The first time I read Farnham's Freehold, I was too young for it and just tolerated it. As I matured, the novel seemed to get better, because I better understood some of the things Heinlein was saying and doing.

I think most folks today will get turned off by this story. However, it actually is good writing. Some of the points about reverse racism are telling. Actually, the book is more about several kinds of prejudice. Goodness knows that there was a lot of prejudice in the 1940s and 1950s. Some of the other reviewers have pointed to most of what seems to be happening. However, Heinlein's story does have more than one level and appearances can be decieving.

This novel, still (many years later), is not as good as Heinlein's better works. If you are new to Heinlein, start with one of his juveniles.

Written at the height of the cold war, this is a story of a family who survives a nuclear holocaust to find a world very much different than the one they were in. That's pretty much what you get on the cover. The problem is what happens after the bombs start falling.

The main character is a 60 year old married father of two, how has an affair with his daughter's friend, portrayed as a 25 year old bimbo, with no personality other than that she gushing over a man more than twice here age. Then even though he's still legally married to his wife, he declares this 25 yr old his wife even though they've known each other for 6 months.

So it was hard for me to get into this book, when I didn't care what happened the main characters. The other characters are portrayed as equally detestful.

Instead of critically examining what would happen in a post holocaust world, we are transported to a fantasy land, when a bunch of unrealistic stuff that is gross and where cannibalism and slavery are the norm.

The only reason that I gave this book two stars instead of one is that it is full of surprises, and the reader is always kept guessing what will happen next.

I am so surprised that this book ever got printed. At the beginning of the book, there is a part where a girl falls for the neighbor's dad..in a matter of a few hours after being trapped inside their shelter, she professes her love for him and he does for her in a manner that two 8th graders would. For Heinlein to harvest this story beyond the first chapter is confusing and at the same time laughable. The story zips along as if it is contrived of paper dolls and cartoon images. Not a good one, my friends. Not entertaining for a sophisticated reader. I think perhaps a 12 year old might be entertained. But my gosh,...please mom, steer your children onto something with a little meat on its bones.

I love Heinlein's early stuff. His later stuff is often preachy with the pacing of molasses in a New England winter. And then there is this.

It's the pacing of the early work, with the preaching like quality of the later, and characters I find it hard to believe Heinlein created.

None of the characters are really all that believable. They are flat and inconsistant in their behavior. Even the Ayn Rand-esque main protagonist seems poorly thought out and tiresome.

The story has many interesting points, and some of the future society ideas are very well done. But the plot that they backdrop is far less interesting. I often wondered where events were coming from. And the ending seemed self-indulgent and disappointing.

I love a great deal of RAH's work, but this isn't one of them.

It's been close to 30 years since I first read Farnham's Freehold, and I've read it once or twice since then. Don't get too wound up in "liking" Farnham; he's a bastard, you're not gonna like him. Heinlein just went through a libertarian period, and this is the result of that. The message isn't "only the strong survive, and screw everyone else", I got out of it "We make our own choices, and a responsible adult lives with the consequences of those choice and isn't a big crybaby when things go bad". Don't get me wrong, I'm not an insane libertarian (more of a Green Party/Ralph Nader sympathizer), just read it with an open mind, and not through the PC filter of today.