Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    New York: The Novel
    Unavailable
    New York: The Novel
    Unavailable
    New York: The Novel
    Audiobook (abridged)9 hours

    New York: The Novel

    Written by Edward Rutherfurd

    Narrated by Mark Bramhall

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The bestselling master of historical fiction weaves a grand, sweeping drama of New York from the city's founding to the present day.
    Rutherfurd celebrates America's greatest city in a rich, engrossing saga that showcases his extraordinary ability to combine impeccable historical research and storytelling flair. As in his earlier, bestselling novels, he illuminates cultural, social, and political upheavals through the lives of a remarkably diverse set of families.
    As he recounts the intertwining fates of characters rich and poor, black and white, native born and immigrant, Rutherfurd brings to life the momentous events that shaped New York and America: the Revolutionary War, the emergence of the city as a great trading and financial center, the excesses of the Gilded Age, the explosion of immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the trials of World War II, the near-demise of New York in the 1970s and its roaring rebirth in the '90s, and the attacks on the World Trade Center. Sprinkled throughout are captivating cameo appearances by historical figures ranging from George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Babe Ruth.
    New York is the book that millions of Rutherfurd's American fans have been waiting for. A brilliant mix of romance, war, family drama, and personal triumphs, it gloriously captures the search for freedom and prosperity at the heart of our nation's history.

    From the Hardcover edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateNov 10, 2009
    ISBN9780739382882
    Unavailable
    New York: The Novel
    Author

    Edward Rutherfurd

    Edward Rutherfurd nació en Salisbury, Inglaterra. Se diplomó en historia y literatura por Cambridge. Es el autor de Sarum, El bosque, Londres, París, Nueva York, Rusia, Rebeldes de Irlanda, Príncipes de Irlanda y China. En todas sus novelas Rutherfurd nos ofrece una rica panorámica de las ciudades más atractivas del mundo a través de personajes ficticios y reales que se ponen al servicio de una investigación minuciosa en lo que ya se ha convertido el sello particular de autor.

    Related to New York

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Apr 15, 2021

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      Goodbye To The Gilded Age

      Feb 15, 2024

      Goodbye To The Gilded Age
      2 min read

    • Article

      Defaced!

      Nov 4, 2022

      From the radicals of the 19th and early 20th century, like Thomas Spence and the Suffragettes, to current artists and activists, such as Aida Wilde and Hilary Powell, the works on display in the Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest exhibition show how m

      3 min read

    • Article

      Behind The Fake News

      Dec 27, 2019

      Behind The Fake News
      7 min read

    • Article

      What Would Be Worse

      Mar 1, 2019

      What Would Be Worse
      3 min read

    • Article

      'Greater Gotham' Traces New York's Transformation Into Capital of the Western World

      Oct 31, 2017

      In this big new book, author Mike Wallace posits that 1898 to 1919 were the years in which New York entered the modern era.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Postcards From Suburbia

      Dec 22, 2022

      Postcards From Suburbia
      9 min read

    • Article

      A Village in the Third Reich

      May 4, 2022

      Elliott & Thompson £25 Take a small English country town – Sherborne, say, or Kendal – picture-postcard cute and surrounded by beautiful landscape. Then imagine it after a defeat in war, a sixth of its men dead, chaos in the capital, hyper-inflation

      3 min read

    • Article

      Rival Bonds

      Dec 24, 2019

      Rival Bonds
      7 min read

    • Article

      Must See, Must Read

      Aug 31, 2021

      Must See, Must Read
      11 min read

    • Article

      Reviews

      Oct 8, 2020

      Reviews
      6 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Jun 10, 2021

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Feb 16, 2023

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      Welcome October 2020

      Sep 3, 2020

      Welcome October 2020
      1 min read

    • Article

      Nonfiction

      Sep 4, 2020

      Stanton, known for his iconic Humans of New York, now turns an eye toward the rest of the world, spanning 40 countries from Moscow to Medellín, with profound interviews and signature stunning photography. Move over Theranos, there’s a new fallen uni

