Forever

by MR Pete Hamill

[wyvernfriend]

I can't beat Davidadams for his review of this book so I'm not going to try, I'm just going to summarise some of the plot points and my reaction to the book.

Cormac O'Connor is living in the north of Ireland, his parents are using a different name to hide the fact that they're native irish rather than planters. His mother is also jewish. Some vaguely pagan associations with his father as well, not well detailed really. When his parents die at the hands of one of the local lords he decides to take his revenge and follows the lord to New York where he gets involved in a lot of politics and through a complex series of incidents becomes immortal, provided he stays in Manhattan.
The story skips and skims through his life and really I didn't care if he lived or died by the end. There didn't appear to be any real depth to the character and he regularly annoyed me, he seemed to have lived his life in a continuous groundhog day kind of way.
Not the worst book I've read but I breathed a sigh of relief when I finished it. Indeed if I had borrowed it from a library I would have given it back without much qualm. I wouldn't rush out to find another book by Pete Hamill either.