New York [Paperback]

I have read and loved all of Edward Rutherfurd's books (starting with Sarum, 20 years ago). "New York" is just as good as any of them. Rutherfurd takes us on a 350 year ride through New York's history, from the 1600s to the present day. The fictional characters are well-developed and interesting and we follow them through multiple generations alongside all of the major events in New York's history. New Amsterdam, the Dutch, the War of Independence, Tammany Hall, the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, through to the inevitable and tragic conclusion at the World Trade Center.

With Rutherfurd's books it feels more like you're living through the history than reading a history book. There are many enjoyable storylines involving the fictional families, with the historical events as a backdrop, and several of them incorporate real characters from history. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Churchill's family, Boss Tweed, and many others, are all here.

At school I thought history was a boring subject. But I found it hard to put this book down, and now that I am finished I will really miss my daily excursions into New York.

I make no secret writing this review that I am a fan of Edward Rutherfurd having read nearly all his books to date, starting with London. To those not familiar with Edward Rutherfurd's books he has a very clear and repeated method in writing huge fictional histories of countries or areas. He does this by following the family trees of several families with a backdrop of the history of a particular place, and putting them on the periphery of those historic events. Whilst it may sound a little contrived, for me the method works really well and you end up with a knowledge of the history of a place without reading a text book. Generally this ends up as a series of stories (about 50 pages each) describing something that happened in one generation, and then the next chapter is a story affecting the next generation and any loose ends are tied up.

New York follows this same method starting with the Dutch settlers in New York, going through the War for Independence, the Civil War, the Depression, racism and most recently terrorism. From this perspective if you are new to Edward Rutherfurd's books I would definitely recommend this as a good book to start with.

For those who have read Rutherfurd's books, however, there are some subtle differences in the way this has been written. Firstly rather than following lots of families in parallel Rutherfurd has chosen to focus on just one (the Masters and their predecessors the van Dycks) and there's no doubt the characters in this book are less strong than in the others. Certainly families come and go and there is not the continuity from other books. For me (and I note a lot of the reviews disagree with this) I don't think this detracts from the book at all - New York is much more about the history of the city than the history of the families, and if anything I would compare it to London far more than the other books Rutherfurd has written. Given how much migration has happened both to and from New York over the pass 200 years I think anything else would not have felt realistic.

Secondly the chapters are much shorter... whereas previously each chapter would take in the whole event this time there may be lots of short stories making up a big one (certainly this was true re the chapters about the War of Independence). I think part of this is because the history of New York is so much shorter in time than the other books by Rutherfurd (with the exception of the second Dublin book I guess)

Having previously felt that none of the Edward Rutherfurd books have been as good as London, I think this one most certainly is.

One curious footnote... I read somewhere that this book was started a long time ago (about the time of London) but got shelved until now... it would be interesting to know if the similarity in the books' styles are due to them being written at a similar time or whether it's more a reflection on writing about a big city.

I look forward to what Rutherfurd writes about next.

I could not wait to get my hands on this book. The cover alone pulled me in. I started it exactly two weeks ago and just finished it in the early hours of this morning, literally with baited breath to see if the characters would escape the atrocities of 9/11. I have been savoring this book every night, and I was very sad to end it. It was as if I were saying goodbye to some well loved friends.

This book tells the story of New York through the eyes of a family, down the centuries. I love how the author makes descendants of well loved characters pop up again and again through the years. Even the wampum belt... This book was fantastic.