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3.32 AVERAGE
3.32 AVERAGE
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Cunningham is a great writer (that The New Yorker is such a name brand doesn’t make their writers any less good), and even if you doubted it, his probing intellect is proven page and page again in Great Expectations. It’s a great pitch too: a coming-of-age novel about a young staffer on Obama’s first presidential campaign, pulled from the novelist’s personal experiences as such.
And yet despite all that, I found the book a bit duller than anything shorter than 300 pages should ever feel. The sections about the campaign are intriguing, not least because it’s fascinating to read someone who knew Obama on any kind of a personal (or even professional) level sort through that affable cipher of a man — which he does with more candor than you might expect but without revealing anything groundbreaking. The problem is more that the other half of the book is spent on reminiscences of the narrator’s young life, all of which feel true if only because they’re not particularly interesting. That feels harsh, as Cunningham writes earnestly about memories feel like they were important for him to sort through. I’m just hoping that he’s sorted through them now, and his next book can focus his gaze more fully on the wider cultural landscape that he writes so curiously about here.
And yet despite all that, I found the book a bit duller than anything shorter than 300 pages should ever feel. The sections about the campaign are intriguing, not least because it’s fascinating to read someone who knew Obama on any kind of a personal (or even professional) level sort through that affable cipher of a man — which he does with more candor than you might expect but without revealing anything groundbreaking. The problem is more that the other half of the book is spent on reminiscences of the narrator’s young life, all of which feel true if only because they’re not particularly interesting. That feels harsh, as Cunningham writes earnestly about memories feel like they were important for him to sort through. I’m just hoping that he’s sorted through them now, and his next book can focus his gaze more fully on the wider cultural landscape that he writes so curiously about here.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Pretty fun to read, interesting coming of age story, sometimes a bit slowed down because of the personal stories in between. Overall a good read!
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Just such delicious prose and excruciating detail about the promise and hope and ambivalence and mundanity of an electoral campaign, even Obama’s
Thought this book would be about the hustle of working on a presidential campaign for the first black president but 45 pages in it just keeps veering off into tangents about central park or a renoir painting, or a stained glass of Moses. It’s hard to see how this has anything to do with the plot and I stopped caring at Moses.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No