On the other hand, there’s a lot of territory to cover in this 860-page novel, so it’s also easy to understand why an author might have to be picky and choosy about what to include and what to leave out. Or that Mary O’Donnell would go from being a maid in the Masters’ house to being one of Hetty Master’s best friends in society. The longtime tension between the Irish Catholics and native-born New Yorkers is downplayed, and it seemed a little odd to me that someone like Sean O’Donnell wouldn’t have run into at least some prejudice on his way up out of the Five Points. I realize there’s a lot to cover in a novel of this scope, but some mention of these defining moments of New York history would have been nice.

The Great Fire of 1835 is ignored, as are the (often confusing) politics of Tammany Hall, the Astor Place riots, the amalgamation of the Boroughs, the General Slocum disaster in 1904, or the building of the subways. The focus of the novel is on the Revolution and Civil War, particularly the Draft Riots of 1863, and the financial panic of the turn of the last century. On the other, I really wish that Rutherfurd had covered Manhattan history during the time it was owned by the Dutch. On one hand, it’s a lot easier to keep track of the generations through the years, and there’s a lot more room for character development. There are good and bad things about focusing on such a (relatively) short period of history. His previous two books covered all of English history, from prehistory to the present New York only covers about 350 years.

New York is the third of Rutherfurd’s books I’ve read, after Sarum and London. The novel opens in 1664, when New Amsterdam is bought from the Dutch by the English and becomes New York, and ends in the summer of 2009.

Covering nearly 350 years of New York, and by extension American history, this book is the story of about a half a dozen families living in the city at various points throughout its history: the Dutch van Dycks, English Masters, Irish O’Donnells, German Kellers, southern Italian Carusos, Jewish Adlers, and the descendants of the slave Quash, who are given the last name River. New York: The Novel is an ambitious book.

Rutherfurd new york review