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A review by cattytrona
Democracy by Joan Didion
4.0
There’s something this novel does in the first 20 pages or so that I found so totally astounding and impressive and well done that I paused to reflect on what I’ve read this year and why much of it has been three stars fine, when I could be following my 1001 Books book and trendy London literary trends into excellency all the time. I’m going to put what the manoeuvre is under a spoiler bit, so that readers can just let it happen to them, but I’d like to note it here for my own reflection anyway: So the first chapter seems like a typical novel — stylised and asynchronous, sure, but we’re in the characters’ world. And then Didion introduces herself as the narrator and I’m like oh. Ohhhh. We’re going to hear this fictional story, somehow told through the gaps in Didion’s discussion of her creative process. This is such an unlikely approach, but the prose is so crisp and reflective, and it’s really an astounding bit of work. And THEN Didion mentions how she met the first of the characters, and suddenly they’re pulled into the real world, or her into the fiction, and it’s really very startling, but quite something. Quite something, in a book which is about known people, famous people, people who the press features. People who are people but also stories.
The rest of the book is okay. Possibly I’d have liked it more if the beginning hadn’t blown me away quite so much, but also if I had more of a sense of US elites and their politics between 1950 and 1975. It’s all fragment and whilst there is a whole, it’s never much bigger than the sense you get of it from the very beginning — there’s a murder and a missing girl and a presidential campaign, but not much action, and even less in the way of reveals. Which is fine, and more than that, it’s pointed and purposeful, but it left me distanced and a little unsure.
The rest of the book is okay. Possibly I’d have liked it more if the beginning hadn’t blown me away quite so much, but also if I had more of a sense of US elites and their politics between 1950 and 1975. It’s all fragment and whilst there is a whole, it’s never much bigger than the sense you get of it from the very beginning — there’s a murder and a missing girl and a presidential campaign, but not much action, and even less in the way of reveals. Which is fine, and more than that, it’s pointed and purposeful, but it left me distanced and a little unsure.