Customer Reviews

Democracy (Pavanne Books)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Didion has a unique, powerful style. It reminds me of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 in its irony and suppressed rage, but Didion's prose is just so elegant. "Democracy" is both a romantic and a political novel, with both themes beautifully intertwined. This is an exceptional work. Didion's heroine reminds one of several of her other heroines, coming from a background where she is expected to be an adornment and where the strains of playing that role take a psychological toll. In Democracy, the heroine is psychologically stronger than in some of the other novels, plays on a larger canvas, and is ultimately able to more successfully express her inner strengths and morality. Interestingly, Didion injects herself into the novel as the narrator, and yes, Didion did work briefly at Vogue, and of course was both a reporter and a novelist. My guess is that the conceit of starting to write one novel, and ultimately writing a different one, was probably accurate.

Joan Didion's "Democracy" is worth reading for the style alone. There's nothing to match Didion at the top of her form, as in "A Book of Common Prayer" or "Salvador", and "Democracy" is as good as anything she's ever written: austere, pitiless, unblinking, tinged with irony dry as the finest gin. Here we are in Hawaii in 1975 as Saigon falls and the American Century unravels, and Didion moves back and forth between a tropic lushness and the chaos in Vietnam, telling a love story that reaches back to the days when Honolulu was still a dreamy colonial outpost and outward to the ugly side of American electoral politics. She sums up her characters-- and her countrymen --near the end: believers in the "American exemption", believers in the idea that individual wishes and efforts can change a world shaped by too much history and too many faceless forces. She gives us Jack Lovett, too, her central male figure-- player and fixer in the clandestine games of the Cold War in Asia, lover of the teenaged Inez Victor, rescuer of Inez's drug-addled daughter, who runs off in April 1975 to be a waitress in Saigon. "Democracy" should be paired with Didion's "The Last Thing He Wanted"--- both letter-perfect treatments of love and family and the frayed edges of empire.

Didion's style in this book is truly arresting. At points, the reader is just stopped, in consideration of what the author has just revealed. Her book is interesting in its style. She does in fact talk to the reader several times through the book. She develops the characters in glimpses and the plot as well; as she moves through the story of her protagonist's life. She describes a prior attempt at Democracy, that did not come to fruition. And she mixes in a dash of American Democracy and its elections and nominations.

Set in circa 1975 mostly, it speaks about the end of the Viet Nam war, but through the side long glances of people who were involved, but not talking about the fighting. Her depiction of the era and the locales is very precise, despite its exposition in little bits and pieces. The story is gripping, although not suspenseful. The book surely does exhibit Didion in one of her best written fictional books.

As a journalistically styled piece the book does a very fine job of helping people start to understand the ephemeral attitude of the people and the country in the days of the war. Disillusionment abounds. Death and destruction and human suffering are implied, but not explicitly discussed. And the message, that of one who is always trying to find oneself, but may be lost in her own mind, is universal.

The book is especially recommended for readers who are interested in the late `60's early `70's era in America. The book is truly a fine piece of literature, surrounded by events and scenery, much more than driven by the plot. But the statement is well worth reading.

"Democracy" is a powerful, even haunting story contemporary to the 1975 U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. It follows the life of Inez Christian Victor, a US Senator's wife, who becomes disillusioned with the artificial, disingenuous world of her husband's political career. This becomes the catalyst for a personal unraveling, and ultimately, a discovery of her truer convictions. The reader is taken back and forth through Inez's past, her familial and societal conflicts, and especially her romance with Jack Lovett, an operative of a government agency dealing in arms procurement in southeast Asia in the 1950's, '60's and '70's. The cost to a culture of forgetting its history is clearly one of the main themes of the book, but there are others, all woven together in a rich tropical colored tapestry.

"Democracy" is one of my favorite novels, though for a long time I would have been hard pressed to explain exactly why. I have read it several times over the years and each time I find new things to appreciate in it. It has always seemed to me to be surprisingly moving, but as time has gone on seems now more personal, even more relevant, and for a twenty-five year old work of fiction that is impressive.

Don't expect a linear narrative, or a conventional style of writing. The book has neither. The author herself describes it as a book of "fitful glimpses" but in truth the writing is thoughtful, very tight and quite distinctive. I will always think of Inez in Kuala Lumpar, explaining why she remains there: "Colors, moisture, heat, enough blue in the air." A great Didion line, with just the right touch of romantic fatalism that admirers of her earlier work will appreciate.

Joan Didion's Democracy is more evidence that she's a writer always worth reading. I have some questions about why she chose to insert "Joan Didion" the report-writer into this story, and why she spends so much time discussing the book she decided not to write (a big epic family Hawaiian novel--but didn't James Michener or someone already do that?), but there is a really good love story here, intense and tight, with lots of gripping details about Hawaii and political campaigning

I have just finished reading this book as a selection by my book club. I've only read Didion's "A Year of Magical Thinking" and a few essays prior to this "novel". Joan should stick to essays and first person accounts. Democracy, as another reviewer stated, is a compliation of glimpses. Everything is glimpses and in order to fill it out to novel length, Didion puffs it up by adding herself as the novelist to the mix.

The novel is utterly pointless, the characters are thinly developed, even the heroine, the plot is aimless, and the timeline is staggeringly difficult to keep up with. Read something else by Joan Didion - not this.

Joan Didion's novel "Democracy," is one about American Politics and the Vietnam War, public and private live, the media, and to an extent image management. The story, however, focuses mostly on Inez Victor, the daughter of a powerful Hawaiian congressman. I personally found the book to be quite a bore, as there simply weren't many "jolts" to keep a teenager like me interested. This being said, I did enjoy a couple of things about the novel. The first would be the way that Didion inserts herself into her novels. She puts herself into the novel as a character narrating the events and inserting her own thoughts as if she was there, in the novel. I also enjoyed reading about the mysterious Jack Lovett. I felt that this character was a brilliant creation by Didion. This is simply because, although he is very close to Inez, no one ever knows what he actually does. He is described as an army officer, a man who sets up export credit programs and AID funding, and an aircraft executive. He refers to himself as a "business man." Those were probably the only two things I really enjoyed about this novel. I wouldn't recommend it as a summer reading, but if you choose to defy my wishes, then read it for stylistic analysis of Didion's writing, if anything.