Customer Reviews

New York: The Novel

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I have read and loved all of Edward Rutherfurd's books (starting with Sarum, 20 years ago). When I heard that his latest book "New York" was being released a few weeks earlier in the UK than in the USA I ordered it from Amazon.co.uk as I was so eager to read it.

"New York" is just as good as Rutherfurd's other works. The author takes us on a 350 year ride through New York's history, from the 1600s to the present day. The fictional characters are well-developed and interesting and we follow them through multiple generations alongside all of the major events in New York's history. New Amsterdam, the Dutch, the War of Independence, Tammany Hall, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, through to the inevitable and tragic conclusion at the World Trade Center. The chapter covering the Panic of 1907 is especially fascinating, given the obvious parallels with recent events: the near-collapse of the financial system, narrowly averted with millions of Government money, and the ability of J.P. Morgan himself to bring Wall Street's top money men together and convince them to do what was needed.

With Rutherfurd's books it feels more like you're living through the history than reading a history book. There are many enjoyable storylines involving the fictional families, with the historical events as a backdrop, and several of them incorporate real characters from history. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Churchill's family, Boss Tweed, and many others, are all here.

At school I thought history was a boring subject. But I found it very hard to put this book down, and very much missed my daily excursions into New York when I was finished.

I should confess straight up that I am a big fan of Edward Rutherfurd and consider him a worthy successor to my favourite author James A Michener. For me, a hefty novel with generations of interesting characters is my idea of heaven, and his masterpiece "Sarum" is a wonderful example of a great, great novel.

Now the latest offering "New York" - is a very well written and researched novel, and this in itself makes it a worthwhile read. However, I have to admit that I found it vaguely disappointing.

The city of New York has a fascinating history and has been at the forefront of much of the world's history, both good and bad. What I have found disappointing is that the storyline seems to only touch lightly on some of the more high profile events in its history, placing them in the context of the families that have been developed to populate the story.

Now this is a tried and true narrative technique, and it would be far more effective if the families were more interesting. But alas, somehow the story moves either too slowly, making the reader think surely something big will happen soon, or in such great leaps that we miss a lot of what makes the characters truly engaging, and limiting the sense of dynasty that makes these types of novels so engaging.

Having said that, it is still a very good read. The research undertaken is excellent and the characters are for the most part interesting and engaging (though I still believe that the characters that we don't get to know as well had the potential to be far more interesting!). Plus its about New York - one of the greatest cities on earth!

I can recommend it, it is entertaining and well written. It is NOT the great novel I hoped it would be, but perhaps I am just a victim of my own high expectations!

New York: The Novel is an ambitious book. Covering nearly 350 years of New York, and by extension American history, this book is the story of about a half a dozen families living in the city at various points throughout its history: the Dutch van Dycks, English Masters, Irish O'Donnells, German Kellers, southern Italian Carusos, Jewish Adlers, and the descendants of the slave Quash, who are given the last name River. The novel opens in 1664, when New Amsterdam is bought from the Dutch by the English and becomes New York, and ends in the summer of 2009.

New York is the third of Rutherfurd's books I've read, after Sarum: The Novel of England and London: The Novel. His previous two books covered all of English history, from prehistory to the present; New York only covers about 350 years. There are good and bad things about focusing on such a (relatively) short period of history. On one hand, it's a lot easier to keep track of the generations through the years, and there's a lot more room for character development. On the other, I really wish that Rutherfurd had covered Manhattan history during the time it was owned by the Dutch.

The focus of the novel is on the Revolution and Civil War, particularly the Draft Riots of 1863, and the financial panic of the turn of the last century. The Great Fire of 1835 is ignored, as are the (often confusing) politics of Tammany Hall, the Astor Place riots, the amalgamation of the Boroughs, the General Slocum disaster in 1904, or the building of the subways. I realize there's a lot to cover in a novel of this scope, but some mention of these defining moments of New York history would have been nice. The longtime tension between the Irish Catholics and native-born New Yorkers is downplayed, and it seemed a little odd to me that someone like Sean O'Donnell wouldn't have run into at least some prejudice on his way up out of the Five Points. Or that Mary O'Donnell would go from being a maid in the Masters' house to being one of Hetty Master's best friends in society.

