Paradise Alley [Paperback]

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.

Kevin Baker deserves high praise for the apparent amount of work he has put into this novel and for bringing an almost lost episode in New York City and American history back into popular consciousness again.

As someone who has studied New York City extensively professionally and academically, I can wholeheartedly say that just about every detail in Paradise Alley is based on some true, albeit sometimes very obscure, bit of truth. The city was as filthy and violent as Kevin Baker makes it out to be and the great mass of its inhabitants at the time were equally, if unbelievably, miserable, ignorant, and generally unpleasant to be around.

For the wealthy, then as now, the city was almost incomparable in what it had to offer. For everyone else, it was no small victory just to survive from day to day. Have things really changed all that much?

The first 400 pages of the book are about Ruth, an irish girl, who came over to the US with Dolan (a brute she met over in ireland and who saved her life). His entire family died during the potato famine of the 40s and he's going to NYC where his Sister Deirdre lives. She is married to Tom who ends up going to war on her request. All those characters live on the same street, Paradise Alley. Because Dolan beats Ruth constantly, she finds a lover who cares for her, his name is billy dove and is black, which makes the affair all the more secret. On paradise alley also lives Maddy, a prostitute whose favorite customer is Herbert, a reporter for the NY tribune.

So these are the main characters, and their lives are told for 400 pages, i'm not going to give any more details because they are boring, just like the first 400 pages are. It drags on and on and has nothing to do with the riot. It is indeed important to know the past of characters to understand why they behave certain ways, but 400 pages was way too much, 50 would have been enough.

The author uses each chapter to talk about the lives of each characters. That's not a bad idea, some of the events are told several times through the eyes of different people. However, there is no chronology, the author keeps going back and forth in time constantly for no reason. When there is a chapter that actually gets exciting and suspensefull, the author stops it just as something is about to happen and comes back to it 300+ pages later. That's not a good way to build suspense, it's frustratin more than anything else.

If it was not for the last 200 pages, this book would get 1 star. The last 200 pages are wonderfull. They describe the riots in great details, through the eyes of a journalist and also through the eyes of Billy Dove, a black man in the city trying to escape white's people's rage against his race. The details can be very gruesome and disturbing, the author spending several pages describing the torture of an irish soldier among other horrible events. It will make you sick to your stomach.

While i was ready to stop reading the book after page 400, i'm glad i kept going. You wont' be able to put the book down until the end after then. Along with the description of the riots, you witness what happens to the main characters as their stories all come together in a terrible fight between neighbors.

If you don't mind long readings or just love to read anything about life during the mid 1800's, this book is for you. If not, read a summary of the first 400 pages, and read the last part.