October/2015 Buddy read with Stepheny- the kidnapper with the heart of...well...lots of people probably, Jeff- the whiny prisoner with a blue crayon, and Jess- the not so innocent bystander, and two new comers (who incidentally finished waaaaaay before me) Steve and CarmenExtra Extra read all about it!THE GIVEN DAY is a historical novel set in Boston- Massachusetts and Tulsa- Oklahoma.Aiden "Danny" Coughlin, an Irish Boston Police patrolman whose father -Thomas- is an influential detective and...

The Given Day is the tale of two men, Danny Coughlin and Luther Laurence, and their families, set against the backdrop of pre-prohibition Boston.Yeah, I know that didn't really say much but it's hard to write a teaser for a 700 page historical novel.As I understand it, this was Dennis Lehane's return to the novel world after five years of doing other things, mostly writing for The Wire. And he crammed every thought he may have had in about Boston in the early 20th Century in those five years int...

Lehane is a wonderful writer. Mystic River was his opus magnus, and his Boston hard-boileds are quite good. This novel is his attempt to break out into a larger literary world. Set in the period around World War I, Lehane offers us a sense of the times, and they are not pretty. The two primary characters are Danny Coughlin, a Boston cop in a long tradition, and Luther Laurence, a poor black. There is much in here about the condition of the working man, and it is startling, even to someone who ha...

Otra maravilla del señor Dennis Lehane. No hay libro que haya leído de él que baje de las 5⭐. Me atrevería a decir sin conocer toda su obra, que está es de las más ambiciosas.A diferencia de esas otras novelas leídas (Mystic River y Golpe de Gracia), el autor nos lleva al género de novela histórica, a los convulsos años 1918 y 1919 en la ciudad de Boston -como no-.Me ha encantado como te hace partícipe de todo lo que ocurrió esos días, que no es poco. Te sientes como un ciudadano más y te echas ...

Muy buena novela. Me esperaba una novela centrada en un tema concreto y me he encontrado con una obra que repasa la historia de tres personajes: Luther Laurence, Danny Coughlin y Babe Ruth. Son hombres, pero sus vidas se forman a partir de las mujeres que los rodean. Ellas los moldean y son el centro de sus pensamientos durante todas las páginas. La novela va desde la gripe que asoló EE.UU después de la I Guerra Mundial (sus consecuencias están presentes en todo momento) hasta la huelga de la po...

Coughlin book No. 1. After being flabbergasted by how great the last book of this trilogy was, I returned back in time to read the story of the Coughlin family (Boston police centred) in the years after the First World War ended, and not only was I in awe of the story, characters and world building, but I got a history lesson, of the events leading up to and ending in the Boston Police strike of 1919!Lehane, in this book first published in 2008, makes no bounds in pointing the finger at White pr...

Esta primera entrega de la serie Danny Coughlin me ha parecido espectacular. El cambio de registro que introduce el gran escritor Dennis Lehane con respecto a su serie policiaca de Kenzie Y Gennaro (una serie que ha producido grandes novelas) es digno de reseña. Es, quizás, el mejor libro del autor que he leído hasta la actualidad.El Boston descrito en los años 18-19 del siglo pasado está tan bien elaborado, que me sentí inmerso en la época. Y los personajes son tremendamente creíbles, sin conta...

IL GIARDINO DELLE DELIZIE Progetto ardito, impresa ambiziosa, dal mio punto di vista non del tutto riuscita.Stati Uniti, dall’Ohio a Tulsa in Oklahoma, (che tre anni dopo sarebbe stata palcoscenico del più sanguinoso massacro razziale della storia americana), ma soprattutto Boston. Prima Guerra Mondiale agli sgoccioli, gli USA parteciparono a partire dal 1917: dopo aver devastato l’Europa con la spagnola, che fece più morti della peste nera, e fece più morti della stessa guerra (50 milioni per l...

The size of this novel equates to the size of this story: Mammoth. Huge. Epic. Lehane sweeps us into the world at the end of ww1 in Boston. It's a time of unrest, social uprising, anarchists, revolutionaries, immigrants, plagues and violence. It's the story of 2 men: One white - an Irish cop; one black, a house worker. Both struggling to define themselves during a turbulent time in history leading up to a given day, where change is inevitable.The stories are told In contrasting parallel with ric...

Imagine an America where the wealthy people in power rule a system in which they are free to reap enormous profits through unregulated businesses while every privilege that society can offer is given to them. These titans of capitalism underpay their employees for hard labor that lasts at least twelve hours a day in unsafe conditions with no overtime or benefits. If any of these workers dare complain, then the government will happily label them as dangerous socialist terrorists who threaten the ...