A nuanced, levelheaded take on change in a country fraught with internal trouble.
In Congdon’s political thriller, a near-future America is in trouble.
The year 2036 is a tough one in the United States. Climate change has caused disasters like “aquifers drying up in the Midwest and West. Hurricanes dropping rain where it’s not needed.” Everything, from laptops to bread, is extremely expensive. Food shortages are a concern—even something as innocuous as raising chickens is technically illegal, since the grain required to feed chickens should be going to humans. One person who’s had enough of this steady decline is Tom Powell, who used to work as an attorney but now takes on carpentry jobs when he can get them. His wife, Abby, used to be a teacher; she now fixes laptops in their converted shipping container home. Tom is also the chairman of the local Revolutionary Party, a group that seeks to effect revolutionary change without resorting to violence. But when Tom gives a speech on the Fourth of July, he’s arrested for inciting a riot. (Tom had quoted a line of Thomas Jefferson’s that refers to “the blood of patriots and tyrants.”) The Revolutionary Party certainly attracts those capable of taking extreme actions, but the goal remains the alteration of the government by means of “discarding what didn’t work anymore, making it fit the times and reflect the majority.” Their message of change delights some and frightens others. When Tom decides to run for Senate, he needs to get serious about his path forward; with Abby’s desire to start a family, Tom must also take into account the safety of himself and his loved ones. With so many people “packing heat” in this world, staying safe is easier said than done.
This narrative about a dismal American future goes in directions that readers might not expect. As worked up as Tom is about the state of his country, he’s always careful to walk a fine line to keep out lunatics who might be willing to kill to enforce their vision of the future. Not that the line is an easy one to walk; Tom must regularly assure people that the cause is truly for the good of the people (the goal is always “democracy, not dictatorship”). The point is not to chase “nostalgia for the perfect past,” as others aim to do—never mind those who still hold “ice age thinking on climate change.” Both actual violence and the threat of more to come keep the narrative tense. With the environment and the economy in ruins, no ordinary people, regardless of their political views, are immune to the stressors of this world. Though the author clearly defines these issues, he reiterates them several times throughout the work; for example, characters repeatedly refer to things like a 30-year drought in the Southwest. Some passages grow wearying, dragged down by blandly chatty interjections like “Sounds good” or “Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Yet once readers are invested in Tom and his inner circle, it becomes imperative to see how things play out—a sweeping change in government will obviously not be easy or bloodless. The inclusion of some playful details, like a robot that claims to be in love, helps readers to stay engaged.
A nuanced, levelheaded take on change in a country fraught with internal trouble.Pub Date: May 31, 2024
ISBN: 9798324665524
Page Count: 307
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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