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Heyday
A Novel
by Kurt Andersen
Andersen, cofounder of Spy magazine and author of 1999's "Turn of the Century", follows English aristocrat Benjamin Knowles in this tale of 19th-century America.
Random House, 640 pages
03/06/2007
$26.95
ISBN: 0375504737
Fiction
Historical Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Allen Barra
The last four decades or so has probably produced more quality historical novels than the previous century and a half...Kurt Andersen's exhilarating new opus, Heyday, deserves instant acceptance into their ranks.
Entertainment Weekly Benjamin Svetkey
Some writers of period fiction make big, messy piles of their facts; Andersen stitches his so seamlessly into his prose you almost don't realize you're learning stuff...The results are so subtly effective, you feel a little like you've found a long-lost literary treasure that was actually written more than 150 years ago.
Booklist Barbara Hoffert
While this is a long book, it moves quickly, with historical detail that's involving but never a drag on the action; the characters are beautifully drawn. A terrific book; highly recommended. [9 Jan 2007]
Publishers Weekly
In the end, this second novel belongs to Andersen, a tale of bright, rambunctious, aspiring young people. Like them, the book is rowdy, knowing--and wholly American. [5 Jan 2007]
The Onion A.V. Club Noel Murray
The characters and story are really just lenses through which to view history, and as a history book, Heyday is terrific.
Chicago Tribune Art Winslow
What Heyday echoes most strongly is the tradition of thrillers as written by Alexandre Dumas, full of social foment and derring-do, riven with coincidence.
Los Angeles Times Susan Straight
Andersen's novel is a major historical work, of lore and wisdom, irony and humor-- the kind of historical novel that has always been the most satisfying to read.
Wall Street Journal Mark Lewis
Heyday is not the smooth concoction that a more experienced historical novelist -- say, Gore Vidal or Thomas Mallon -- would make from the same ingredients. But it's an impressive effort nonetheless. If Mr. Andersen continues in this genre, and learns to skim off the clutter, he may have a promising future in the past.
Christian Science Monitor Yvonne Zipp
Andersen is so knowledgeable that he can probably do a minute-by-minute timeline of [1848], and so enthusiastic about his subject that readers will probably gladly sign up for the history lesson.
Kirkus Reviews
This block-sized blockbuster can't be faulted for timidity--and, as an entertaining fictional primer to mid-19th-century Western history, very nearly justifies its hubris. [13 Mar 2007]
San Francisco Chronicle Dan Zigmond
There are more than a few preposterous coincidences, as historical figures are marched onto the page for no particular reason in scenes that were probably more fun to write than to read...The myriad of intentionally improbable connections start to seem a bit like Hollywood celebrities taking tongue-in-cheek cameos in a B movie.
The New York Times Book Review Geoffrey Wolff
It’s a mighty busy and messy story, jumping among the urban settings of Gotham, Paris, London, Chicago and San Francisco; evil is afoot and brutality the quotidian, but Heyday is also a sweet book, with a tropism toward redemption and happy endings.
The New York Times Janet Maslin
Spending more than 600 pages in permanent digression mode, the book has no center and no nongeographical destination. Eventually, when it comes time to end this story, Mr. Andersen stages some violent confrontations, but they are startlingly inconsequential.
USA Today Jocelyn McClurg
The characters, with one major exception (a witty newspaperman turned daguerreotypist), feel generic. The sense of place -- and what's more important in historical fiction? -- is murky. The prose is, well, flat.
Washington Post Louis Bayard
Heyday reads, as [the main character] himself describes it, 'like an account in a history book.' Surely that's not how history is actually experienced, in the living of it. Surely every novelist must, at some crucial point in his book's genesis, commit the rash, the almost suicidal act of throwing out his research.
New York Observer Adam Begley
As a novel, Heyday flops. The plot’s secrets are transparent, its construction needlessly complex; the characters are flimsy and unconvincing; and the pacing is almost perversely poor. None of it feels organic, like a story waiting to be told; it’s all forced, artificial--contrived. [5 Mar 2007, p.18]
 The average user rating for this book is 6.0 (out of 10) based on 1 User Votes
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