Rating: 
Summary: A Rare Book I Threw Out
Review: I went into this book looking forward to something great from Pete Hamill. Uunfortunately I was severly disappointed. The main character is someone you grow to be indifferent about and the story is predictable, too long and boring. Mr. Hamill is obsessed with certain topics and that is clearly apparent. Don't waste your time on this one.
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Summary: Cormac Samuel O'Connor, 1723-
Review: Wow. I just finished Forever and I was sorry to turn the last page. Pete Hamill has penned an incredible and moving history of a man and a city. While the book is full of the factual, it is also mystical and fantastic. Cormac O'Connor, born in 1723 in Ireland, is a happy child with plenty to eat, a faithful dog, and a gorgeous horse for his birthday present. He discovers, as he matures, that his parents having been keeping secrets: big ones. As he learns more about his true history, tragic and evil events come to pass. He ends up on a boat to New York with his mother's earrings, his father's sword, and a few gold pieces. On board, he sees other Irish bound for indenture and Africans bound for the slave block. The conditions are awful and he is moved to help the Africans by bringing them food and water. He slowly wins the trust and friendship of their leader, Kongo, who is no ordinary man, but a shaman. After Cormac is injured trying to save Kongo's life, Kongo heals him and gives him a gift: immortality, as long as he stays on the island of Manhattan. The rest of the book chronicles the story of New York and Cormac's long life and his quest to fulfill a sworn oath. I stayed up way too late, several nights in a row, with Forever. I borrowed my copy from the library, but I think I'll be buying this one so I can revisit Cormac and his New York at will.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: I bought the book very excited about 'visiting' New York through the past centuries. Hamill does not include enough description to create the places in the story for the reader. I felt like I was just in the tiny world surrounding Cormac. And after 600 pages, I have not come to care about Cormac O'Connor or what happens to him. Hamill does not effectively communicate any real feeling from him, though his experiences should be incredibly emotional and intense. The plot is predictable and disappointing.
Rating:
Summary: Past and Present
Review: This book was a honey!! Pete Hamill's writing has fueled the curiosity bug in me regarding New York's history and the citizens who peopled it, yesterday and today. I know I will want to learn more and this, to me, is the essence of a story. Does it make one want to learn? If it does, it is more than well worth the read. As Yoda would say, "A Pete Hamill fan now I am."Elaine Suhre
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This is the first book I have read by Pete Hamill. I am a History teacher and loved the way he explained New York's history in the book. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone.
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Summary: An Epic Delight
Review: As with "Snow in August," I struggled early on to get into this novel. Indeed, the first 30 pages seemed to slog along, but it was well worth it. For the following 570+ pages take the reader on a magical ride through the streets of New York's history. Prior to this novel, I had no interest in New York or it's history (other than an E.L. Doctorow novel), but Pete Hamill has changed that. This story, the protagonist, the city as a central character, beautiful prose...all combine for what is an epic adventure. It is a novel that may rank in the top 10 of my personal favorites.
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Summary: A whirlwind historical tour of New York.
Review: Cormac O'Connor lives to be over 200 years old but does not age. He leaves besieged Ireland as a young boy after both his parents are killed. The Earl of Warren is the territorial dictator and the lives of those in his environs are expendable. For example, when his horse-drawn carriage runs down Cormac's mother and kills her, the Earl sends a paltry amount of money to cover funeral expenses. There is the magic of the ancient Celtic beliefs and ceremonies and one must suspend logic and disbelief for what follows when Cormac kills the Earl and flees to the United States. In New York he meets as many historical ills as there were in Ireland. It is still the moneyed who rule the world and men's (and women's) lives. Cormac is sworn to kill the whole of the Earl's line in order to destroy, I presume, the possibility of the Earl's "issue" continuing his injustices. As a reader, I wondered many things. Once Cormac destroys the line, would there have been other Warrens he just didn't know about and, therefore, his sworn oath would not have been really fulfilled? The story is interesting, to a point, then it becomes tedious...even when suspending logic and disbelief. The history is the interesting part and to tell it over a 200+-year period, culminating with the destruction of New York's Twin Towers is an awesome task. Cormac and his vendetta are the vehicles. Cormac literally drifts through history, tires of living so long while awaiting his destiny. The reader sees little character growth as he passes through many decades. He is a voice, a guide, a translator of politics, art, architecture, religion, music, human failings and foibles. It is only at the end that he finds love, a reason to live and we see a desperate Cormac searching for the woman who is carrying his child and who most probably has perished in one of the Twin Towers. The finale resembles a badly written romance novel!
