Rating: 
Summary: An underrated book !
Review: Banished Children of Eve - Peter Quinn (Penguin, paperback)
Set in New York City in 1863, this is history from the ground--and the gutter--up. Through both fictional and historical characters, Quinn offers a perspective on New York City that doesn't appear in history books. His focus is on the dirt-poor Irish immigrants, and their hatred of the only people held in lower esteeem than themselves: the Blacks. Among the books many historical underpinnings are minstelry, the nascent stock exchange, the building of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the free African-American community on Staten Island, and the Children's Aid Society--which began as little more than a slave trade that supplied Western pioneer families with unpaid child labor, and reduced the Catholic population by forced conversions. By the time the action culminates in the horrific New York City draft riots, the reader knows the mob violence was inevitable--and completely avoidable. Anyone interested in the history of New York City, and lovers of historical fiction, should read this book. This book more than satisfies on both counts.
Rating: 
Summary: Riveting historical fiction of Civil War-era New York City.
Review: Banished Children of Eve - Peter Quinn (Penguin, paperback)
Set in New York City in 1863, this is history from the ground--and the gutter--up. Through both fictional and historical characters, Quinn offers a perspective on New York City that doesn't appear in history books. His focus is on the dirt-poor Irish immigrants, and their hatred of the only people held in lower esteeem than themselves: the Blacks. Among the books many historical underpinnings are minstelry, the nascent stock exchange, the building of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the free African-American community on Staten Island, and the Children's Aid Society--which began as little more than a slave trade that supplied Western pioneer families with unpaid child labor, and reduced the Catholic population by forced conversions. By the time the action culminates in the horrific New York City draft riots, the reader knows the mob violence was inevitable--and completely avoidable. Anyone interested in the history of New York City, and lovers of historical fiction, should read this book. This book more than satisfies on both counts.
Rating:
Summary: A NOVEL OF THE NEW SOCIAL HISTORY
Review: For generations historians studied the lives of elite white men in order to compile a record of the past. Starting in the 1950's, historians began using the "bottoms up" approach to history wherein they looked at the lives of individual persons at the lower end of the tradional social order. Traditionally historians considered the center of the society - kings, leaders, rulers - as the controlling force. More recent historians argue that the periphery, that is the persons of what was usually called the fringes of the society, controls the center. Peter Quinn ably uses this approach in his novel BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE. In considering life in mid 19th century New York City, he explains the prejudice that existed between the Irish and the Black community on an economic level which makes it understandable. While not justifying the acts of violence, the reader comes to see the blight of the underclass. The reader comes to identify with the overworked housemaid, petty criminal, homeless orphan and free black. One sees the corruption in the society. The upper clas is not romanticized but shown as the oppressors. The Civil War affected major changes in the lives of most Americans. Quinn shows the changes in the lives of the major characters in the book. Through the eyes of these characters the reader sees the emergence of the middle class, which was one of the major impacts of the War. There are Horatio Alger stories in the book but not in the tradtional sense. The reader also sees the brutality of life in 19th Century society. Death and separation from parents and realtives were a common experience. The use of alcohol was common and one can see why the Temperance Movement became so important by the end of the century. And prostitution is shown as the only way out for many women. But some women do get out of it. Students read about the brutality of slavery and as a African American and a student of African American history I am in no way trying to diminish the horrors of America's "peculiar institution." Slaves lacked all rights and had no freecom to lave their masters. Family members were sold and never seen again. But when you look at the lives of the working poor in New York during much of the 19th Century, there are many parallels. The horros of the middle passage are unspeakable but the horrors of many immigrant ships were terrible also. Historian Nell Painter argues a theory of "Soul Murder." She aruges that the effects of slavery were so damaging to all of American Society, both black and white, that we are still feeling it today. She argues that the dysfunctional families of today are the result of the violence experiences of both black and while children during the 19th century. Her argument is interesting, but in it she fails to consider the effects on white society of such events as orphan children shipped West, the abandoned family as a result of immigration, alcoholism and death. Surely these events have long range consequences in contemporary society. Quinn includes all of these in his marvelous book. By way of criticism I thought the book was a tad long. The story of the priest did not seem to add anything to the story and in my humble opinion could have been left out. Some of the sub plots got a little wordy. The point was made and the author could have moved on. I assume that Stephen Foster is used as an example of someone that falls from the upper class to the lower class whereas Bedford is a person that moves up. I'm not sure that Quinn does such a good job of wrapping up the story. In a sense the novel is kind of a look at a period of time in the lives of the characters. The reader is left to speculate as to the rest of their lives. I first heard about this book when Quinn was interviewed on Public Radio. I bought it and started it and then left it on the shelf for a year or so until I saw in a recommended section in my local book store. That caused me to start it again. Once you get about 50 pages into the book it really kicks in and is a fascinating read. I high recommend BANISHED CHILDREN OF EVE to the student of American History and those interested in the study of Irish immigration.