On the other hand, there's a lot of territory to cover in this 860-page novel, so it's also easy to understand why an author might have to be picky and choosy about what to include and what to leave out. The parts of the novel that the author does cover are well-researched, especially the chapters on the Revolution, the Draft Riots, the great blizzard of 1888, the financial bits, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1910, the blackout of 1977, and 9/11.

As I've said, because this book covers less time that some of Rutherfurd's other books, there's less to keep track of in terms of family history. The Master family, for the most part, are the focal point of the novel. The story follows them, as merchants and Wall Street men, from the early 18th century to the present, so I really enjoyed following their story through the centuries. It was also interesting to witness New York growth through the years, from sleepy 17th century village to bustling 21st century metropolis. It's also a fascinating story about the American dream, of a half a dozen families living that dream in one of the greatest cities in the world. For an excellent narrative history of New York (at least up through the 1960s), try Edward Robb Ellis's The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History.

Edward Rutherfurd, whose sweeping historical epics introduced us to 10,000 years of ancient SARUM and thousands of years of LONDON, now turns his historical pen to that young upstart of the west --- New York City.

One of the greatest cities of the world, New York City saw its humble beginnings in a tiny Indian fishing village in the forests of Manhattan in the mid-1650s. The ancient cities of Europe and the Orient had flourished for thousands of years before the rustic trading center in New Amsterdam began to bustle with ships sailing across the Atlantic into its natural harbor.

In this history, the Master family, descended from the earliest traders, is followed through many generations and historical events in NEW YORK: THE NOVEL. They and their families are portrayed in this epic saga covering the great events that shaped our new nation. Rutherfurd explores the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the numerous stock market crashes, the racial divides that occurred as each new wave of ethnic immigrants swept ashore to start new lives in the promised land. We've read of these historical events in some of our country's greatest literature, but Rutherfurd's take on our history is seen through the eyes and experiences of New Yorkers, who were often not as closely involved as one might assume.

Many might be surprised to learn that in the 1760s and 1770s, New York's role in the American Revolution was neutral. New York at first abstained from signing the Declaration of Independence and stayed at arm's length from the war until British ships were almost in New York Harbor. We learn that this is because the majority of influential New Yorkers were royalists who regarded the upstart revolutionaries of Boston and Philadelphia as rabble rousers who should at the very least be ignored, if not hanged for treason. The Revolutionary War was an annoyance to New Yorkers that interfered with trade and the booming commerce that would come to define the city.

The Civil War was also viewed from afar. The lucrative slave trade that sustained the trading routes of the Dutch West India Company --- and the many others that developed in the first 150 years --- was jeopardized by the threatening secession from the Union by the South. From its very beginnings, New York was about banking and making money. Unlike the industrial South and the growing inland cities, it did not manufacture goods; it marketed them. It did not grow crops; it traded them and invested the profits on Wall Street. If patriotism stirred the early New Yorker, it was about profit; it tended to leave the flag waving and fighting to the rest of the country. Street demonstrations in later years were more apt to be about suffrage, prohibition and social causes than about taking up arms in civil and international wars.

The early slave holders in the Master family gradually change to more progressive thinking, but are still torn --- even as slavery is abolished --- to holding to the old ways. The family encounters the forces of Tammany Hall, the Irish (and later, the Italian) mobs, the Jewish artists and craftsmen, and the Asian communities that gradually move in as other ethnic groups move out. New York evolves before our very eyes as some of the great landmarks rise, then fall to fire, dilapidation, or new development. Overhead railways change to subways, and narrow streets turn into freeways and parkways. The city crawls slowly northward, filling up as waves of ethnic groups move in behind other ethnic groups who want to move up or out. Anyone who has visited New York City in the last half century has watched this evolution as familiar buildings and landmarks vanish from the skyline, the most regrettable being the World Trade Center.