      1 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Sep 2, 2021

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      TV, FILM & RADIO

      Sep 29, 2022

      TV, FILM & RADIO
      5 min read

    • Article

      Q&A

      Sep 30, 2021

      Minette Walters is one of the world’s bestselling crime writers and has sold 25 million copies of her books around the globe. She has won the CWA John Creasey Award and two CWA Gold Daggers, as well as the Edgar Allen Poe Award in the US. She lives i

      2 min read

    • Article

      Recent Books On Russia

      Sep 11, 2022

      As the title suggests, KILLER IN THE KREMLIN (Bantam) doesn’t beat about the bush. Award-winning UK war journalist John Sweeney leans on decades of his own experience and first-hand reporting, including in Ukraine, writing in easy, matey style – “We

      1 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Oct 29, 2020

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      Sing As We Go Britain Between The Wars

      Nov 15, 2023

      ‘Heffer has been chronicling our island story, since the accession of Queen Victoria, for years,’ wrote A.N. Wilson, a fellow historian of the period, in the Critic. ‘It is hard to imagine anyone better qualified to tell the story of the 1920s and 19

      1 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Oct 1, 2020

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      BOOKS & PODCASTS

      Jul 7, 2022

      BOOKS & PODCASTS
      2 min read

    • Article

      An In-depth Look Into History Of American Presidents

      Oct 4, 2020

      HISTORY Africa (DStv 186) takes viewers behind the scenes of US presidential history, secrets and rivalries in the build-up to what will be one of the most polarised US elections to date. HISTORY showcases the legacies of these iconic commanders-in-c