Rating:
Summary: Fragments of Lives
Review: I believe in reading a book on its own terms-- its own internal logic. The crescendo built in this book as these fragments of lives come together in the draft riots of New York City. The power of the book lies in the premise that it is the stories of these individuals, otherwise lost in the mass of humanity, that form the real stuff of history -- not so much the generals and tycoons. Bedford, a minor player on Wall Steet, Dunne, Eliza, Margaret are all swept up in the events of the times. Mixing non-fictional character such as Noonan and Stephen Foster, minor characters even on the larger stage, I thought was particularly effective. I admire what Quinn did with the clippings from historical archives, included at the end of the book,in fashioning his imaginative world. Place--geography--shapes character, events more than we care to acknowledge. The power of place is all important here.
Rating:
Summary: A difficult tragedy of forgetting in New York's palimpsest
Review: I grew up in New York and walked many of the same streets Peter Quinn writes about in Banished Children of Eve. They're still there. If you look down at the pavement in some of the older neighborhoods, the same slate and stone sidewalks might still be in place that were there in 1863. Even if the remnants of that old city were plowed under by the wrecking ball, even before the terrorist came with his commandeered passenger jets, other remnants remained. And Gettysburg is not the only place where one feels the presence of ghosts. Quinn's novel is imperfect. It's overly long and one could almost say the writing is florid, the style at points too meandering. But we are modernists or postmodernists, we are in a damned hurry and we want our plots laid out before us rapid-fire. Quinn slows us down. He draws us into the nexus of an old city beneath the city we know, a place of ugliness that makes even the ugliness of today's New York seem bucolic: today's racism and poverty are as nothing compared to what we find in Civil War New York. Here people are still able to reinvent themselves and shapeshift. The daughter of a former stockbroker ruined in the 1857 Panic reinvents herself as the Trumpeter Swan, ultra-whore of a concert saloon and chief attraction of a peepshow for masturbating Union officers. A financier comes from nowhere, builds his fortune on a lie born of pre-computer identity-theft, brutally kills (of course in New Jersey!) to preserve his money, disappears, resurfaces as someone else and proves you can get away with murder. A safecracker becomes a hero in spite of himself and becomes the grandfather of a Jesuit Rector of Fordham University. A half-black woman masquerades as a Cuban actress. Through it all runs the sense of tragedy, of a city burying its own past. Midian Wells disappears from Staten Island to Troy, graveyards are overturned for new building sites, the grave of a department store magnate is robbed for his grave desecrations, and ultimately the characters with whom we identify by novel's end are forgotten two generations later, plowed under by the present as Potter's Field is covered over by layers of new dead. What survives? Ironically, the monument of a decrepit Archbishop--St. Patrick's Cathedral--and the songs of a hopeless alcoholic, Stephen Foster, whose periodic appearances in the novel are perhaps its most gratuitous as well as ghastly element, a sense of living death hauled into view when real death, the slaughter of innocent and guilty alike, looms through the Draft Riots of July 1863, hanging over the novel like the diseases that swept through New York with the irregularity of sawteeth, and just as viciously. The book is a hard read for people who want it easy. It's not linear, it's not always fun, and it's calculated at moments to make you turn your head away. I dread the idea that someone might wish to make a movie of Banished Children of Eve and "straighten it out." Its disconnectedness is its flaw and virtue together: you need to work at it, and the rewards outweigh the demands.
