Reviews

Anthem by Noah Hawley

brodego's review against another edition

dark reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

oreojakesters's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

greatlibraryofalexandra's review

dark funny tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Tough to rate, this one! Comments that it has Stephen King vibes ring so true - it's bizarre, disturbed, mystical, gritty, and the motif that focuses on children is definitely reminiscent of his work. In a tongue-in-cheek way, for me, it's also reminiscent of his work because I found it to be strikingly good at some points and outright drudgery at others. 

I'd say for the first half of this book, I was so intrigued by the plotline and the themes: cynicism and sarcasm and irony and brutal irreverence mixed with sharp reflection on the world we live in and storylines so yanked from the headlines that it was both hair-rising and unoriginal in an annoying way. I liked the pace, and the exploration of our growing anxiety and malaise as a nation through the vehicle of a youthful suicide epidemic, juxtaposed against the way the parents struggled continuously to find out the "cause" while ignoring the obvious signs of illness. 

The second half...well, there it often just devolved into messiness that didn't really always work for me. It seemed to literally lose the plot, and I found it took on preachy, pretentious "Parable of the Sower" vibes that had me rolling my eyes and starting to skim read - points were made and then repeated to an ad nauseum, and it felt like Hawley had decided (again, halfway through the book) that his readers were idiots, when in the first half he had trusted their intelligence. 

It has a lot of the same elements as Eluetheria, Lord of the Flies, The Stand, It, and Parable of the Sower, and my feelings about all of those books run the gamut from love to hate, so this is a solid 3.5 for me, but definitely a highly readable and enjoyable one. It could have made more of an impact on my if it was shorter and subtler, and if it had not fallen into the trap of beating the reader over the head with the metaphor. 

weelilbit's review

If I wanted page after page of poorly written similes about why "cis-gender, nonbinary" (yes, hyphen in the wrong fecking word) are new appellations and using them improperly gets you shot down on the internet, I'd spend more time on Reddit and do a deep dive into 4Chan.

I'd really like to believe this book has more to offer than a hypersexual Black girl as the only POC in a mental illness retreat and two neo-Republicans raising kids in Brooklyn, but alas... 76 pages in and it's reading like a conservative's wet dream. No thanks.

I'd be very, very curious to see a BIPOC take on this book (or, at least the first 80 or so pages) but wouldn't dare ask any of my own friends to do so because this read as such a hateful piece of prose (and not even well written prose at that!) that I think I'll be waiting a while.

I agree with the other reviewer who said that it felt like someone who wanted to write a book full of slurs just to call it "satire". No.

znorth's review against another edition

challenging dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

Anthem by Noah Hawley desperately tries to be a challenging,  edgy commentary on the current state of politics and people in the United States. Anthem covers many serious topics with little to no nuance or strong message to leave the reader with at the end.
 

Let's start with what this book is marketed to be:

Something is happening to teenagers across America, spreading through memes only they can parse.

At the Float Anxiety Abatement Center, in a suburb of Chicago, Simon Oliver is trying to recover from his sister’s tragic passing. He breaks out to join a woman named Louise and a man called The Prophet on a quest as urgent as it is enigmatic. Who lies at the end of the road? A man known as The Wizard, whose past encounter with Louise sparked her own collapse. Their quest becomes a rescue mission when they join up with a man whose sister is being held captive by the Wizard, impregnated and imprisoned in a tower. 

Right off the bat, Anthem presents itself as two very different books. The first part reminded me of The Measure by Nikki Erlick. The second seemed similar to The Institute by Stephen King. I was interested to see how the two concepts would work together. The publisher's description does not tell you about the American Civil War that breaks, the massive climate disasters, the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the many points in time when the author breaks to monologue about the state of the world as he sees it. The description fails to give the reader a clear picture of the book.

For the first quarter of the book, there are two main ideas:

1. Teenagers are committing suicide because of something supernatural. (A11)
2. Teenagers are committing suicide because the world is a mess and they feel that hope is lost.

Anthem throws out those ideas for something else.

Right-wing extremists attack the congressional building and state houses across the U.S starting a state of anarchy and civil war. The suicide epidemic and A11 are pushed to the background in favor of an attempt at societal commentary. The West Coast is a sea of fire and smoke.

Every crisis you can think of is happening at the same time and is amplified by 10. I get that Hawley was attempting to shock the reader with a dystopian future that is uncomfortably close to the current state of affairs. I also understand that the complete tonal shift is, I hope, supposed to happen to really drive the point home. Unfortunately, the end result feels like two entirely different books that ended up in the same manuscript. One of those two books is in the publisher's description, the other is not.

For the most part, I enjoyed this book. What ruined it was the random interludes of author's commentary on the state of the world, the overly descriptive violence, and how disjointed this book was. There is an entire section where Hawley stops the book to tell you that he is sorry for how grim the world he made is but that he's just doing his job as the author. The descriptions of gun violence are overly detailed and give description of bullet sizes entering and exiting parts of bodies. Graphic descriptions of viscera, blood, and internal organs after injury. I get that the nation has been thrown into anarchy and that violence is the state of anarchy. Those descriptions were never necessary to the plot.

Surely the characters are this books saving grace right? Not really. The characters are monoliths. Louise is a 15 year-old black girl that grew up in a broken home in a suburb of a large U.S. city. She's a child who has been sexualized by every man around her, so that must become her identity and tool to make her story move forward to its conclusion. Simon is a leaf in the wind being blown from one plot point to the next by whatever apocalyptic tragedy Hawley throws at him. Most of the other characters are hidden behind code names. The only character I liked was Duane, and he had almost little to no impact on the book.

Here's what I say that's positive about Anthem. It's vivid and packed with action. The world is largely believable. All one needs to do is turn on the news to see stories about Right-wing nuts doing god knows what protesting the next thing their supposed to be angry at, or news about wildfires. There is a reflection of anxiety in these pages that is very real and present. If that were the thesis of this novel from the start, I'd rating this higher. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Cursing, Racial slurs, Classism, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicide, War, Addiction, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Torture, Trafficking, Violence, Alcohol, Child abuse, Death, Abandonment, Death of parent, Deportation, Forced institutionalization, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Drug use, Gaslighting, Gore, Gun violence, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Kidnapping, Pandemic/Epidemic, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Fatphobia, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, and Xenophobia

david_brent's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Eating disorder, Murder, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Forced institutionalization, Gun violence, Pregnancy, Self harm, and Violence

sugarbowl's review

adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

quinndm's review

4.0

This is not just a book, it is an experience and an experience I won’t soon forget. The story is heavy, it is scary, and it is traumatic because it is all real and all very relatable. From the start, the author talks to the reader, preparing us for what we are about to experience (and he makes a few more appearances to explain certain points or elaborate on specific decisions); not only does that help “soften” the sharp edge of this story, but it intentionally breaks that suspension of disbelief and reminds the reader to step back to comprehend what had just unfolded and to question our own involvement and complicity with everything happening around us. We aren’t just readers anymore; we are accomplices, and, as such, we, too, need to make choices once we finish that last page.
This book is about a writer trying to understand life today and trying to comprehend the life he is leaving for his child. And I got to join that journey.

jhoffmann's review

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

amwatt226's review

4.0

This book integrates a lot of our current politics and the state of global warming, etc. It was a hard and heavy beginning, and I took a 4 month break because I wasn't in the right head space to begin it. After coming back to it, the book was still heartbreaking but also entertaining and hopeful. Ultimately, I think the story was wonderful but it did not provide an escape from reality.