"I solemnly swear to change my approach" - Jay-Z, Allure
The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin). Honestly, I was expecting a little more. You put a swastika on the cover of your novel and I want a little more strum und drang. I wanted big stories of political duplicity and eye-opening adventures into the dark heart of America (or the light). I wanted an assassination attempt. What I got was an interesting tale of a family attempting to deal when they fear their country has turned against them. It works. It just didn't blow me away.
There are limitations with presenting this complicated story through the eyes of a nine year old. As a reader, I want to go places this young boy just isn't able to go. We don't get to follow his angry cousin Alvin's adventures into the war or his older brother Sandy's trek to the midwest. We only get snippets of this larger world in which Charles Lindbergh is President and a friend of Germany during the 2nd World War. We get sidetracked by stories of sneaking around on the bus and of the odd boy who lives in the apartment beneath his family's own. Then by the time we get to the end, when America truly goes haywire, we get treated to it through this newsreel style that does little to engage us in the ways this Jewish family crumbling and clinging together has. It falls flat to me. It winds up too tidy. There is redemption that rings false. There is this fictionalized America that, despite its flirtation with the Third Reich, comes through on the other side looking not much different.
I wanted more. The story is well written and often quite compelling but if you're going to go this far, go all the way. Give me a world that resembles ours but is truly, noticeably, definably different than our own history. The Plot Against America just doesn't come through on that promise.
Meh. Mildly recommended.
Side Note: In comparison, I'm only 11 pages into Can't Stop Won't Stop and Jeff Chang has already written probably the best prose I've read all year. His non-fiction pages crackle with life and rhythm and beg to be read.