New York
Summary (from the publisher): Edward Rutherfurd celebrates America's greatest city in a rich, engrossing saga, weaving together tales of families rich and poor, native-born and immigrant - a cast of fictional and true characters whose fates rise and fall and rise again with the city's fortunes. From this intimate perspective we see New York's humble beginnings as a tiny Indian fishing village, the arrival of Dutch and British merchants, the Revolutionary War, the emergence of the city as a great trading and financial center, the convulsions of the Civil War, 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 1990s, and the attack on the World Trade Center. A stirring mix of battle, romance, family struggles, and personal triumphs, New York: The Novel gloriously captures the search for freedom and opportunity at the heart of our nation's history.
Review: Spanning over three hundred years, this historical fiction novel is a saga of New York City from its early days as a Dutch fort in 1664 through the trauma of the 9/11 in 2001 and beyond. The storyline follows several families through the generations that represent the diversity of New York including Native Americans, Dutch, English, African American, Italian, Irish, and more. Through the characters' eyes, the city grows and expands and the reader is able to experience key historical events that shaped the history of the city including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the rise of trade, and more.
I loved the concept of tracking a city's history through the stories of several, frequently interconnected, families and this novel does a great job of covering most of the major highlights of New York's past while also representing a variety of family backgrounds. Yet including multiple generations was also my biggest complaint; just when I was most invested in a particular individual's story, the time period would shift ahead abruptly. This was a massive novel and it would have been impractical to make it yet longer, but I did not like the very abrupt transitions that left stories frequently unfinished. Yet ultimately this novel is about the overarching history of the city and the families as a whole and not about the fates of individual characters, so in that sense, the author's choice makes sense.
While an immense doorstopper of a book, this was an enjoyable novel that richly embodied the shifting, grand scale of the city through the centuries. In some ways this novel reads as a dramatized history text but it made a historical exploration of early American life in New York so much more enjoyable than just reading a history.
Stars: 4
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