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A review by sistermagpie
New York by Edward Rutherfurd
3.0
I've read a couple of Rutherford's books. My first was London, which remains my favorite. Unfortunately a lot of the things that were so fun for me in that book didn't really translate to New York. What I liked in London was the way he introduced different families representing recognizeable London types and had them pop up at different periods of history as both the same and not the same as the originally had been. So there was a sense, looking at a modern person, of the historical people--the sea captains who came from Vikings, etc.
New York concentrated mostly on one family, the Masters, which was a bit like if the book London had been dominated by the Bull family. Sure the wealthy members of the 400 are a part of New York's history, but they're not always the most interesting. By contrast the other families seemed to just kind of show up on cue to demonstrate the ethnic type (the Irish family spins their drunk father into a gentleman after making money with Tammany Hall in the 19th century, the Italian family sacrifices all for the "special" son while eating good food in the early 20th century, the smart Jewish girl spends the sabbath with her family in Brooklyn in the 50s etc.) And in the end we're back with the Master family (married to the Irish family, but her personality's pretty much like his except she's smarter, as most of the Master wives are), now serving on co-op boards on Park Avenue obsessing about whether they can donate as much as the other families to the private school. I live in New York and can't relate to it at all. There is one Master who has ties to the more artistic sides of the city, but he still can't really bring it to life. Often I just felt like I was hearing a lot of lecturing on history that was shorthand for character, so the characters themselves didn't really come to life. I know that's part of the trade-off of this story structure--characters are made to be summed up by their actions. But I was still left feeling like the book has a whole didn't have much personality, which is the opposite of what I think about New York. Like, where were the nuts?
New York concentrated mostly on one family, the Masters, which was a bit like if the book London had been dominated by the Bull family. Sure the wealthy members of the 400 are a part of New York's history, but they're not always the most interesting. By contrast the other families seemed to just kind of show up on cue to demonstrate the ethnic type (the Irish family spins their drunk father into a gentleman after making money with Tammany Hall in the 19th century, the Italian family sacrifices all for the "special" son while eating good food in the early 20th century, the smart Jewish girl spends the sabbath with her family in Brooklyn in the 50s etc.) And in the end we're back with the Master family (married to the Irish family, but her personality's pretty much like his except she's smarter, as most of the Master wives are), now serving on co-op boards on Park Avenue obsessing about whether they can donate as much as the other families to the private school. I live in New York and can't relate to it at all. There is one Master who has ties to the more artistic sides of the city, but he still can't really bring it to life. Often I just felt like I was hearing a lot of lecturing on history that was shorthand for character, so the characters themselves didn't really come to life. I know that's part of the trade-off of this story structure--characters are made to be summed up by their actions. But I was still left feeling like the book has a whole didn't have much personality, which is the opposite of what I think about New York. Like, where were the nuts?