Rating:
Summary: Struggled To Finish
Review: This book had so much potential and really held me in thrall for the first 200 or so pages but after that I began to feel as if I was going to be reading it forever with no end in sight. The premise of a young Irish boy loosing his family at an early age (due to the same person) and then following the Celtic tradition of revenge was a good one. His course had been set and he followed the murder of his family to the New World and the growing city of New York. Mr. Hamill was very descriptive on his narrative regarding Ireland, the ocean crossing, and the politcal as well as religious issues that colored the day. He lost me though soon after setting foot in New York. The idea of slave, indentured servants, and Spaniards uniting to fight totally overshadowed the reason why Cormac left his native Ireland for New York. Occassionally we would re-visit the oath he had sworn by coming to the new world but again our author would soon loose sight of this due to some other issue that seemed to catch his fancy. In the end Cormac never managed to wipe the Warren clan off the face of the earth. Again this book had so much potential but I feel that the author may have lost track of the direction he truly wished to go in. So much was left out (much of New York history) with only brief glimps at what it was like to watch New York grow from a small city to the thriving metropolis that it is today. Do yourself a favor borrow the book from a friend (as I did) or visit your local library.
Rating: 
Summary: Often quite good, yet frustrating
Review: A young 18th-century Irishman goes to New York in pursuit of the heartless nobleman responsible for the death of his parents, and is granted eternal life by an enslaved African shaman--on the one condition that he never set foot off the island of Manhattan. From this intriguing premise comes a novel that alternately flies and stumbles, as our hero Cormac lives through more than 200 years of New York's history, seeing the tidal pulse of life in the world's greatest city, loving and unavoidably leaving various women and friends to death while he lives on, and never losing sight of his vendetta against the bloodline of the Warren clan. There's a lot going on in this book, and Hamill has his work cut out for him to carry it off. Parts of the novel kept me glued to the pages, while others were flat and unconvincing. Some dramatic scenes are weakened when characters utter the kind of overbaked dialogue one hears in a musical, just before a song. Here's Cormac speaking to George Washington: "They want to be free, General...that's why they won't disappear when times get hard. They want to be free, sir. Free." (Ugh.) Also, as I read I was reminded--often--of a wonderful book written some 20 years ago by Mark Helprin, WINTER'S TALE, which also features New York as its stage and an immortal Irish hero with a magic horse. (Cormac has one of those, too.)The two books are vastly different in other ways, but the similarities are distractingly striking. I can recommend "Forever"--despite its unevenness there's some stirring drama, a good (but necessarily very abridged) historical perspective, and a well-conveyed feeling of melancholy as the book enters the modern era. Immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be. Just ask Anne Rice's Lestat--or, in this case, Cormac O'Connor.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but disappointing
Review: If you allow yourself to believe in the world the author has placed his main character in, the first half of the book is excellent. There is a lot of emphasis on the man's life when he is in Ireland, and the story is so vivid. Then he moves to New York, and the story is good, but it skips a lot of New York's "growing up" years. Also, this is a fairly long novel, and when you invest the time in these characters, it is a little disappointing when the book ends as it does. In fact, you suspend disbelief to enjoy the book, you invest in and believe in the main character, then the last page totally turns the story 180 degrees, and leaves you asking "What just happened?" Everything you are believing in to make the book work gets totally thrown away with the character's last actions. This book was good, but don't invest the time in it if you don't have a lot to spare.
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