      2 min read

    Reviews for New York

    4/5

    552 ratings51 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This is one of my all-time favorites. One of those books you really don't want to end! If you live in New York or have ever visited New York, this is a must read!
    • 4/5
      Accurately described as a sweeping saga - I learnt much about New York history through the stories of several families over their generations.
    • 4/5
      3.5 starsThis is a novel that follows multiple characters through 400+ years in New York City. Primarily, we follow the same family(ies) through the generations. Starting in the 17th century with a Dutch family (and we also follow African Americans, Irish, Italians…), we follow from grandparent to grandchild (for the most part) and we see the characters through colonization, slavery, the Civil War, Tammany Hall, The Triangle Factory fire, the Depression, up to and including 9/11.I listened to the audio, and for me, audios narrated by a male voice aren’t always exciting for me; add to that, the length of this one (I also tend to have trouble with very long audios), and I was pleasantly surprised. I waffled between rating this 3 stars (ok) and 3.5 (good), as there were parts where I lost interest. I think I rated “Sarum” 3 stars, and though it was a number of years ago, I do think I preferred “New York”. In some ways, with the different characters (though all family), it felt a bit like short stories – some situations and characters I found more interesting than others. It did end on a strong (but very difficult) note with 9/11.
    • 4/5
      “Charlie shrugged. ‘Maybe I'm just being a novelist.’ Novelists liked to imagine the interconnectedness of things -- as though all the people in the big city were part of some great organism, their lives intertwined.” — Edward Rutherfurd, “New York”Edward Rutherfurd gets personal twice in his 2009 novel “New York,” and the lines above mark the second time. Commenting on one of his characters he is also commenting on himself and on what he is attempting to do in this novel and all the others he has written: to imagine the interconnectedness of things — as though all the people in the big city were part of some great organism, their lives intertwined.He succeeds admirably, even more so than he did in an earlier Rutherfurd novel I read, “London.” The reason may be simply that New York City has a much shorter history than does London. In his novels he follows a few fictional families through the entire history of a city, country or region, conveying important details of history while displaying how key events impact his characters and then showing how these characters impact the lives of descendants who will not remember them. That task can be daunting in a place with as long a history as London. New York, however, has been around just a few hundred years, and so some of his characters can stay around for several chapters in some cases, and readers can follow more closely as one family member passes the baton to the next generation.Rutherfurd's main characters are part of the Master family, some of whom lived in the city when it was still called New Amsterdam at the time of Peter Stuyvesant. The family business prospers, and the Masters become part of the New York elite. They witness the Revolution, the impact of slavery on the city, the Civil War, major fires and the blizzard of 1888, the arrival of large numbers of immigrants, the Great Depression and, eventually, the terrorist attack on the twin towers. The author mixes in families representing different groups, including blacks, Irish, Jews and Puerto Ricans. In a sense, Rutherfurd demonstrates that the history of New York City is also the history of the United States.The author errs here and there in his massive novel. At one point, for example, he writes that "General Grant had just smashed the Confederates at Gettysburg." Grant was attacking Vicksburg at the time of the Battle of Gettysburg. Later the British author rites of a family going to the beach for a few days, saying it "was one of the best holidays they'd had in years." Americans normally refer to such days away from home as vacations, not holidays.This novel proves totally absorbing, demonstrating as much as any novel can the "interconnectedness of things."And as for the other time Rutherfurd gets personal. He pokes fun at himself when he has one of his characters say about another, "Of course ... he was never a gentleman. He even wrote historical novels."
    • 5/5
      This books is a wonderful example of a good historical novel. The stories for each generation were linked well, but not too obviously. I found Rose's story a little laboured, but apart from that I was completely transfixed by the descriptions of New York through the centuries and the families' storied being told.
    • 3/5
      Well, there's around two weeks of my life when I could have been reading other books that I won't get back, but I FINISHED A BOOK BY EDWARD RUTHERFORD!
    • 5/5
      As always, Edward Rutherfurd's books are seeped in fact, fantastic fiction, and are as utterly believable as fiction. Loved it. Loved recognising all the areas and buildings described in the book. The characters were perfectly described - loveable and villainous at the same time.
    • 5/5
      I love when a novel drags you into a character's drama in the first two pages! I have a real affinity for the way Rutherfurd ties people and families together over the generations. It has a very buddist feel to me - that we are all connected throughout time. Cried with fear for these characters and the thousands of New Yorkers like them during the 2001 chapter. I love when a book evokes that kind of deep emotion.
    • 4/5
      This is my first time reading this author and I was thoroughly impressed. His style in which in combined his story with actual historic events was impressive and it kept the story moving. Following the families throughout the generations provided an outlook on how some things are today. I was concerned that the story wouldn't be developed as much as it was but Edward has a great respect for detail. His writing style is one that I have to say is my favorite. When placing a story around historical facts there has to be detailed information. I definitely can't wait to read another of his books.
    • 5/5
      If you like Michener, you will also like Rutherfurd's [New York: The Novel]. The saga begins in the early 1600's with the settling of New York and ends with the 911 tragedy. It drags a bit during the Revolution, but not enough to cause the reader to wonder if they should stop reading the book! I will other books by this author.
    • 3/5
