Historical fiction, set in New York City at the turn of the (last) century. The emphasis is on three intersecting communities: the carnies out at Coney Island (in the Golden Age of Luna Park, Steeplechase, and Dreamland), Tammany and the petty criminals on the Lower East Side, and the nascent union movement. I liked all the characters and was invested in what happened to them. Some of the "historical New York" flourishes felt a little tired. Our budding union organizer works at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. I mean, WHERE ELSE? Where else could you possibly work in a city of three and a half million people?

Grade: B+. Not bad.
Recommended: To people who, despite reading about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and Delmonicos and the General Slocum ad infinitum, continue to enjoy being immersed in stories about the underbelly of New York. Hey, I still pick them up. Obviously.
2008/29

Interestingly, this book felt like a dream. It was very atmospheric and cartoony in its characterization and flow. I liked it for those qualities and for the historical fiction aspects. As far as buying into the story and the plot, well, not so much.

In dreamland, even America was possible.

Kevin Baker’s spectacular new novel is often more a nightmare than a dream, but I didn’t want to wake up.

Trick the Dwarf, a Coney Island circus performer, opens the novel by claiming, “I know a story,” and does he ever. “It is a story about a great city, and a little city, and a land of dreams. And always, above all, it is a story about fire.” Over the next 500 pages, we descend into the controlled and uncontrolled flames of New York in 1911. This isn’t the city Edith Wharton described in her novels. Baker has turned that luxurious portrayal of the Big Apple on its stem. His New York is an explosive furnace in which gangsters, prostitutes, politicians-all recent immigrants-vie for survival.

In a seedy bar where the patrons bet on rat fights, Gyp the Blood is showing off: He can break a man’s back over his knees. When Gyp reaches for a young boy, Kid Twist bravely-foolishly!-intervenes. After beaning Gyp with a shovel, Kid and the boy are marked for death and flee to Dreamland, an amusement park on Coney Island.

Here, Kid Twist discovers that the boy he saved is actually Trick the Dwarf, who disguises himself as a boy to snatch a few moments of normalcy from his life of ridicule.

The phantasmagoric amusement park provides a perfect metaphor for the city itself. Staffed by the mentally or physically handicapped, Dreamland is an ever-expanding complex of bone-crushing rides, shocking freak shows, and reenactments of disasters.

As Gyp the Blood seeks revenge on the man who beaned him with a shovel and the “boy” who got away, we meet his indomitable sister Esther and their cruel father, a rabbi so strict that his congregation has abandoned him.

Trapped in the crippling labor of the garment district, Esther is saved from despair by her friendship with a young socialist. Together they begin the almost hopeless task of organizing a women’s union and striking for better hours. But their modest requests are met with horrifying brutality from the city’s police and gangsters, two groups distinguished only by uniform.

Above the fray, but thoroughly in control of it, strides Big Tim, a state senator and city crime boss who owns more bars, gambling rings, and flop houses than he can count. Big Tim enjoys such prosperity and power that he’s beginning to dabble in a new luxury: compassion for the people in his city. Why should so many children be killed by thoughtless carriage drivers, he wonders. How many women will be lost in factory fires because the bosses lock them in?

These questions are just starting to break through a lifetime of corruption, but they’re in harmony with the liberal reform movements driven by shrill newspapers and the persistent lobbying of the city’s high society ladies. That the New York we know today could have evolved from such social chaos should give us hope about modern-day Russia.

Woven throughout these stories of escape, revenge, survival, and reform is a remarkable, often comic narrative of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung coming to America. It’s the culmination of Freud’s attempt to legitimize his cause, but the founder of psychoanalysis finds himself haunted by anxieties. New York’s explosive energy and sensuality overwhelm him. Abused and humiliated in a ghastly Coney Island funhouse, Freud finally concludes, “America is a mistake.”

Dreamlandis a richer symphony of life than E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime(1975), to which it’s being compared. Baker, the chief historical researcher for Harry Evans’s recent American Century,has perfectly captured the messy, complex, inefficient nature of social development. Thick with the gritty details of unforgettable characters, this is literature-and history-at its best.

Sometimes I run across novels where moments of brilliance are enough-where one segment of the story carries the whole work. Its fairly rare when a 650 page effort can be held up by moments. All and all it failed as a story, even though there were sections I'll gladly revisit in the future.

