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3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A memoir-esque novel about politics, navigating your mid twenties, and religion is basically my dream book. Obviously I really wanted to love this book, but unfortunately a lot of it just fell flat. The story moved too quickly and unswiftly between David’s current life working on Obama’s 2008 campaign and his reflections on his past and the things he learns along the way. The story about his campaign was interesting, and his reflections were very insightful and beautifully written, but it was often unclear when he moved between the two and it made the story hard to follow. The ending of the book was also somewhat unsatisfactory and I was left wondering what the point of it all was.
My main critique of the book, however, was not in its content but its style. I have never seen so many punctuation-ridden, paragraph long, run on sentences since I read Kant in my college philosophy classes. I often had to reread sentences several times to understand them because one sentence would literally contain 5 separate clauses.
With all that being said, the reflection aspect of this book, specifically the spiritual/religious aspect was beautiful. Cunningham perfectly captures how it feels to try to discover, understand, and invent yourself as a young and newly independent adult— to straddle belief and disbelief, and find purpose in a world that seems at best cruel, and at worst meaningless.
My main critique of the book, however, was not in its content but its style. I have never seen so many punctuation-ridden, paragraph long, run on sentences since I read Kant in my college philosophy classes. I often had to reread sentences several times to understand them because one sentence would literally contain 5 separate clauses.
With all that being said, the reflection aspect of this book, specifically the spiritual/religious aspect was beautiful. Cunningham perfectly captures how it feels to try to discover, understand, and invent yourself as a young and newly independent adult— to straddle belief and disbelief, and find purpose in a world that seems at best cruel, and at worst meaningless.
i had great expectations...about this book!
but maybe i just liked the cover.
the marketing of this book that reached me was of the "a novel of our time from a refreshing new voice" variety, when what this actually is, as far as i can tell, is "autobiographical."
this is not just a work of fiction about working on the campaign of the first Black president, but more like a long essay from an author who worked on obama's first campaign about what that was like, with some thoughts on faith tossed in.
almost all of the identifiable details in this down to speech transcripts can be googled and determined to be true to life, and while some names have been changed, some haven't — cornel west is a character whose lengthy and frequent criticisms of the president are often dismissed because he wasn't invited to the inauguration. (wonder how he thought of that!)
i really love metafiction, and i enjoy the experience of wondering if something feels so vibrant and real because it is, a moment rendered from a life rather than one created from a thought.
but i didn't have those feelings here. i didn't find descriptions of emotion or lines of thinking that made me catch my breath.
i was mostly like, well, i guess the author did have this kind of awkward moment with obama in the street in new york. he did go to columbia, after all.
anyway. that's a lot of complaining about what wasn't the real problem anyway.
this book has a lot of threads — conversations on race, on politics, on education and wealth and class, and above all on faith — and very little interest in tying them up. these things never really come together to create any sort of consistent theme, let alone some kind of message. i read this whole book, and often didn't dislike doing so, and yet i came away like "okay. why did we do that?"
in other words, the problem here is not that this book is so true to life, but that that dedication to reality extends to its significance. this is as hard to find meaning in as any given 6 month period of human life...which does not make for a very fulfilling reading experience.
bottom line: bummer.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
but maybe i just liked the cover.
the marketing of this book that reached me was of the "a novel of our time from a refreshing new voice" variety, when what this actually is, as far as i can tell, is "autobiographical."
this is not just a work of fiction about working on the campaign of the first Black president, but more like a long essay from an author who worked on obama's first campaign about what that was like, with some thoughts on faith tossed in.
almost all of the identifiable details in this down to speech transcripts can be googled and determined to be true to life, and while some names have been changed, some haven't — cornel west is a character whose lengthy and frequent criticisms of the president are often dismissed because he wasn't invited to the inauguration. (wonder how he thought of that!)
i really love metafiction, and i enjoy the experience of wondering if something feels so vibrant and real because it is, a moment rendered from a life rather than one created from a thought.
but i didn't have those feelings here. i didn't find descriptions of emotion or lines of thinking that made me catch my breath.
i was mostly like, well, i guess the author did have this kind of awkward moment with obama in the street in new york. he did go to columbia, after all.
anyway. that's a lot of complaining about what wasn't the real problem anyway.
this book has a lot of threads — conversations on race, on politics, on education and wealth and class, and above all on faith — and very little interest in tying them up. these things never really come together to create any sort of consistent theme, let alone some kind of message. i read this whole book, and often didn't dislike doing so, and yet i came away like "okay. why did we do that?"
in other words, the problem here is not that this book is so true to life, but that that dedication to reality extends to its significance. this is as hard to find meaning in as any given 6 month period of human life...which does not make for a very fulfilling reading experience.
bottom line: bummer.
(thanks to the publisher for the e-arc)
medium-paced
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
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
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is more of a coming of age story than about an election. It took me a bit to get into it. The main character has a lot of flashbacks to memories of his life that are seemingly triggered by events happening now. Sometimes the connection seems tenuous. But after a while that didn’t bother me and I began to see these threads being pulled together. The author also writes some beautiful sentences.
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes