{"id":331065,"date":"2025-12-05T08:30:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T08:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/entertainment\/books\/blasts-from-the-past-dreamland-by-kevin-baker-1999\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T08:30:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T08:30:12","slug":"blasts-from-the-past-dreamland-by-kevin-baker-1999","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=331065","title":{"rendered":"Blasts from the Past: Dreamland by Kevin Baker (1999)"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\"Cover\"Cover\n<\/picture>\nThis is the latest in a series of occasional posts<\/a> featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could.<\/p>\n

I have a rather tattered proof of Dreamland<\/em> which I\u2019m pretty sure was given to me by a rep in my last bookselling year. I remember being enthralled by it right from the start, despite being wary of its chunkster proportions.<\/p>\n

Largely set in the eponymous Coney Island amusement park, Kevin Baker\u2019s novel takes its readers into New York\u2019s underworld at the turn of the nineteenth century with observations from bemused onlookers, Freud and Jung, occasionally thrown in which really shouldn\u2019t work but it does. Russian stowaway turned gangster Kid Twist makes a big mistake when he takes a shovel to Gyp Blood\u2019s head. Gyp is driven by hatred, ruthless and well-connected. When Kid falls for Esther, a fire brand trade unionist, he unknowingly compounds his error: Esther is Gyp\u2019s sister, up there on a pedestal as far as her brother\u2019s concerned. Kid and Esther\u2019s story is set against a background of corruption so deep that no one can make a move without catching the eye of gangster politician Big Tim Sullivan, controller of every brothel and racket in the Bowery.<\/p>\n

Baker deftly keeps control of the many threads which run through this ambitious, sprawling excellent novel many of whose characters are drawn from New York\u2019s history. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever come across another book by him since this one, despite being on the lookout for years. Sadly, it looks like Dreamland<\/em>\u2019s out of print in the UK but if I\u2019ve whetted your appetite, I\u2019m sure you can pick one up online.<\/p>\n

What about you, any blasts from the past you\u2019d like to share?<\/p>\n

You can find more posts like this here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. I have a rather tattered proof of Dreamland which I\u2019m pretty sure was given to me by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":331066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[157023,3121,4920,94328,65675,13772,157024],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-331065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-american-historical-fiction","tag-baker","tag-blasts","tag-dreamland","tag-granta-books","tag-kevin","tag-kevin-baker"],"yoast_head":"\nBlasts from the Past: Dreamland by Kevin Baker (1999) - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=331065\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blasts from the Past: Dreamland by Kevin Baker (1999) - 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