Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by kris_ring
New York: The Novel by Edward Rutherfurd
4.0
I am a true New Yorker at heart. I should probably admit that I have actually never been there, but it doesn’t matter to me, I am a New Yorker. I live and breathe that city; its politics, architecture, finances, its fashion... ohhhhh the fashion, but now after finishing this book it’s all about New York’s history.
This book is a saga, one long 860 page saga, and a page turner at that. Rutherfurd magically connects each part of history to the next through families, politics, love and war in a way that is truly baffling. Some stories are long and detailed, some are short and almost unfinished. Sometimes you read pages and pages about one day and other times major events in time got merely a paragraph. But this is how it draws you in and keeps you in right until the very last page.
Typically books have the basic elements; plot, theme, main characters, supporting characters, beginning, climax, end... you know, the usual. But this book had one main theme and hundreds of everything else! To keep a reader interested through 800 pages without a main character is talent, and it’s rare. Though what becomes obvious towards the end is that this book’s main character and its theme are one and the same; New York. Rutherfurd gives the city itself personality, emotion, actions, consequences; he creates a living, breathing entity from merely a place.
I, along with most of the world, will never forget that Tuesday in September, 2001. Last night, reading the final pages of this book, watching the events unfold through eyes of characters that I got to know and love, watching the city that I had just spent 500 years in, be attacked, was so powerful it’s hard to describe. And it wasn’t the politics of it that was enraging, as it was back in 2001; Rutherfurd left that out, and focused on a day as any other with families, friends, coworkers, banking appointments, and job interviews; all what I expect would be any typical day in the financial district of New York. It wasn’t a political, staged, “the government failed” attack; it was personal, so very personal. It was the first time I didn’t feel emotions for the USA as a whole, but connected with someone who was there, who survived, and with the city, New York, who not only survived but fought back.
I am a Canadian, and as such know how young our history is, how much of it began in Europe and the USA, and that other nations’ histories are our history. The Hudson River, the fur trading, the railroads, the slave trading and the Underground Railroad, the British Rule and Independence; we are all interconnected. This book should be read by every North American citizen. It makes learning easy, the history flows, and you connect with it. It shows us pieces of the puzzle of who we are and where we come from. Thank-you Edward Rutherfurd, you opened my eyes to so much more of New York than Vogue and Vanity Fair, Fox News and Rap music, Sex & the City and the Sopranos, what you did was show me how all those things came to be, and it was no simple story to tell.
In my eyes, New York is a masterpiece, both the city and the book!
This book is a saga, one long 860 page saga, and a page turner at that. Rutherfurd magically connects each part of history to the next through families, politics, love and war in a way that is truly baffling. Some stories are long and detailed, some are short and almost unfinished. Sometimes you read pages and pages about one day and other times major events in time got merely a paragraph. But this is how it draws you in and keeps you in right until the very last page.
Typically books have the basic elements; plot, theme, main characters, supporting characters, beginning, climax, end... you know, the usual. But this book had one main theme and hundreds of everything else! To keep a reader interested through 800 pages without a main character is talent, and it’s rare. Though what becomes obvious towards the end is that this book’s main character and its theme are one and the same; New York. Rutherfurd gives the city itself personality, emotion, actions, consequences; he creates a living, breathing entity from merely a place.
I, along with most of the world, will never forget that Tuesday in September, 2001. Last night, reading the final pages of this book, watching the events unfold through eyes of characters that I got to know and love, watching the city that I had just spent 500 years in, be attacked, was so powerful it’s hard to describe. And it wasn’t the politics of it that was enraging, as it was back in 2001; Rutherfurd left that out, and focused on a day as any other with families, friends, coworkers, banking appointments, and job interviews; all what I expect would be any typical day in the financial district of New York. It wasn’t a political, staged, “the government failed” attack; it was personal, so very personal. It was the first time I didn’t feel emotions for the USA as a whole, but connected with someone who was there, who survived, and with the city, New York, who not only survived but fought back.
I am a Canadian, and as such know how young our history is, how much of it began in Europe and the USA, and that other nations’ histories are our history. The Hudson River, the fur trading, the railroads, the slave trading and the Underground Railroad, the British Rule and Independence; we are all interconnected. This book should be read by every North American citizen. It makes learning easy, the history flows, and you connect with it. It shows us pieces of the puzzle of who we are and where we come from. Thank-you Edward Rutherfurd, you opened my eyes to so much more of New York than Vogue and Vanity Fair, Fox News and Rap music, Sex & the City and the Sopranos, what you did was show me how all those things came to be, and it was no simple story to tell.
In my eyes, New York is a masterpiece, both the city and the book!