      I both loved this book and didn't love this book at the exact same time. The process of reading it was a fascinating relationship. I would become frustrated with the choppiness of the plot or the similarity of the point of view characters and set it aside and then be inexplicably drawn back and unable to put it down for several hours.Other reviewers have pointed out the lack of diversity in the characters (not bringing in Jewish characters until the 1950s, completely dropping the African-American storyline in the 1860s and never picking up the thread again, token Latino character for about a chapter who is then for all intents and purposes ignored, etc.), but I think that the major character problem is that toward the end everything got very rushed and I didn't get to know the characters well at all. I don't know why this is the case. I feel I got to know the earlier characters quite well. I understood why Mrs. Van Dyke acted the way she did; I rooted for Abigail Master; I felt genuine tension for Hudson and his family; I was legitimately sad when Anna Caruso died, but by the time the 30s rolled around we were speeding through decades so fast I didn't have time to understand the character's motives. It was also sad to see interesting periods of New York's history completely brushed over. I can understand the brush-off of Five Points, because immigrant stories in that time and the draft riots do get discussion, but in the 20th century? After we realize the Masters are going to be okay, we skip to the mid-50s. No depression? No WWII? The turbulence of the 60s happens off screen, and the 70s (a seriously fascinating time in NYC's history as far as I'm concerned) get about a chapter that sums up things up: there's a killer, there's a blackout, time for the 90s. I realize there's a lot of ground to cover and very interesting things in the previous centuries were also skipped, but I think the lack of significant character development during the last quarter of the book exacerbates this problem.I personally would have preferred that this book would have ended with the "Towers" chapter. While, yes, that would have been a cliche choice, the theme of the novel seemed to be everything is a cycle and the loss of the wampum belt seems to finalize the story which begins with it's delivery. Also, I personally found the epilogue a little preachy (not because of the "Spirit of New York" discussion, but the whole bit about people not really having ADD and kids today, etc). Despite -all- of this, I really enjoyed this novel and I'm glad that I read it. The first 3/4 of the book is an engrossing look into the lives of an interesting family and the world around them.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed listening to this book because it gave a clear picture of the history of New York told through the stories of several families. The story begins with a few Dutch and English families and continues to trace their descendents down to and including the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial. It was rather easy to follow along from generation to generation and to see how these fictional families carried on traditions or family businesses. This book made learning about the history of New York interesting. I have read other books about the histories of cities, and they were not nearly as interesting as this. Part of this is due to the fact that this was historical fiction. Part of it is due to it being based on a cultural perspective rather than an physical or architectural perspective. Most of all though, I think it is due to the fact that New York has such an interesting history.
    • 5/5
      Other historical novels take a snippet of time and concentrate on that period. Rutherfurd takes us back to the beginning of American History and when I say back, I mean waaaay back. Written as a novel it brings history to life in a way that is not boring at all and makes me want more of the same.
    • 2/5
      The book is good but this is an abridged copy of this book and they do not mark it as such on the app.
    • 5/5
      If you like Michener, you will also like Rutherfurd's [New York: The Novel]. The saga begins in the early 1600's with the settling of New York and ends with the 911 tragedy. It drags a bit during the Revolution, but not enough to cause the reader to wonder if they should stop reading the book! I will other books by this author.
    • 5/5
      Listened to it on Audible Audio. This was really a great listen. Very interesting. Spanned several generations of New York families. Great history lesson on the beginning of New York to present day told as a fictional depiction through a generational family. There was a point towards the end that started to be very depressing. Then the anticipation of the worse events for New York. I actually had to turn it off and regroup emotionally before completing the book. The only negative I have is that jumping into the next generation of family members, I felt like I wasn't ready for the end of the characters. The ending tied up and united the original families interesting enough to say I loved the book and will read another by this author.  
    • 5/5
      This is a great read if you like a historical,generational,epic! The author really got the details and facts researched! At times,you almost feel transplanted to the place and time he writes of.This is a dense read.It is not a quick read.But it is a most worthwhile way to spend time!
    • 5/5
      New York, The Novel is an excellent read. Rutherfurd follows generations of several families from the Dutch period all the way up to the tragic events of 911. I admire Rutherfurd’s handling of the numerous characters in the book, which spans 350 years. Despite the brevity of our time with each generation, we get to know the characters fairly well before we move on to their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. I often think that novels such as this would do a better job of giving s sense of history to young students than the typical textbooks we employ within our school system. Bravo to Edward Rutherfurd on a job well done!
    • 4/5
      Michener-like in its grand scale, but it becomes very personal too. Fun, interesting facts about NYC: One discovers that there actually was a wall along side Wall Street at one time, for example. For a 860-page book, it moves very quickly.
    • 4/5
      read-alike for Michener, Follet's Fall of Giants
    • 1/5
      I just don't think Edward Rutherfurd is for me. I do love historical fiction but I don't like that one novel captures two hundred years. Even when it follows a few families, I can't connect to characters when they are only around for a few chapters, at most.
    • 4/5
      It took me half a year to finish this book, though only because the episodic, time and character jumping nature of it lent itself to being read in chunks of a few chapters at a time instead of all the way through; I read many other books during the breaks while reading this. However, this was a solid epic novel. Rutherfurd's prose is clean and easy to read, his characters are believable, and the repeated coincidence of descendants of characters from hundreds of pages earlier meeting each other is only a minor distraction. Fun really. If you are coming to this book for straight ahead history, go read a monograph, though it is obvious the author did plenty of research and got his facts straight. That said, if you are a reader of fiction and are interested in the history of New York, just not enough to go read a history book, I think you might enjoy this.
    • 4/5
      As a new New Yorker, I found this book to be quite fascinating. I'm not usually much for historical fiction, but it gave me a perspective on the city that I didn't have before. I'm going to seek out his other books to see if I enjoy them just as much.

