Reviews

• Solid background research; Well done story

  A well researched novel set during the New York draft riots of 1863. There are flashbacks to the Irish famine of the 1840s which prompted a large influx of Irish into New York, including many of the novel's main characters. If you like the "historical" in historical fiction to be well done and accurate, put this book on your reading list. Its depictions of both the Irish potato famine and the 1863 riots are quite accurate. I was quite impressed by the depth of the author's research. The "fiction" part of historical fiction is likewise well done. The story drew me in quickly and kept my interest. It is a long novel, so I read it with frequent interruptions. But I always looked forwards to getting back to it. You may not like the attitudes expressed by some of the book's characters, but those attitudes are in tune with the times. Strongly recommended.

• Nasty, Brutish, and Long

  Welcome to Kevin Baker's New York. By 1863 the great metropolis had grown into a cruelly concentrated reflection of the greater nation, offering countless lives the tantalizing prospect of a lift from danger to hope, squalor to prosperity, and slavery to freedom. But 1863 was a singular time in the city's life, as in the country's, a time when the fragile fabric of civilization fell victim to a reckless, violent drive for freedom and survival. It's evident that Kevin Baker has a complicated relationship with New York. His main characters, by turns noble, desperate, resourceful, feckless, and downright evil, all share a seminal drive for survival that propel them through impossible traumas and betrayals. From Ruth, the Irish peasant girl who runs from starvation in her homeland and washes up on American shores, to her frightening co-hort and erstwhile mate Dangerous Johnny Dolan, to her great love the ex-slave Billy Dove, her sister-inlaw Deirdre, and the cynical journalist Herbert Willis Robinson, each soul has a relationship with the city that either saves or destroys. And in New York, survival is not always the province of the good. Yet through this scrim of ruthlessness the author's affection for the city still shines through. His style of writing, though often subdued and painful, somehow gives voice to the intense possibility of the place. The crucible for his characters' lives, the draft riots of 1863, crack New York wide open and unleash a torrent of horrific violence. Yet by novel's end, despite some of the tragic and unresolved circumstances of the main characters, there's a sense of purging and redemption. The war, the riots, and all the hardships that came before all teach something about the need to strive for good. Historically Baker seems on firm ground with his subject matter, though a lay person might wonder about the author's take on race and repression. In particular, to an uninformed mind the development of the relationship between Billy Dove, the ex-slave, and Ruth, the Irish refugee with a scary and violent boyfriend, seems florid and far-fetched, a bit like "Mandingo" written as Harlequin romance. During these passages Baker loses control, falling back on a style less assured and honest than that displayed througout the rest of the book. It's an uncomfortable passage to read--a little embarassing, like a wrong note passed off as a right one in an otherwise flawless concerto. Some of the book's peripheral stories (i.e. those outside the city's vise) are gripping. Ruth's almost random flight from her starving family's home, her journey through the hell of Ireland's starving countryside, the harrowing journey across the Atlantic in a typhus infested ship with the psychotic, near dead Johnny Dolan--these are some of the most powerful passages in the whole work. This reader has never come in such intimate contact with the carnage and horror of that time. Billy Dove's escape up the East Coast on a makeshift sailboat, pursued by slave traders and sharks, also show Baker at his page-turning best. This book is a labor of love, and love is a complicated thing. Baker brings to it effective writerly instincts, a strong sense of character, and an clear desire to make history live. If it's a long book, it needs to be so. Baker has much to say, and he says it well, leaving the reader enriched, informed, and thoroughly entertained.

• New York City seeths with unrest in the hot summer of 1863

  New York, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the land of refuge for Irish immigrants. Yes, the city was steeped in filth, buildings were shoddily constructed, and corruption was everywhere. But there were jobs to be had, and to Ruth Dove, whose experience of the potato famine in Ireland is described in the most gruesome fashion, it is a place where the sight of feral pigs roving the streets and eating garbage reminds her that food is plentiful. The book opens in the hot summer of 1863. The Civil War is in full swing. And President Lincoln has just called for a draft. It seems that the draft only applies to the Catholic working class immigrants though. That's because a man could buy his way out of the draft for $300, an exorbitant sum for most Irishmen who think that if the Union wins the war, the slaves will be freed and come north to take their jobs. They also hate the class structure that keeps them struggling while the Protestants control the city, and grow rich selling substandard merchandise to the army. The city seethes with unrest. Especially in the area in lower Manhattan known as Paradise Alley where the well-crafted cast of fictional characters have their own problems. There are the women. Ruth Dove is not only worried about her husband, a former slave, and their four mixed race children. She's also heard that Dangerous Johnny Dolan is back in town after 14 years. He's her former lover, a cruel criminal who saved her from starvation in Ireland, and constantly mistreated her, beating her bloody all the time and making her life with him in America a horror. Then there is Deirdre, Johnny Dolan's sister, whose husband is already fighting in the War. And Maddy, a prostitute whose lover is a writer for the New York Tribune. There are the men: Billy Dove, a former slave, who discovered that life as a freed man in New York is little better than slavery. For a short time, he and Ruth were happy in the Negro Seneca Village settlement until it was destroyed to create what is now Central Park. Then there is Tom O'Kane, Deirdre's husband, a former fire fighter. He's been wounded twice on the Civil War battlefields and has seen more than his share of death and destruction. There's Herbert Willis Robinson, the writer, who cares more about writing the story than about the safety of his woman. And then, larger than life is the character of Dangerous Johnny Dolan. Each of these characters narrate chapters and so I got to meet each one of them individually and understand their various points of view. This is a very human story here about love and death and social class and race relations and struggle and revenge. But this is only part of the tale as it is set against the backdrop of real historical events. The characters might be fictional. But the draft riots really did happen. Whole neighborhoods went up in flame. African Americans were tortured and hung. Policemen and soldiers were killed. People fleeing burning buildings were shot. And anyone who infuriated the raging mob was likely to die a horrible death. It was awful. Through the art of his fiction, the New York of 1863 came alive for me. I found it all fascinating reading. Highly recommended.

