Customer Reviews

Quinn's Book (Curley Large Print Books)

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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.

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.

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.

I have read all of William Kennedy's books. I admit to being from Albany, the subject of his books. Kennedy unravels the tales of one of the nation's great "open" towns in the U.S.

They are history on a more personal level. It will not ast long on the night table.

I admit to being biased (my family moved to Albany around the time this story is set and has stayed since) but still insist this is a great period story that is at times hilarious, at times heart-wrenching, and never dull.

Although period literature is definitely in no short supply, Kennedy writes this book with a distinctly mystical flair that adds a stern dose of magic to a time most authors relegate to stuffiness and pomp. In addition, his characters here are immediately endearing, espescially Maud, Magdalena, and Daniel Quinn himself.

I'm less coherent than normal having spent the night awake reading this great story in lieu of sleep, but for anyone interested in, well, good storytelling set with a historically accurate backdrop of Albany and canal-town New York as a whole,

Quinn's Book recommends itself.

I came late to William Kennedy's work and may have to take other reviewers at their word that this is not his best. But it's certainly pretty good, and I'll find out if the rest is better. He captures a kind of crazed picaresque worldview which is something like E.L. Doctorow on drugs. His disasters are gigantic, larger than life, and so are most of the characters. It's hard to tell if it's magical realism or just totally unlikely, but it's funny as hell and a tremendously fun and quick reading experience--in spite of the mass violence and misfortune and desperate poverty it describes.

An excellent book, just excellent. My cousin read me the first sentence and I was hooked. This novel made me think of Doctorow's Billy Bathgate and Helprin's Winter's Tale, and it's just as good as those masterpieces. Now, has anyone else wondered about the mysterious but obvious relationship between this book, Winter's Tale, and Paul Auster's New York Trilogy (e.g., there is a character named Daniel Quinn in New York Trilogy)? And what other references am I missing? What is going on here?

If someone set out to write a parody of Kennedy's works, it would read a lot like Quinn's Book. Hard to put down, yes; telling details, of course; but undermined by preposterous characters and an offensive kind of magical realism. Billy Phelan's Greatest Game and Legs were much better.