By Pete Hamill
For Fun
Source Library
Synopsis
Early in the eighteenth century Cormac is young Irish man whose mother and father are killed by an English Earl. Vowing to seek vengeance, Cormac follows the Earl to America. Befriending and saving the life of a black slave named Kongo, Cormac is gifted with eternal life and lives to see the rise of New York.
General thoughts
The first two hundred pages were absolutely thrilling! I was swept away in this amazing story and totally enthralled, then Cormac gets to New York and gets the gift of eternal life. (no, he's not a vampire) For three hundred pages the author seems to have forgotten he was writing a fiction book. The author is from New York and I know he wanted to capture the history of the city but it was done really poorly and I was so bored it took me forever to get through Forever. Ha ha! Enjoy the pun. It didn't make me have a love or even respect for New York so if that's what the author was going for I wasn't impressed. Any who, by the time he got back to the story I'd lost interest and just flipped pages trying to finish the dang thing. Even when Cormac lives though 9\11 I was completely emotionless. There was one thing I liked and it is this: for Cormac to live forever he had to stay on the Isle of Manhattan and truly live. Live. And anytime that Cormac stopped learning or immersing himself in life he could feel his brain turning to sludge. I did like that.
Characters
Cormac was likable enough and I enjoyed his progression...when the author was talking about him! Obviously, as this book was just over six hundred pages and covers the span of almost three hundred years, there are a lot of characters and truthfully none of them really impressed me so I won't bore you by listing them. As for the "character" of New York...like I said before, I wasn't impressed. I hoped with all that long boring history the author could have captured my interest and made me appreciate New York and it's people but it didn't.
Would I recommend it?
If it was the last book in the world and you had nothing but time then, sure, why not? Or, I guess if you are a New Yorker and love your city and wanted to know more about its history I might recommend it but I bet there's better books out there to choose from.
Hi, Jenny. I just changed my Goodreads challenge from 75 to 100 yesterday. I figured that once the fall semester starts up I'd probably be back to read 2 or 3 per week, so that would probably be a good number. LOL
ReplyDeleteUgg! This is one of my pet peeves. You know, when authors are so enchanted with their research that they feel the need to put in every single little detail about the history. It can totally ruin an otherwise engaging story. Sorry this one went thataway.
ReplyDeleteJessica, I know! It's so annoying!
ReplyDelete+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteIf it was the last book in the world and you had nothing but time then, sure, why not?
LOL! That's nearly the same "recommendation" I gave for a teen novel with the title Mates, Dates and Inflatable Bras.
And even then, I said, you might not want to read it and give it the dignity of being the last book you ever read. ;-)
But I hope this one is not that bad!
Enbrethiliel, I'm glad you enjoyed that. Great minds think alike.
ReplyDelete