Rating:
Summary: A difficult tragedy of forgetting in New York's palimpsest
Review: I grew up in New York and walked many of the same streets Peter Quinn writes about in Banished Children of Eve. They're still there. If you look down at the pavement in some of the older neighborhoods, the same slate and stone sidewalks might still be in place that were there in 1863. Even if the remnants of that old city were plowed under by the wrecking ball, even before the terrorist came with his commandeered passenger jets, other remnants remained. And Gettysburg is not the only place where one feels the presence of ghosts. Quinn's novel is imperfect. It's overly long and one could almost say the writing is florid, the style at points too meandering. But we are modernists or postmodernists, we are in a damned hurry and we want our plots laid out before us rapid-fire. Quinn slows us down. He draws us into the nexus of an old city beneath the city we know, a place of ugliness that makes even the ugliness of today's New York seem bucolic: today's racism and poverty are as nothing compared to what we find in Civil War New York. Here people are still able to reinvent themselves and shapeshift. The daughter of a former stockbroker ruined in the 1857 Panic reinvents herself as the Trumpeter Swan, ultra-whore of a concert saloon and chief attraction of a peepshow for masturbating Union officers. A financier comes from nowhere, builds his fortune on a lie born of pre-computer identity-theft, brutally kills (of course in New Jersey!) to preserve his money, disappears, resurfaces as someone else and proves you can get away with murder. A safecracker becomes a hero in spite of himself and becomes the grandfather of a Jesuit Rector of Fordham University. A half-black woman masquerades as a Cuban actress. Through it all runs the sense of tragedy, of a city burying its own past. Midian Wells disappears from Staten Island to Troy, graveyards are overturned for new building sites, the grave of a department store magnate is robbed for his grave desecrations, and ultimately the characters with whom we identify by novel's end are forgotten two generations later, plowed under by the present as Potter's Field is covered over by layers of new dead. What survives? Ironically, the monument of a decrepit Archbishop--St. Patrick's Cathedral--and the songs of a hopeless alcoholic, Stephen Foster, whose periodic appearances in the novel are perhaps its most gratuitous as well as ghastly element, a sense of living death hauled into view when real death, the slaughter of innocent and guilty alike, looms through the Draft Riots of July 1863, hanging over the novel like the diseases that swept through New York with the irregularity of sawteeth, and just as viciously. The book is a hard read for people who want it easy. It's not linear, it's not always fun, and it's calculated at moments to make you turn your head away. I dread the idea that someone might wish to make a movie of Banished Children of Eve and "straighten it out." Its disconnectedness is its flaw and virtue together: you need to work at it, and the rewards outweigh the demands.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful historical fiction
Review: I just finished reading "Lincoln" and was pleasantly surprised with this book filling in some blanks. It was enjoyable to read for an historical fiction fan. Some of the facts were things one doesn't usually learn about. Instead of a distraction, I thought all the characters and story lines were wonderful. The book worked just like a large city, lots of things and people and sometimes events just bring them together. One of my favorite books. I would read it again.
Rating: 
Summary: An author's note
Review: My family first arrived in New York City in the late 1840s. They were part of the wave of Famine Irish who poured into America as a result of that catastrophe. As a kid in the Bronx in the 1950s, I knew next to nothing about these events. I had the names of a few ancestors and some scattered dates and facts, but the immense saga these people were part of--the massive transfer of Europe's most rural and primitive peasantry to the rapidly industrializing cities of America--was unknown to me. Although I studied for a Ph.d. in history at Fordham, I was never able to find out many specifics about these people, about their humanity and the dense particularity that marks every life. So I turned dishonest (hey, I grew up in the Bronx, whaddaya expect?) and set out to write a novel. I wanted to try to recreate the world my ancestors left and the one they found. I wanted to convey the feel and smell of New York at the time, a city that in so many ways encapsulated--for better and for worse--the America to come. The New York City Draft Riots--the bloodiest urban insurrection in American history--provided the dramatic back drop. I felt that here, amid this crisis, I could explore the clash and confluence of races, classes and ethnic groups that has driven so much of the history of New York and America. Some critics have said that my book lacks a central character. But New York is the central character. Its the factor that alters the lives of all the other characters. Everyone who comes to New York is changed by the city, some elevated, others destroyed, but no one left the same. Along with being an exploration of New York--my native city, a maddening place that I love very deeply--my book is a personal reckoning with