Quinn's Book - by William Kennedy (Paperback)

About the Book

Quinn's Book tells the story of Daniel Quinn, of his adventure-filled search for true love and the answer to the riddle of his own fate.

Book Synopsis

Filled with Dickensian characters, a vivid sense of history, and marvelously inventive humor, Quinn's Book is an engaging delight from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Ironweed

"Kennedy writes with verve and nerve. His wit, always sharp, has rarely been sharper. He paints a full and lively canvas...Quinn's Book casts a lovely light, indeed."--Stephen King

From the moment he rescues the beautiful, passionate Maud Fallon from the icy waters of the Hudson one wintry day in 1849, Daniel Quinn, a twelve-year-old orphan, is thrust into a bewildering, adventure-filled journey through the tumult of nineteenth-century America. As he quests after the beguiling and elusive Maud (she's fourteen), Daniel will witness the rise and fall of great dynasties in upstate New York, epochal prize fights, exotic life in the theater, visitations from spirits beyond the grave, horrific battles between Irish immigrants and the "Know-Nothings," the vicious New York draft riots, heroic passages through the Underground Railroad, and the bloody despair of the Civil War.

William Kennedy's Albany Cycle of novels reflect what he once described as the fusion of his imagination with a single place. A native and longtime resident of Albany, New York, his work moves from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, chronicling family life, the city's netherworld, and its spheres of power--financial, ethnic, political--often among the Irish-Americans who dominated the city in this period. The novels in his cycle include, Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, Ironweed, Quinn's Book, Very Old Bones, The Flaming Corsage, and Roscoe.

Review Quotes

Praise for Quinn's Book

"Engrossing and eerily profound."--TIME

"Our history comes to us, grandiloquent and ennobled, translated by Kennedy back into a language of the heart."--The San Francisco Chronicle

"The author of Ironweed goes on magnificently, adding yet another dazzler to his Albany novels.... It's full of sur­prises, mysteries, comedy on a grand scale."--Cosmopolitan

"Kennedy has chosen to do something not only different, indeed strikingly original both in his own terms and in the context of these times, but also something as risky as can be, something adventurous and even outrageous."--The Chicago Tribune

"There is enough larger-than-life American Gothic action for any average ten novels."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"The magic in Quinn's Book is kin to that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and company."--Newsday

"Quinn's endless, apparently effortless invention dazzles like a virtuoso musician improvising .... All praise to William Kennedy for a bold departure."--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

William Kennedy, author, screenwriter and playwright, was born and raised in Albany, New York. Kennedy brought his native city to literary life in many of his works. The Albany cycle, includes Legs, Billy Phelan's Greatest Game, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Ironweed.The versatile Kennedy wrote the screenplay for Ironweed, the play Grand View, and cowrote the screenplay for the The Cotton Club with Francis Ford Coppola. Kennedy also wrote the nonfiction O Albany! and Riding the Yellow Trolley Car. Some of the other works he is known for include Roscoe and Very Old Bones.

Kennedy is the founding director of the New York State Writers Institute and, in 1993, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Literary Lions Award from the New York Public Library, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Governor's Arts Award. Kennedy was also named Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in France and a member of the board of directors of the New York State Council for the Humanities.