regardless of the monumental challenges with which are are constantly faced.
The book's sole strength--and it's a good one--is in the details of everyday life of the time. The author has done his homework! What luxurious descriptions of life in Paris, London, New York City, the Midwest, and California during the Gold Rush, including numerous titillating details about sexual habits and instruments!
But in the end, the book is just too long to sustain interest in detail alone

"Heyday" is an entertaining story that highlights the astonishing world changing events that occurred during 1848-1849. The cast includes a floundering journalist, a disillusioned aristocrat, an aspiring actress, her haunted brother, and a clairvoyant teen - all who are being hunted across the country by a vengeful French militiaman.

In other words, this is solidly amusing fluff stuck to a rickety structure of historical facts. Readers of historical fiction who can suspend their need for history to be woven into a believable story will enjoy this book. It is decidedly UN-believable, but fun nonetheless.

Skaggs, the inebriate, womanizing, bumbling author/journalist/photographer/philosopher has so many connections across the globe that he would impress the founders of LinkedIn or MySpace. Uncannily, he bumps in to them in every town and pub he enters for a 2 year period! Benjamin Knowles, a British aristocrat running from his privileged roots, rubs shoulders with other historically significant figures and is similarly lucky in the number of connections he has to shipping magnates & entrepreneurs of the day. While mostly amusing, particular passages in the text are so laden with coincidences that it becomes burdensome.

Familial themes abound as well. Duff and Polly Lucking are so close that some mistake them as spouses, yet they are estranged by keeping their true lives secret from each other. Polly engages in sinful activities in order to amass a fortune and escape her gritty roots. She picks young Priscilla Christmas out of the gutter, sets her at her own side in a brothel, and keeps her under her wing as she strives for a better life outside the city. Meanwhile, Duff is locked in a battle with himself while waging guerrilla war all around him to cleanse the earth of sin. Ben wants to reinvent himself without relying on nepotism and rank. He unwittingly sparks revolution in Europe and then sails for New York where he meets Skaggs and the Luckings, befriends Skaggs and Duff and falls in love with Polly. As this troupe of misfits trek across the earth they are unknowingly pursued by a murderous Frenchman seeking revenge ... and who is ironically duping the king of sleuthing at the time, Alan Pinkerton.

Flaws aside, "Heyday" is interesting not only for its entertainment, but for providing a panoramic view of the incredible historical and cultural events that occurred in Europe, Mexico and the United States/US territories during this incredible 2 year period. The era is an unsung period of renaissance overlooked by US history teachers. Andersen does a favor to us all by cramming the factoids and context into an enjoyable package.