As the progeny of immigrants during different times in America's history, it is fascinating for me to read in such vivid detail about the times in which our ancestors lived. Rutherfurd is a master at bringing to life the people and streets of the times, not just the events. By happenstance, many of the eras he describes coincide with my own family history. To enjoy his almost cinematic description of New Amsterdam in the mid-1600s when my too-many-greats-to-be-listed grandfather was a clerk from Delft, Netherlands for the Dutch West India Company and then opened a bar on Beaver Street, which could have been the same tavern mentioned in the book, sent chills up my spine. A later branch on my family tree when my great-grandmother arrived from Ireland in 1860 coincided with the upheaval prior to the Civil War.

But no matter if you are Dutch, English, descendents of slaves, Italian, Asian, Jewish, German, or Nordic, there were so many important events that affected the people on the streets that one can't help but feel a bit of déjà vu if you are lucky enough to have had older relatives who reminisced about times past. And it's all there: the book starts with the Indians and traders in New Amsterdam and ends in 2009. Three hundred and seventy years is a mere blink of an eye in historical terms, but what a history it is.

--- Reviewed by Roz Shea

First, I enjoyed this book, particularly reading it on Kindle. I have studied a fair amount of New York history, so the thought of having this history put in the context of a novel (Michneresque?) was appealing to me; however, I came away less than fully satisfied. The history seems on the mark and it is a good, if somewhat superficial, overview of the evolution of New York since its founding. What mostly disappointed me was the development of many characters only to have them dropped or abandoned on the turn of a page. Maybe some of this was necessary to get through the history in what is already a long book, but having a character developed over the course of a chapter or more, only to have them dismissed almost instantaneously, with barely an afterthought, left me somewhat dissatisfied. I kept saying to myself, "I wonder what finally happened to so-and-so"? This seemed to be Rutherfurd's method of jumping through time so I'll leave it at that. Overall, I would recommend it.

New York is ambitious, but then all of Rutherfurd's novels are broad in scope, the history of a place through time via the intimate details of individual lives. As in Sarum, London, The Princes of Ireland, Rutherfurd paints with a broad brush, but imbues his stories with the minutiae of details, in this case a tiny Indian village on Mannahata invaded by Dutch settlers with ambitions for great fortunes. Colonization, taxation, the arrogance of the conqueror- all meet with rebellion in the birth of a new country and the city at its very heart. The challenge, of course, is to capture three hundred and fifty years of New York's history in one great story. Just as in his other novels, the author again uses a number of families, the Van Dyck's, Masters', O'Donnell's, Keller's, etc., representing a variety of ethnicities and backgrounds, German, Irish, English, Dutch, Jewish, even the descendants of the slave, Quash, eventually the Rivers family. Rich and poor, black, white, native and immigrant, friends, neighbors and sometimes adversaries, these families become the changing face of New York.

Storytelling and research merge beautifully as, decade by decade, we encounter those who seek opportunity, suffer tragedy, yearn for better lives, harbor visions for the future- and make foolish, human mistakes. Rutherfurd has a talent for capturing the ordinary, the threads of family from one generation to the next as they marry, form political organizations, worship, bear children. New York teems with every kind of individual and the vices that accompany progress, from the kind to the greedy, the loyal to the opportunistic. More difficult perhaps is the choice of events as the great city evolves, the historical figures that define an era, from George Washington to W. Pierpoint Morgan to Babe Ruth, from the traders on the Hudson River to the politics of Tammany Hall, from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire to the blizzard of 1888, Five Points to Ellis Island, events that shape the direction of the city, political, financial and personal.

It is the particular families, the Masters', Van Dyck's, the Rivers', who personify the evolution of this dynamic city, the individual and historic details that provide this story with a breadth of human experience. I particularly enjoyed the early years, the city expanding from the ambitions and conflicts of colonization. From New Amsterdam and the Dutch to the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the roaring twenties, World War II, power politics, immigration... all through that terrible September day in 2001. It is easy to fill in the map of time as Rutherfurd's characters march across the landscape of years, the humble beginnings of a few families writ large as the world becomes more complicated. History comes to life through people and events. Just as I learned to appreciate the struggles in Ireland, so do I recognize the essence of New York, one era at a time, random events made more relevant- and memorable- from wars to personal dramas, politics and family dynamics, loves and betrayals, trials, challenges and spirit of this city. Luan Gaines/2009.