Kevin Baker's 'Dreamland' is quite an amazing read. Massive in size and scope, it deals with New York City in the 1st decade of the 20th century. It contains a melting pot of characters, ranging from crooked politicians in the early days of Tammany Hall, to the immigrants living in lower-Manhattan, to circus performers and denizens of Coney Island. There are dirty cops, factory workers and gangsters galore. I almost forgot to mention Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This is a very powerful tale, and I will be checking out some of his other books in the future.

This historical novel is well-researched and even better written. Baker tells several interweaving tales here, and most are fascinating, if strange, and full of human emotions: greed, love, lust, shame, guilt, loneliness, despair. The New York of this period has great wonders and greater tragedies, and Dreamland includes both. My only difficulty involved the Freud/Jung tale, which seemed unconnected and incomplete. Perhaps I missed something there, though. Remarkable, engaging tale.

I had purchased this book several years ago when I worked at a bookstore—which is like some kind of shiny fantasy dream for a book lover like me. We got a 30 percent discount and could special order books, and since much of the job consisted of stocking, restocking and reorganizing the walls and tables and books, I became quite familiar and quite enamored with several books. This was one of them, one that I was sure I was going to love since I'm drawn to books about amusement parks and carnivals, including books just about the history of amusement parks.

This book starts with an index for a "cast of characters", something I always am loathe to see because it means I'm likely going to be flipping back and forth from what I'm reading to the index to see who the hell it is I'm reading about. Usually, I try to give a book at least 50 pages before making up my mind about continuing, especially if I'm not getting into the story. However, I only made it to page 16 for this one and decided I was done. I lost track of how many times I'd flipped back and forth in that short amount of pages, trying to figure out who was who. The main reason I stopped was that maybe I'm just too squeamish for this subject matter, which is kind of messed up because I'd say the same about Rizzoli & Isles novels, with all their graphically detailed autopsy scenes, yet I still continue to read Rizzoli & Isles novels. This, this did not compel me to keep going.

I stopped shortly after a bunch of men, gangsters, and a carnival dwarf were all gathered in some basement for a "rat pit" or something like that, where they watch dogs kill rats for sport, and a scary gangster named Gyp was "breaking men"—and there was a description of a man whose back had been broken in three places—when another gangster, Kid Twist, hit him over the head with a shovel. I didn't finish chapter 4.

So, needless to say, I'm disappointed. I wish I wanted to keep reading, at least till 50 pages, but I don't. Reading just what I did gave me this odd sensation of grit and nastiness that I just don't want look any further into, if that makes sense.

wonderfully entwining stories within a story of Old New York with its immigrants, gangsters, activists, politicians and street children, with Coney Island and the Lower East Side as the backdrop. My only reason for giving this 4 stars out of 5 were the stories of Freud and Jung. I found their parts unnecessary and dull.

This is the first in Kevin Baker's 'City of Fire' trilogy and I'm literally just starting it, so I will come back and update this review as I get through the book. Based on subject matter and reviews alone, it promises to be complex and entertaining, all about the Jewish experience in turn-of-the-century Coney Island and the Lower East Side. more to come..
well, that got very complex, not only addressing the beginnings of the garment workers strikes in the lower east side, but chronicling a particularly bizarre underbelly of New York City. The story is presented by a dwarf who works in one of the historic carnivals of Coney Island; involving a number of gangsters, their loves, their families, the dirty cops and beaurocrats. all the elements we love and hate about big, powerful cities. very entertaining and incredibly well informed in regards to historical accuracy.
the linguistic glossary is quite an education in lost words.

Fragmented

What do a dwarf, a factory girl, Freud, and some gangsters have in common? Very little. In general, I don't mind alternating narration but in this case it was a burden. Jumping between characters and time lines, even within the chapter, it was unclear what was happening when and to whom. The storylines are supposed to intertwine, but there wasn't enough connection between the stories to make it a success. Dreamland is another novel with potential that needed more polish.

It was an abridgment, but it was pretty wonderful.

One, I like historical fiction that does a ton of research, and I love the turn of the century time period, and I love carnivals/circuses.

Two, the narrator, John Rubenstein, was amazing...spot on accents for the Irish politicians and old Jewish "luftmensch".

Probably would only give this three stars as a book, but it was an amazingly entertaining listen.

This book is recommended by a The Museum of Extraordinary Things reviewer for its "Bowery (a borough in Manhattan) life, the Jewish immigrant experience, the ins and outs of 1910-1911 Coney Island, the gangsters and prostitutes and corrupt officials"

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...