      That being said, it felt a little thin on the 20th Century end of the novel. Perhaps because so much time was spent on the 17th & 18th centuries there wasn't enough time to delve into the last 50-75 years, but certainly there wasn't the same level of detail as there was in the first half of the novel.
    • 5/5
      I grew up in northern New Jersey, so the history of New York is fascinating to me. Edward Rutherfurd tells the story of people living in the city, starting in the 17th century when the settlement was called New Amsterdam and was governed by Peter Styverson and ending in the 21st century when Rudy Giuliani was mayor. The novel focuses on the Master family, but also looks at other families whose lives were intertwined with the Masters. I thought Rutherfurd did an excellent job of mixing history with fiction.When I lived in the New York area, I went to the city often. I loved the museums, the theater scene from the small groups in store front theaters to the Broadway shows, and I went to countless concerts in Central Park and at the Fillmore East. I spent hours in the libraries, especially the main branch on Fifth Ave and the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. But despite loving the city I didn't know much about its history. I had no idea about the early connection to the slave trade, Spanish Harlem was just a song to me, and I knew next to nothing about the financial district, especially during the years leading up to the depression. New York covered those aspects of the city in a way that held my attention. I loved the book for that.I saw in some of the other reviews complaints that Rutherfurd did not spend time with the African American families living in the twentieth century. He did cover their experience, especially during the pre civil war years, but those families were only mentioned briefly during modern times. I don't agree with that criticism. Rutherfurd chose to write a story about the Master family and if he left their story for too long the plot would have lost its continuity. He covered the Italians and the Irish during the years when those nationalities were the bulk of the immigrants. The African Americans were in the city from early on, just as the English were. Another novel about their experience in New York would be equally fascinating, but this novel was primarily about the English experience. Perhaps he could have spent more time with the Puerto Ricans families, given their importance to modern New York, but he did touch on that experience and I learned a good deal. He discussed the Lenape Native Americans, but as with many of the other groups that section was from the point of view of the European (Dutch) settlers.My chief complaint comes down to a single word. Here's the line from late in the book:He'd been fortunate to get a low number in the lottery and avoided the draft.The word I object to is low. Rutherfurd was talking about the 1970s here and anyone who lived through that period knows that a low number meant you were going to war, not the other way around. The problem with this mistake is it stops the reader who knows its wrong and casts doubt on the accuracy of the rest of the book. But I'm still giving this book a five star rating. Overall, I loved it.Steve Lindahl - author of Motherless Soul and White Horse Regressions
    • 3/5
      Well done tale of development of New York from its earliest days, when Indians occupied the land, and trappers traded with them. Follows family lines through American Revolution thro Civil war and forward. Last part of the book was in more modern times, and not as interesting. By that times all the characters lived relatively affluent lives, and I missed the struggles of making it in the new world. Long book, but interesting read (at least the first two thirds of the book.)
    • 3/5
      History and more history. Only my New York state education kept me going.
      Some parts really good and others dragged. I liked the England setting better.
    • 4/5
      God, this was a masterpiece. Rutherfurd wove hundreds of years together so seamlessly, it's a thing of beauty. I had wanted to read this as I had originally thought it was a non-fiction historical account of the birth of New York City, but now I feel like it was even better as a fictionalization. Everything did have that neatly resolved feeling at the very end, and I did feel a little cheated that almost everyone escaped the terrorist attack on World Trade, as that was not the case for many, but it wasn't enough to knock it down a star. I grew up bicoastal, and I consider New York to be my second home, so even just reading about the towers being hit was still a very emotional and visceral experience for me. This was brilliant, I became attached to the characters, and could clearly see in my mind's eye New York in all its forms throughout the years as it rose and progressed. Absolutely brilliant.