This novel begins, in 1664, with a tiny Indian village and Dutch traders. It ends in 2009 with an epilogue. In between, the journey through the generations of the fictional families Mr Rutherfurd has created traverses many of the major events in the history of both New York and America.

From New Amsterdam as a Dutch trading settlement, through the period of British colonisation, and the War of Independence, the creation of the American nation, and the Civil War: these were the parts of the novel that held my attention most closely. This novel is about the evolution of New York, and the various families, characters and historical figures are important because they illuminate places, issues and times. This is not a history of New York, and some inaccuracies may aggravate those who spot them.

While I enjoyed the novel, I found the characters less engaging towards the end. The earlier parts of the novel were well served by Mr Rutherfurd's focus on the lives of families living through the historical events. By the end of the novel, the focus was almost entirely on one family and I found myself wondering about some of the others and the resolution of the issues they had been facing.

I think that this novel primarily depicts the historical development of New York from an economic and political perspective, and this makes sense when looking at a city over a period of nearly 350 years. An absorbing work of historical fiction: I'm glad I read it.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

This book was a pleasant read, packed with history, which suffered a bit from uneven storytelling. This is the first book I've read by Rutherford. It reminded me most of the North and South trilogy by John Jakes, but not quite as good. The book is extremely long, as one might expect from a novel covering the entire history of New York after Europeans arrived, so you'll get your money's worth.

The book is essentially a collection of stories throughout multiple eras in the history of New York. The characters in each story are connected to those of previous eras. In this way there is some cohesiveness, but not quite enough to ever really feel like the book is entirely tied together.

The biggest criticism I have is the uneven writing. Some of the stories were compelling; others were decidedly less so. The way the book was constructed did not really allow for development of the characters, as they seemed to be used more as props to tell the story of whatever era was being discussed. As soon as the next era began, of course, there was a new set of folks to contend with. In some cases the characters appeared to be extremely stereotypical, but I don't know if this could be avoided in a novel covering so many time periods in history and still give the reader a broad idea of the events of the time.

I will say that there were a few parts in the book that moved me deeply. These places were where the writing about the era was so realistic as to help the reader really feel like they could picture that particular place in time. I loved learning more about the history of New York in early America and during the Revolution and the Civil War, as New York does not often appear front and center of tales related to these eras.

The last 200 pages were dreadful. I was a big Rutherfurd fan and greatly anticipated this book. What was he thinking? I thought the Dutch part was good and the Amer. Rev. the best part of the book. Geo. Wash. becomes a real character but most of the time he name-drops his way through the history of the city. There are many typos and grammatical mistakes (even taking into account the differences between British and American English) throughout. The last 200 pages were mostly a tourist guide -- one character walks down Fifth Ave. admires the Chrysler Bldg. and then Rutherfurd explains the building like a tour guide. This happened over and over -- characters walk and drive all over the city and it is nothing more than excuse to explain landmarks in a cold, expository way. Boring. The characters in the last 200 pages are woefully lacking. It was inevitable to end the story on 9/11 but Rutherfurd did it so inelegantly. Trite. He should be embarrassed. --I have neve written a review before but I am so annoyed by mediocrity this time around. I loved "London" and "Russka."

Don't expect this book to be historically accurate on all counts, but it is close enough to blend reality with fiction and keep the reader engaged. If you are a nitpicker as to NYC history and are expecting perfection, this is not a book for you. However, if you want a great novel, with ties to a great city, that is used in all its splendor, glory, good and bad as a relatively accurate backdrop for a very engaging novel you will love this book.

As a NYC history buff I can say that whatever leeway the author took to make the book more enjoyable, was well worth it. I didn't quite get the visceral feel of NYC I got with other books, but there was enough for the casual reader and the storyline was well done. In fact, in many ways, I am glad the author did not overshadow the characters with the background of NYC. The author made a wise choice in this regard.

For those who needing a more in depth perusal of NYC history as many will want after reading this book, I would recommend Gotham.