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amiecaitlin 's review for:
New York: The Novel
by Edward Rutherfurd
A brilliantly unique idea for a novel. The city is as much a central character as any of the people within it.
For me, the overriding takeaway from this novel is how interesting the city’s history is. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think the skill with which it’s written, how Rutherfurd intertwines historical events and people with the fictional characters created to tell the tale is magnificent. But I’ve only given it four stars because:
1) the epilogue didn’t fit the style or tone of the book and was wholly unnecessary. As a result, the ending was off for me. (I wish Rutherfurd had simply finished before the epilogue - it would have been a poignant end.)
2) something I battled with while reading and still can’t make up my mind about is whether I liked the focus on New York’s old money and high society. They’re absolutely intrinsic to New York’s culture, but they’re only one small part. The protagonist family you follow from colonisation to modern day are a blue-blooded and entitled (‘old money’) Dutch-English family, the Masters, meaning at times you see more of high society NYC than perhaps the ‘real people’. But on the whole, Rutherfurd balances the needs of the groups battling for a mention well and offered enough insight into each demographic and how they helped shape New York - displaced Native Americans, black slaves, the Irish, Italians, Jews and Puerto Ricans to name a few.
I can imagine Rutherfurd had to make some hard editing decisions when writing this book or else it would have gone on forever. As it is, it’s 1020 pages and a real doorstop of a book. But it held my attention and at no point did I feel I was forcing myself to finish it - always a good sign!
For me, the overriding takeaway from this novel is how interesting the city’s history is. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I think the skill with which it’s written, how Rutherfurd intertwines historical events and people with the fictional characters created to tell the tale is magnificent. But I’ve only given it four stars because:
1) the epilogue didn’t fit the style or tone of the book and was wholly unnecessary. As a result, the ending was off for me. (I wish Rutherfurd had simply finished before the epilogue - it would have been a poignant end.)
2) something I battled with while reading and still can’t make up my mind about is whether I liked the focus on New York’s old money and high society. They’re absolutely intrinsic to New York’s culture, but they’re only one small part. The protagonist family you follow from colonisation to modern day are a blue-blooded and entitled (‘old money’) Dutch-English family, the Masters, meaning at times you see more of high society NYC than perhaps the ‘real people’. But on the whole, Rutherfurd balances the needs of the groups battling for a mention well and offered enough insight into each demographic and how they helped shape New York - displaced Native Americans, black slaves, the Irish, Italians, Jews and Puerto Ricans to name a few.
I can imagine Rutherfurd had to make some hard editing decisions when writing this book or else it would have gone on forever. As it is, it’s 1020 pages and a real doorstop of a book. But it held my attention and at no point did I feel I was forcing myself to finish it - always a good sign!