    • 5/5
      "New York" is a well researched, wonderful inter-generational saga that spans several centuries, from the mid 1600’s until 2011. It traces the generations of several families through feast and famine, prosperity and poverty, hope and despair. Many of the characters develop and reconnect seamlessly and realistically, as time goes by.The amazing history of New York is told wondrously in this novel, while adhering to the facts perfectly, albeit using a mixture of real and fictional characters. Several families meet again and again, generation after generation, notably the Masters and O’Donnells, the Kellers and the Carusos, even though their relationship and past connections to each other often remains unknown to all, but the reader.Occasionally, the author creates an “aha” moment for the reader, when he introduces a little known fact and it becomes a painless, teaching moment, like how a street or a river got a name, or who founded a certain part of New York, or who saved the city from a stock market crash. The author’s subtle presentation of facts, important incidents and details, is never burdensome or tedious. The weaving together of both real characters (Tammany, J. P. Morgan, Roosevelt, Koch, Lincoln, Washington, Franklin, Douglas, Kennedy, King, to name just a few that appear throughout the narrative), and fictional characters is never contrived. It isn’t like the history books that can bore you to death with facts, and yet, it is filled with all of the necessary accurate information to create a clear picture of New York’s evolution and rise to the megalopolis it is today.New York’s foundation is illuminated with such clarity and portrayed with such vigor, that the narrative simply flies by with lively images of life there. The Indians, the privateers, the Dutch, the English, the Irish, the financiers, the soldiers, the gangs, all play a role in the account and all fit in seamlessly, so the reader really understands how New York and its environs came to be and comes to understand all of the people who populated the area in the beginning- from the mid 1600’s onward- and the kind of courage needed to survive as New York City and America grew.The reader of this audio is one of the best. He does a fabulous job as he is able to throw his voice into each character with authentic accents and precise emotion to fit the moment. He relates the brutality and difficult history of so many things like slavery, the Revolution, the Civil war, the suffrage movement, prohibition, the Civil Rights movement, the Depression, the rise and fall of the stock market, the rise of terrorism with the World Trade Center bombing and its eventual collapse, all with perfect and appropriate inflection, feeling and accent.I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to painlessly learn the history of New York and even the United States, since New York was such a major part of its development, while having the added pleasure of reading a wonderful piece of historic fiction that will be memorable and not easily forgotten.
    • 4/5
      My first Rutherfurd work was Sarum, his novel telling the story of the history of England by focusing on five lineages down the centuries in the area around Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral. The style wasn’t anything special, even clunky at times, and with almost 9,000 years of history to cover, few characters ever felt fleshed out. It was a novel more broad than deep; it was historical fiction, almost more dramatized history text than stories with history as a backdrop. All of that can also be said of New York: the Novel which tries to encapsulate about 350 years of the history of New York City, mostly by following one family of English descent, the Masters, who early on married into one of the founding Dutch families, but as with Sarum, the effect is cumulative, and I found myself completely engaged through its 860 pages.I’m a native New Yorker, and as such so much of this book in the very beginning was irresistible. The book starts in 1664 when the population of New York City (New Amsterdam then) was only 1,500 people. I had a blast seeing all the Dutch Colonial origins of the name places around my city, some of which I knew (Wall Street, Canal Street, Harlem, Broadway, Manna hata, Bronck's land) and some not (Jonkers, Bouwerie, Pearl Street). The book, although focused on the Masters, also includes cameos by such historical figures as Peter Stuyvesant, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, J. P. Morgan, Enrico Caruso. The chapters are almost more connected short stories than one united narrative with decades sometimes passing between them. I found among the most striking the early chapters, “New York” and “New Amsterdam” (Margarethe de Groot featured there was among the strongest female characters