the the meaning of the Famine emigration in the history of my own family. It is an act of remembrance of the passage into America, the first leg of an epic journey, a cruel and amazing arrival amid other banished children, from other races and other places. It is an attempt to reach the lives of those swallowed and forgotten by history, those whose entire biography consisted of a birth certificate, if they were lucky. Last spring marked the 150th anniversary of my great grandfather's arrival in New York City. That man--Michael Manning--was part of an exodus that changed both Ireland and America, a wound that would not clot, that bled Ireland--internally and externally--for generations, and that helped shape the experience and expectations of Irish immigrant communities, wherever they may be. One hundred and fifty years ago is an eternity removed from us. And it is the day before yesterday. The world Michael Manning knew and inhabited is gone and beyond our knowing. And it is with us, in us and all around us. Do I contradict myself? That great New Yorker Walt Whitman understood such contradictions ("Very well then...I contradict myself."). I claim such contradictions as a birth right. They are there in the hyhen between Irish-American. Is the hyphen a bond, a link? Or is it a minus sign? Does one identity detract from the other? Is it possible to have both? Is it necessary? Is it wise? Mostly, I believe, it is inescapable. Already several Irish-American critics have expressed some unhappiness with the characters I describe--whores, thieves, rioters. I plead guilty. I apologize for offending anyone's feelings or ethnic sensitivities. But I will spend the rest of my life wondering and writing about such people. My purpose is not to excuse, justify, glorify. It is to see these people for who and what they were, to try to understand. Above all, it is to say in the words of Walt Whitman, in the words with which I chose to end Banished Children of Eve, "Each belongs here or anywhere as much as the welloff...Just as much as you, Each has his or her place in the procession."
Rating: 
Summary: (3.5)Fear and Loathing in 1863 New York...
Review: Peopled with carefully constructed and multi-layered individuals, the history of each life is inserted with the introduction of every new character, although diverse in background, social pretensions and aspirations. The subtle nuance of class-consciousness ripples near the surface of even the most polite dialog. There is a constant jockeying of rationalization, from the hypocritical "do-goodism" of the wealthy to the racial obsessions of those who discover themselves straddling the lowest rung of the societal ladder. The skillful presentation of pervasive class distinctions is one of the major accomplishments of Quinn's ambitious novel. The possibility of great wealth ignites an already raging blaze of fundamental competition for financial independence in an era of manifest destiny. Classism is clearly rooted in ancestral experience and identity, alongside a Darwinian struggle for survival. The old guard financiers are surrounded by a ragtag mob of enthusiastic young men seeking entrance to the halls of privilege, men willing to speculate their way to success. The imperative of that success is inevitable, a rising tide that washes ashore on a wave of progress and opportunity. This relentless pursuit of success, coupled with a looming fear of ruin, drives Quinn's characters, allowing them more humanity, albeit with questionable morals. Indeed, their failings are tempered by the exigent circumstances of birth. The streets are teeming with bustling crowds, either headed uptown to the financial and business district or downtown toward the docks, where shabby streets are lined with garbage and taverns, gambling halls and brothels. From this morass of opportunity, deals are struck. Wall Street investors, flushed with success, are perfect targets for hustlers, one scam or another created to relieve the mark of his money. Add to this the uncertainties of war with a mandated draft, and emotions run rampant through crowds of immigrants disappointed by the actual brutality of life in America in 1863 New York, the great melting pot of hope and ambition. Agitated by the summer heat, new conscription laws and the tension of the politics of war, Quinn's numerous characters finally swirl in the confusion of their particular agendas. Halfway through the novel I lost interest, burdened with too much information about the history of every character, an oddity that seriously confused the direction of the novel. But I picked the book up again, curious to see Quinn's treatment of the Draft Riots portrayed so vividly in Kevin Baker's Paradise Alley. Quinn simply pours too much into these pages, often drowning the thread of the story and I frequently skipped pages. After all this effort, the Draft Riots are all but lost amid Quinn's superfluous detail. Ultimately, this lack of focus exhausted me and rendered The Banished Children of Eve less than rewarding.
Rating:
Summary: An underrated book !
Review: This book is very much underrated; it's a great pity it has not received the attention it deserves. Besides being a great read, it offers genuine and truthful insights into the Irish Immigrant in America. It's an essential read for anyone interested in the history, character and role of the Irish in nineteenth century America.
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