The Plot Against America
Philip Roth
Well, this book is certainly not quite what I expected. It's framed as a memoir, which must be popular as it's the second book I've read in this format in a while. I was expecting the main character to be a government official or something, but instead it is the view of a boy who is affected by a hypothetical historical turn of events. The events themselves, that of Charles Lindbergh's ascension to the presidency of the United States and the consequences felt by Jews, aren't entirely unbelievable.
However, the book loses a lot of its credibility when it reveals an actual plot twist, a conspiracy theory that could work in literature but which ultimately fails in this context. I think this is mostly due to the fact that the book reveals the major national events that occur in late 1942 in the form of newsreel recordings and before the narrator actually experiences them in his childhood. This is a major flaw. I thought that it was very sloppily done.
Here again is a book whose actual writing is quite good, but whose plot is just not working. I will even give credit to the original premise, and the conspiracy theory that motivates it. However, the way that everything jumps around chronologically just doesn't congeal to form any meaningful plot. A character will be introduced and then have a lengthy backstory. This in itself is not automatically destructive, but for some reason I don't think the method ever really worked in the novel, especially since many of the characters introduced in this way only serve very minor functions.
I expected a lot more out of this book and I've only heard good things about the author. However, I felt that this particular effort lacked any reasonable credibility and was not straightforward enough to be meaningful. I think I will try to look into something else by the author, but this particular book was sadly disappointing.
Grade: B-
Philip Roth
Well, this book is certainly not quite what I expected. It's framed as a memoir, which must be popular as it's the second book I've read in this format in a while. I was expecting the main character to be a government official or something, but instead it is the view of a boy who is affected by a hypothetical historical turn of events. The events themselves, that of Charles Lindbergh's ascension to the presidency of the United States and the consequences felt by Jews, aren't entirely unbelievable.
However, the book loses a lot of its credibility when it reveals an actual plot twist, a conspiracy theory that could work in literature but which ultimately fails in this context. I think this is mostly due to the fact that the book reveals the major national events that occur in late 1942 in the form of newsreel recordings and before the narrator actually experiences them in his childhood. This is a major flaw. I thought that it was very sloppily done.
Here again is a book whose actual writing is quite good, but whose plot is just not working. I will even give credit to the original premise, and the conspiracy theory that motivates it. However, the way that everything jumps around chronologically just doesn't congeal to form any meaningful plot. A character will be introduced and then have a lengthy backstory. This in itself is not automatically destructive, but for some reason I don't think the method ever really worked in the novel, especially since many of the characters introduced in this way only serve very minor functions.
I expected a lot more out of this book and I've only heard good things about the author. However, I felt that this particular effort lacked any reasonable credibility and was not straightforward enough to be meaningful. I think I will try to look into something else by the author, but this particular book was sadly disappointing.
Grade: B-
No comments:
Post a Comment