Reviews
Achingly prescient!
** spoiler alert ** it's prescient, it's a true american story, etc. etc. it'd be an easy 5 stars for me if not for the chapter toward the end that steps out of philip's head and third-person explains everything that happens, how it resolves, lays all of the latent american fascism at the feet of a weird secret child blackmail plot (?). it both too neatly wraps up/converges the alt history with our own, and also moves away from the deeply personal lens of everything viewed through a child growing up. also why is it not just an epilogue or something? idk. i can't wrap my head around how to make it work but i'm also not an author so that ain't my job, i just know it really took the book down a level for me 4
tbh I read this for a class and really hated being forced to read it even though i’m sure I may have liked it if I had read it on my own. I hated the process of reading this book- it was super slow and seemed to lack focus in the organization at times. However, there were a lot of parts where I was struck by how beautiful the writing was. I wasn’t even going to rate it but since I watched the show and now read the book i’m giving it like a 2.5-3 because i’m nice. After reading and watching this I can say with certainty that alternate histories, while really really interesting, aren’t for me.
I found the idea behind this book fantastic. The re-writing of history usually makes very interesting reading material but I have to say this book didn't really convince me. I expected the story to focus on the alternative history scenario but it turns out to be the author's biography with some counter-history thrown in. That was quite a disappointment to me, as were the general lack of punch and slow pace of the book. To make things worse, I didn't feel for any of the characters, didn't sense their fear or anxiety. The ending was also quite a let-down. The plot device Roth uses to get the story back on track with real history feels like an easy way out and is very unsatisfactory. I'm curious as to what other readers will have to say about this book. I was disappointed because I erroneously thought this book was mainly about alternate history whereas it focused on family history. Readers with different expectations might have a different point of view so I can't wait to read future reviews for this book. To readers interested in books on a similar theme (without the biography thrown in), I'd suggest reading Fatherland by Robert Harris. It's a gripping read!