in the book), “The Patriot” and “Vanessa” which skillfully depicted the growing divide between the colonies and Mother country, “Draft” about the 1863 Draft Riots, “Old England” where an Irish family reinvents its past.Some reviewers complain the portrait of New York City isn’t diverse enough. I think that’s a casualty of Rutherford’s formula of trying to follow the history of the city through just a few families from the beginning, and particularly putting such emphasis on the Masters. I do feel Sarum did better in interweaving the various lineages over the centuries. Early in New York there was a thread about a family of African Americans. One early chapter was even written first person from the point of view of a slave in that family, but the African American story in the novel petered out and disappears after the Civil War. Irish and German immigrants don't come into the novel until after a good third of it has passed and Italians and Jews not until well after the half-way mark. Even though Rutherfurd mentions that there had been Jewish families in the city from the days of the Dutch, the novel doesn’t really deal with Jewish life in the city before the 1950s. I felt Rutherfurd missed an opportunity not making one such family a thread in his tapestry from the beginning, though I imagine he worried that might make things too unwieldy. He could have kept the Native American thread going too. Not many of the original Lenape are still here, that's true, but until recently there was a community of Mohawks in Brooklyn for over a century; a lot of Mohawks were involved in building our skyscrapers. No Asians are even mentioned until very late in the novel--there's nothing here about Chinatown at all. Centering the narrative on one family isn’t the best way to view such a dynamic, changing city. So many New Yorkers came from somewhere else, and few of us have roots that go deep: my father was born in Baltimore, Maryland, where his family had been for ages, my mother in rural Puerto Rico. My family’s own intersection with the city would only cover the last 150 pages of this multigenerational saga. It’s in the last chapters from the 1970s on where I can speak from personal experience I found weakest, that I thought rushed and where parts didn’t ring true. It’s a small thing, but he got wrong the details about the top three public high schools students could enter through competitive examination. Hunter high school would have still been an all girls school at the time his character Juan Campos could have attended. The three magnet public high schools in the sixties and beyond a boy could attend were Stuyvesant, Bronx Science--and Brooklyn Tech, not Hunter. I went to one of those schools--much later than Rutherford’s character would have, but no I can’t imagine Puerto Ricans being discouraged from trying or attending the way Rutherfurd presented it--not by that time anyway. There was nothing about the homeless problem that hit New York City in the 80s that was such a shock to me when I first saw it in my youth. (I recently read New York City is home to 14 percent of the national homeless population.) Nothing about how AIDs hit the vibrant gay community in New York (Gays and lesbians are almost invisible in this massive novel. There's just a brief mention in one of the last chapters of someone in one of the families being gay and of the Stonewall riot.) And Rutherford had only this to say about the Dinkins years: “Mayor Koch had been succeeded by Mayor Dinkins who, as an African American, had been perceived as more sympathetic to the troubles of Harlem and the other deprived areas.” Nothing about the Crown Heights riot that took place during those years that were a watershed for the city. Rutherford devotes a chapter to the 1977 blackouts, but not one line about what was, I think, as much a shock to New Yorkers. Mind you, it’s still a bitter, still a controversial event; I realize that. Dealing with it and its repercussions in New York City would have taken guts. But what else is fiction for? There are so many sides, so many strands to New York I pity anyone trying to tell our story. There was a lot in the book (including African American aspects) of the history of the city I never knew, so even a native like me felt I learned a lot. And a lot Rutherfurd got so very right. I couldn’t help smiling when John Master tells off a Thomas Jefferson determined to move the capital that, “New York is the true capital of America. Every New Yorker knows it, and by God we always will.” What proud New Yorker would disagree? In his introduction Rutherfurd called New York “a much-loved city.” His affection and respect for my city definitely came through.
    • 3/5
      Interesting but I know most of the story. Written like a monograph or primer for sixth graders. Too puerile yet something is compelling me to continue reading.