Quinn's Book [Paperback]

William J. Kennedy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 6, 1989

Quinn's Book tells the story of Daniel Quinn, of his adventure-filled search for true love and the answer to the riddle of his own fate.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The scene is still Albany and environs, but the time is the decade or so preceding the Civil War, the tone "high fantastical." Daniel Quinn is a self-reliant orphan; plucky, ambitious and in love. "Narrative is not the essence here," commented PW of this "richly packed" novel. "It is Quinn' s endless, apparently effortless invention that dazzles, like a virtuoso musician improvising." 75,000 first printing; $65,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Daniel Quinn, America's foremost Civil War reporter, recalls his adolescent years in and around Albany, New York, and his 15-year pursuit of the mysterious Maud Fallon, a theater star world-renowned for her nude interpretations of Byron and Keats. Quinn has a newsman's eye for detail, and history buffs will enjoy his accounts of the anti-draft riots, the underground railroad, and Saratoga racing in its heyday. However, as in the rest of the "Albany cycle," real people and events take on an almost mythological significance. Set a century earlier than his other novels, and written in a bombastic prose style reminiscent of 19th-century journalese, this novel will surprise fans of the Depression-era Kennedy. While too full of loose ends to be judged a complete success, this is nevertheless an important work of fiction. Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch., Los Angeles
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (May 6, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140077375
• ISBN-13: 978-0140077377
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #938,838 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great period piece, February 11, 2003

By 

Marsha E. Lytle (Olathe, KS United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quinn's Book (Paperback)

Fifteen-year-old Daniel Quinn doesn't know his life is about to change on a wintry day in 1849. An orphan, the result of a particularly bad cholera epidemic which wipes out his whole family, Daniel apprentices himself to the boatman, John the Brawn, as a helper in lieu of living in an orphanage. But when the boat containing the actress Magdelena Colon, her maid, and niece, Maud Fallon, is upset by a large block of ice, fate intervenes, causing Quinn's fortunes and fate to be interwoven with Magdelena, Maud, and John the Brawn.
This was a wondeful novel, full of rich language, and subtle humor, which portrays the life of the Irish in the mid-nineteenth century with startling realism. Daniel's family seems to have arrived in America well before the parade of famine Irish, so starkly portrayed by Kennedy in all their squalor. While not attempting to stereotype the Irish immigrants, we see them as the white, upper-class citizens of New York did, a scourge and pestilence bringing filth and disease with them. At one point in the novel they are herded on railroad cars and transported away from Albany as undesirables, dumped on some less fortunate area of the state.
Though the fate of the Irish immigrant is not the main theme in the novel, Quinn's background of being a penniless Irish orphan doesn't increase his chances of gaining the hand of Maud, though she declares her love for him upon their first meeting when she is but thirteen to his fifteen. Fate throws them together over the years, but it is not until he is a grown man that he finally seems worthy of the precocious Maud.
Besides the obvious love story the historical perspective works well. We are treated to a look at the anti-Catholic Know Nothing Pary, the forerunners of the modern Republican Pary, Abolitionists, the Underground Railroad, and the New York City Draft Riots. A very enjoyable story.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Ode To The "Famine Ship" Irish, February 10, 2010

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quinn's Book (Paperback)

Recently, in reviewing an early William Kennedy Albany-cycle novel, "Ironweed" I mentioned that he was my kind of writer. I will let what I stated there stand on that score here. Here is what I said:

"William Kennedy is, at least in his Albany stories, my kind of writer. He writes about the trials and tribulations of the Irish diaspora as it penetrated the rough and tumble of American urban WASP-run society, for good or evil. I know these people, my people, their follies and foibles like the back of my hand. Check. Kennedy writes, as here with the main characters Fran Phelan and Helen Archer two down at the heels sorts, about that pervasive hold that Catholicism has even on its most debased sons and daughters, saint and sinner alike. I know those characteristics all too well. Check. He writes about that place in class society where the working class meets the lumpen-proletariat-the thieves, grifters, drifters and con men- the human dust. I know that place well, much better than I would ever let on. Check. He writes about the sorrows and dangers of the effects alcohol on working class families. I know that place too. Check. And so on. Oh, by the way, did I mention that he also, at some point, was an editor of some sort associated with the late Hunter S. Thompson down in Puerto Rico. I know that mad man's work well. He remains something of a muse for me. Check."

That said, this little novel takes place in an earlier time in the Albany novel cycle, the earliest period thus far in my reading of the cycle. This is a story of the hard period in America for those "famine ship Irish" that were driven to seek a new life in the new world against their collective wills. But, certainly they were driven out of Ireland by economic necessity and desperation. For the most part the snippets of character detailed here, including the earliest generations of names that are familiar from later generations in Kennedy's book , do not suggest that they were driven out due to some criminal activity, political or not, against old "Mother "England".

That snippet of character reference above also can be used as a point that makes this novel a little different from the others in this cycle. The narrator, Daniel Quinn, a teenage boy-man orphan (nice touch, as narrator in a fresh, young country) with plenty of spunk and ambition, as is usually the case gets plenty of character build-up throughout. However this novel is driven more by the plot than by character development than prior Kennedy reads. That plot, such as it is, centers on Quinn's "golden quest" to win the hand of the "teen angel", Maud, come hell or high water. Along the way, we are taken on a Kennedy version of "magical realism", 19th century Albany Irish style: of the "famine ship" Irish; of the old Dutch squirarchy that ruled the Hudson Valley in those days; of the American racial and political scene in the pre-Civil War period, and much else. That "much else" sometimes gets in the way of the "golden quest", but as almost always with Kennedy he gives us a good read, if not a great one.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it cover to cover, December 9, 2008

By 

Lucy Menard - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Quinn's Book (Paperback)

I should have been writing my senior thesis during the last 24 hours, but instead I was whipping through this novel. I really like mystical realism, and the idea of the author following the large cast of characters through the twists and turns of their eventful and intersecting lives. It reminded me of novels by Isabelle Allende which I really have enjoyed.