Forever
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.8
(100)
Pete Hamill
A man arrives in Manhattan in 1740 and can live forever, if he remains on the island, in this acclaimed bestselling magical epic tale.“Straight from the fountain of epic adventure. . . . If you have recently stood in line for Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings, read Forever.” —Los Angeles Times“A swashbuckling, ribald tale told with flair and, sometimes, unbridled emotion. At the same time it is a serious look at what makes a city more than just bricks and mortar.”―Denver PostThrough the eyes of Cormac O’Connor—granted immortality if he never leaves the island of Manhattan—we watch New York grow from a tiny settlement on the tip of an untamed wilderness to the thriving metropolis of today. And through Cormac’s remarkable adventures in both love and war, we come to know the city’s buried secrets—the way it has been shaped by greed, race, and waves of immigration, by the unleashing of enormous human energies, and, above all, by hope.“New York grows from a village—with wolves stalking in forests—into a town and eventually a city, Cormac O’Connor plays a role in a slave revolt, the American Revolution, and the great fire of 1835. . . . O’Connor thinks ‘Not many people know anything about their own past and New Yorkers are most amnesiac of all.’ Forever should change that.” —USA Today“A vivid, gratifying, and ultimately uplifting tale about choosing life over death.” —Boston Globe
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More Details:
Author
Pete Hamill
Pages
604
Publisher
Hachette+ORM
Published Date
2011-05-01
ISBN
0316196258 9780316196253
Ratings
Google: 3.5
Community ReviewsSee all
"I can not say enough about this one right here. I never read fiction with such attention to detail of historic places. Living in NYC you know what I did went search and sure enough. And being of the Yoruba-Lucumi religion even more relatable. I loved this book beginning to end and hated that it ended and wished he had a second part."
Dalila Lala
"I wanted to give this book five stars. It's a really beautifully told history of New York City—necessarily incomplete, since it's also the story of one man. But I was fine with that. I always get annoyed when I get this big-picture perspective of things in a book, when it's one person's story. I think, Wait, how do you know what was happening way over there, when you were way over here the whole time? I like also that the story is biased: we aren't told everything, we're told about what's important to the main character. <br/><br/>Throughout the book, there's a fetishisation of brown and black skin that made me feel a little squiggy, and nowhere is this more pronounced than where Delfina enters the picture. Further, I wish the same attention to detail had been given to all the Spanish bits as was given to New York's history. The verb conjugations, the vocabulary, and the idiomatic expressions were all wrong. It would have taken very little effort to actually talk to a Dominican woman and get them right. There were also a couple of instances where the prose was anachronistic; they were jarring and took me out of the story. <spoiler>For example, I remember a mention of Mars and thinking, Wait, what? I just didn't believe that a poor, Irish boy would have "Mars" in his headspace in the 1800s.</spoiler><br/><br/><spoiler>Strong, strong feels about including 9/11 in the narrative. I could see it heading that way and was really hoping that I would be wrong.</spoiler> While I was disappointed with the end of the story, I enjoyed the beginning and middle enough to make the whole thing a worthwhile read. If you love New York City, I recommend giving it a try. But it's really a whole lot about NYC, so if that sounds boring, I wouldn't bother; for me, it was the best part."
Nik Lal