• Not a Story You'll Forget

  It's no exaggeration to say I've read at least a book a week since the age of eight, and twice that during retirement. It's also no exaggeration to cite this as within the top five. I bought it on my daughter's recommendation after reading (and loving) Dreamland, the first in Baker's trilogy Paradise Alley is part of. The story itself is compelling, but the writing--and the enormous amount of historical research--is above and beyond. One word of warning. Persevere! The first hundred or so pages seem slow, in this novel as well as in Dreamland, but you'll see how that was necessary to set such a stage and develop such characters, and you'll never regret hanging in there. Reading this during the coronavirus downtime is beautifully absorbing and also inspires strength.

• A grisly, gristly, atmospheric body blow of a novel

  It's difficult to imagine a New York City where large herds of pigs roam freely through the streets and kids play with toy boats in streams of blood and offal from the butcher. Kevin Baker has a gift for thrusting the reader directly into the center of a forgotten world and a largely lesser-known chapter in Civil War history in this grisly, gristly, atmospheric body blow of a novel. I sometimes feel that the category "historical fiction" is too broad. This is most assuredly historical fiction, but then again, many other very different types of books are also classed as "historical fiction" -- and don't get me wrong; I'm not knocking those, and many people like them -- but if your idea of historical fiction is a nice, sudsy, mostly tasteful bodice ripper with a dash of basic Wikipedian history thrown in for a sense of time and place, this is *not* the book for you. Aside from having seen and liked the movie "Gangs of New York," I had basic to little knowledge of the New York Draft Riots. Nor does the reader need any, because this book is one of the most experiential ones I have ever read: You are there. I've read many good books where the writer clearly knew the importance of a sense of place, but as far as atmosphere goes, aside from using a time machine, I have never seen atmosphere better done than it is in "Paradise Alley." And that's more than just a compliment to a good storyteller; it's a nod to a historical fiction writer who has clearly put in the elbow grease it really takes to effectively recreate another era -- from the scenes of the streets, to the products (and people) that are available for sale, to the food, to the dialogue. (There is a glossary at the end of the book, but I didn't see or read it until I found it at the end. I enjoyed trying to puzzle out the meanings of many words and phrases I didn't know as they continued to reappear throughout the book.) There are, of course, a number of real-life historical figures present in the book, as well as fleeting cameos by real-life gnarly dames like Gallus Mag and Sadie the Goat. Some readers have criticized the book's grossout factor, saying that the brutality, harshness and naked realism was simply "too much" in places, especially in the chapters dealing with the famine in Ireland. I can certainly see why people would say this; if you're not ready for it, it can be off-putting (and I wouldn't read this book while snacking or eating dinner). But I disagree that these elements are thrown in for shock value or are out of place. They are not without purpose, in my opinion, and some of the images won't leave my mind anytime soon. (There is a description of a barrow full of abandoned orphans likened to a nest of bewildered baby birds -- an unforgettable image.) While upsetting, and at times downright gross (images of cannibalism; gruesome illness; a knock-down-drag-out between a man and a dog, one of whom is going to be eaten), I feel it was necessary to recreate this particular experience, which is one that most of the modern Western world finds inconceivable, even with a good imagination, to set the stage for the fact that so many Irish immigrants had already been through this living nightmare before even setting foot on U.S. soil, where many would continue to struggle in poverty, hunger and squalor long after arriving -- setting the stage for societal and racial tensions that, while not justifiable, become at least believable in the context of the main plot of the novel, the movements and activities of the mob as seen by many different characters. I hesitated to give five stars for two main reasons. One, I did think the book became bogged down and bloated in a couple of places, particularly in the latter half. I believed the book tried to do too much in all that it tried to capture, and that in the interest of keeping a brisk pace in the plot, there was some fat that could have been trimmed and wouldn't have been missed. Two, the characters are very hit-and-miss. The most dynamic character may possibly be Deirdre, who visibly evolves throughout the course of the book and is in an entirely different mental space by the end. While not the most likable, the most sympathetic character may be Maddy, the hot-corn girl turned kept woman turned defiant slattern. I found the character of Ruth to be a bit under-drawn, especially considering she is one of the novel's leading voices. And the character of Johnny Dolan was in my opinion simply too evil, too vile, too physically disgusting, and too bloodthirsty to be very believable -- even with the author's attempts to show us why this foul boogeyman has become what he has become. Four-and-a-half-stars I would have gladly given, had that been an option. I had the stomach for it, and so I tremendously enjoyed the book. If you don't have the stomach for it, you might want to give it a pass.

Purchase links