I could overlook the confusing story telling. I could even look past trying to find out what the long drawn out plot was for. What I couldn't get over was the inaccurate telling of historical events. The 1909 shirtwaist strike is told so blatantly wrong and over embellished that I wanted to scream. Read a book before writing about something, please.

The timeline presented in the book wasn't even clear. Were Freud and Jung necessary? All of the talk about sex sure wasn't. Nor was using rape as a plot device. I'm honestly surprised I even read the whole book. How can you write something like this and not mention dates. Was there a point to the story at all?

Very good book. Really helps to give one a good idea of what life was like at the turn of the century in NYC. Unfortunately it gets more difficult to read as it goes on and there is no real resolution for any of the characters. I found the ending to be something of a cop-out.

I've been slogging through this one for over a month now and finally decided (after 400 torturous pages) to let. it. go. Wanted to like it, but - the writing style, bizarre characters and absurd plot put an end to that. Good riddance to bad luggage.

This novel set at Coney Island and other sites in New York City in the early 20th Century is as just as concerned with the place and time period as it is with its plot. But there is enough plot to hold it together and it kept my interest. A few characters have some heft, but most seem like representations of a type.

An excellent novel! Dreamland skirts the edges of melodrama but is saved by excellent writing. Baker sometimes waxes poetic but most often the plot and the character's lives just take over and one is less aware of the author and his messages and you're just involved in the story. It's an extremely sensory book that pulls you in and makes you forget your own reality for a while.
There are a two drawbacks that should be noted though. First, this book is not for those with weak stomachs: there are a couple of gross out scenes (which I don't mind, but they're really, really gross.). Second, this book is extremely violent especially toward it's female characters. There is one particularly gratuitous scene of sexual violence that seems stilted and thrown in for weird effect. It's supposed to provide back story and show us that the character is the whore with a heart of gold, but it goes on for pages. Also, there are a number of gangsters who get names and bit parts, but the whores just get called whores and barely say a word.
So, aside from the endemic sexism that can be found in many "meaty" novels, this book is worth a read.

Well this is a giant of a book, a book fit for the big top. I’d never heard of Dreamland, the place, the book, or author Kevin Baker. I think I picked this copy up from a Little Free Library in my neighborhood. It sat on my shelf for a long time. Then I cracked it open and read 10 or 15 pages, but got distracted by other books, other responsibilities and it sat neglected for several more months. I returned to it with few expectations and due to its physical heft, little hope of finishing it.

However, I found myself drawn into a dreamworld like no other I’ve experienced. Baker has created a fantastic example of historical fiction, a genre that can be puzzling and often suffers from lack of respect. Set on a Brooklyn peninsula, amidst the rough and rollicking Coney Island amusement park culture of the early 1900s, Dreamland, takes readers into a surreal world of desperate immigrants exploited at every turn by employers, street thugs, gangs, and a manipulative political system.
The rich cast of characters is comprised of real historical figures as well as fictional rubes struggling to make a go of life in a new and unkind country. Character names provide insight into what I’m trying to describe: Kid Twist, Gyp the Blood, Trick the Dwarf, Mad Carlotta, Big Tim Sullivan, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Francis Perkins, Mary Dreier, Louie the Lump—I think you get the picture.

Baker’s achievement is in making us root for these characters, even the most despicable ones. There is pride, outright evil, graft, animal cruelty, child abuse, violence against men, women, children, and animals. There are scenes that made me want to flee. But, the matter of fact way in which they are presented lends a horrifying credence to them. These things, or things much like these things, really happened. Think the garment industry and the Triangle Fire, for example.

This book will suck you in, perhaps against you better judgement. I think it will echo in my head for a long time.

So much of this book is interesting and fascinating, but then it just ends! No resolutions, we have no idea what happened to the characters in whom we've invested so much of our time. Just the musings of one character--maybe this happened, maybe that. I call B.S.

I tied, I tried. Even though I was a bigg fan of Mr. Baker's previous novel PARADISE ALLEY I just couldn't get through this one. I found the characters to be uncompelling, and the writing to be over wrought. I finally gave up just over halfway through it.

I have a ton of affection for this book, but re-reading it 10 years later has made me realize just how embarrassingly purple the prose is, and how mawkish the whole thing comes off. I love Coney Island and am a sucker for stories from the heyday of Luna Park and Dreamland, so I gladly slog through, but it still feels like SNL doing a Tom Waits parody.

The four stars is a bit misleading. I'd really like to give this book 3.5 stars. Make no mistake, I really liked it, but the ending (save for one storyline) frustrated the hell out of me. It's a book worth reading, but I was somewhat unsatisfied at the end, particularly the third-to-last chapter, which was damaging to a book whose story lines I cared about.

For some reason I thought this was a non-fiction book when it was recommended to me. I really enjoyed this book especially because I worked pretty close to the Bowery and little Italy. I could really picture where everything took place.

I would recommend this book to fans of boardwalk empire, devil in the white city, and maybe even geek love.

Mixed feelings about this book. On one hand it tells an interesting story of early 20th century NYC. On the other hand, even though written by an historian and expert on that period, it is filled with anachronisms. Events taking place not in their actual times, characters that were dead by the time they appear in this narrative, etc. The author is aware of this but must have felt that his novel was better served by this artifice. Also the novel is comprised of several subplots, one of which to me was completely superfluous. I was annoyed several times by the author switching subplots and going several paragraphs using he or she and not identifying the character or even that the subplot had switched. Another literary device I've encountered many times but always find annoying. I mean WHY? And I have to say...the ending was a complete cop out. Maybe this was the author's way of reminding us that it is, after all, just a story, but .....really?