Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - Anthem

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Anthem by Noah Hawley

3 reviews

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:

Teenagers are committing suicide because of something supernatural. (A11)
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.

Content Warnings

asquareclaire's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective tense fast-paced

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

5.0

Warning: Between the gratuitous violence and coverage of many dark topics, this may not be for everyone. I'd maybe liken it to philosophy that reads like a Chuck Palahniuk novel.

Halfway through, I still wasn't sure if I liked this book - I even considered putting it down altogether. Having finished it, however, I will be immediately recommending it to friends & probably buying a few copies to give out.

"Anthem" is right.

Content Warnings

ashleysbookthoughts's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

2.5

I loved Hawley’s book, Before the Fall. So when I saw that he had a new novel coming out that was kind of a dystopian critique of America, I was excited. The jacket description of this book is bananas, but it begins as a compelling, insightful critique of America and how divided we’ve become.

But then it devolves into a bit of a mess. I think I get what Hawley was trying to do. He’s attempting to satirize the current state of America. But I think his point and his narrative get bogged down by the fact that he’s trying to do too much. There’s no issue that isn’t included. We get everything: the political divide, climate change, opioid epidemic, social media, COVID, the Me Too movement, Q-Anon, gun violence, the war in Afghanistan, and more. There’s even a Jeffrey Epstein type character.

To his credit, Hawley acknowledges within the text that the world he created is “ridiculous,” but his points still come across as heavy-handed. It isn’t helped by the dialogue, which is often clunky. There are too many metaphors; people don’t talk like this.

Somewhere in here, though, is a good story. I was invested throughout and anxious to see where it was going. Unfortunately, the problem, to quote from the book: “Simon sighs. It’s all so vague.”

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