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1 of 2 members found this review helpful.What if
“It is Newark, NJ, 1940. Charles Lindbergh is the Republican nominee. The narrator, Philip Roth, is seven. His brother Sandy is twelve. Work, more than religion, defines their neighborhood. The children are playing a new game, I Declare War.
An amazon user wrote this on 2008-01-31.
Lindbergh campaigns in the Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh wins. Friends talk of migrating to Canada. Hitler and Lindbergh negotiate something termed the Icelandic Understanding. The Hawaiian Understanding is signed with a representative of the Japanese Imperial Government. Americans are pleased to have no war and no young men fighting.
On a visit to Washington D.C. the family has to leave a hotel where a room had been reserved in advance. The father, Herman, finds himself at the center of a heated discussion in a cafeteria. A cousin goes to Canada to volunteer to fight in the war. He returns, injured, with a leg gone. Philip becomes a sort of valet to his cousin, Alvin.
Herman Roth agonizes over the progress of the war. The mother, Bess, works in a store in an attempt to save some money for a move to Canada if necessary. Ribbentrop visits the United States in 1942. Walter Winchell calls this the end of Lindbergh's honeymoon with the American people. Lindbergh's response is low-key, taciturn, effective.
The family's older son, Sandy, receives an invitation to the White House because he has gained notoriety as an artistic member of the regime's youth organization. Sandy's father, Herman, feels that he should not go. Herman is supposed to to be transferred from the Newark office of his insurance company, Metropolitan, to one in Kentucky. This is to enable the family to participate in a program called Homestead 42.
It is for the reader to discover all of the rest of the changes, reversals of fortune, and anxieties burdening the narrator's family as events unfold. There is a section to the book termed Postscript enabling the author to give information concerning the actual people in his novel. In true postmodern fashion, the family of the narrator and the narrator himself have the same names as the author. It is clear that Philip Roth has improved upon the attempt of Sinclair Lewis in showing what America would have been like under World War II fascism.” -
1 of 6 members found this review helpful.
Well Mr. Roth may be a Pulitzer Prize winner . .
“but, this book certainly didn't seem to me to be worthy of a prize winning author.
An amazon user wrote this on 2007-08-02.
I purchased this book thinking that it would be a story about what the US might have been like if Lindbergh had become president in the early 1940s, but the 1st third of the book (and all I could read) was strictly about how this whole process affected the Jews. Now I'm sure that Jews in this country might have been treated differently with Lindbergh as president, but I was really hoping for some other topics to be covered, like how the isolationist policies would affect the US? Would we have found ourselves with no trading partners? If we had a different attitude, would Japan still have bombed Perl Harbor? If we had stayed out of the war, would we have supplied arms to either side of the conflict?
But in the part of the book I read, we focused on a Jewish family and only on that family and how their life was affected. Before I quit reading I started flipping pages and scanning to see if this book was ever going to move on to a different subject and I kept seeing phrases like " the massacre of Russian Jewry", "what their Gentile betters", "for the Jewish insurance agents", "Jew-hating Christian Front", and on and on. So, I decided that this book was not going to be what I had hoped and just stopped reading and moved on.
My star ratings:
One star - couldn't finish the book
Two stars - read the book, but did a lot of skipping or scanning. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection or search out other books by the author
Three stars - enjoyable read. Wouldn't add the book to my permanent collection. Would judge other books by the author individually.
Four stars - Liked the book. Would keep the book or would look for others by the same author.
Five stars - One of my all time favorites. Will get a copy in hardback to keep and will actively search out others by the same author.
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2 of 3 members found this review helpful.
Chilling
“This book created in me a fascinating mix of feelings. I did not want to continue reading for a variety of reasons. First of all, the plot did not seem to progress. There just was not that much activity. There was a lot of fear, a lot of suspicions, but very little action. Secondly, it did not feel good to read. It did not rise to the glorious state of joy nor sink into the painful abyss of tragedy. It felt rather like floating through a marsh. Third, I did not particularly relate to or care about any of the characters. Now, hearing that, you may be surprised that I would recommend the book, but I am recommending it for a variety of reasons. I believe that all of the aspects of the book that seem to make the reader immediately want to return it to the shelf are important and purposeful. Roth was writing a book to create the very uncomfortable feelings you will probably experience while reading, which is quite daring for an author. First, the lack of action displays how quietly and subtly changes in our government can occur. The United States may have been immune to physical attacks or hostile coup d'etats, but how does our liberty stand up to a slow and secret shift toward fascism? Second, the lack of strong feelings one way or another reveal in ourselves the ability to be persuaded to believe very different things. Lastly, the ambivalent feelings we have toward the characters also presents a strong point. Are we as Americans willing to stand up and protect people that we do not know and maybe don't even like? It is an interesting book, and I think it ought to be on many reading lists, especially in light of our current political situation. Perhaps there is no risk of the country becoming a Nazi stronghold, but what other fate waits for our nation if we do not pay very close attention to the subtle changes? ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2007-06-18. -
2 of 5 members found this review helpful.
entertaining but over the top
“The first 75% of the book, describing the rise of President Lindbergh and his relatively mild anti-Semitism, worked for me: it was entertaining yet not completely implausible. The last 25% of the book (in which Vice-President Wheeler, in real life a perfectly respectable Democrat, leads a Nazi coup, inspires anti-Jewish pogroms, and after a week is overthrown as suddenly as he is installed) was a bit too ridiculous to be plausible.”
An amazon user wrote this on 2007-03-22. -
7 of 10 members found this review helpful.
This book makes my hair stand on end.
“Let me qualify by first saying I am a huge fan of Roth's. This book is right up there with "The Human Stain" and "American Pastoral," although it has a completely different structure. It's a "what if" story revolving around FDR's loss of a third term to Charles Lindbergh, who runs on a platform that has a single issue - staying out of the war in Europe, which is accelerating because of actions by Hitler. Lindbergh's anti-Semetic agenda is feared by the Jews of Newark, and the book is told from the viewpoint of a pre-adolescent boy living there during this time. It's a chilling account of how government (lead by a popular and compelling President) can subversively take over the hearts and minds of a nation and cause havoc of a chilling nature. I'm not completely finished with the book yet, and I'm counting on Roth to give a satisfying ending. I don't think this is one of Roth's big commercial successes in the long list of his novels, but it should be. ”
An amazon user wrote this on 2006-09-04.
