From Publishers Weekly
Weighing in at nearly 800 pages, Cantor's epic effort to frame the experience of growing up Jewish on Long Island with the radicalism of the '60s and '70s is a chaotic, unfocused sprawl, a book bursting with an overwhelming number of subplots, characters, tangents and the occasional illuminating episode. Cantor introduces his core Long Island peer group in the early chapters, with the most compelling sections exploring the dilemma of Beth Jacobs, an activist who escapes imprisonment after being indicted for a bombing at MIT, only to find herself incarcerated with her African-American counterpart after a robbery goes awry. Cantor then bounces back and forth between the Long Island story lines and those dealing with the African-American group of civil rights activists. Members of the huge cast of characters include Beth's longtime friend Laura, an psychoanalyst with multiple sclerosis; brilliant, scrawny comic book artist Billy Green, who transforms his friends into superheroes; hardcore militant Sugar Cane; and Jacob Battle, a more conflicted revolutionary. Cantor is an accomplished writer who churns up enough material for at least two decent novels here, and both the coming-of-age stories and the race-related material might have worked nicely as either stand-alone books or as part of an ongoing series. But in a single volume, his hyperactive plotting renders parts of the book almost unreadable. The author employed this sort of comprehensive narrative style successfully in The Death of Che Guevara, but given the familiarity of the material, the elliptical, labyrinthine nature of this book will try the patience of even his most avid fans.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Library Journal
Can a novel be too well realized? Can it give too much detail, insight, and elaboration? These are questions to be asked of Cantor's epic folio, which starts in 1960 with a group of largely Jewish grade schoolers on Long Island learning the lessons of the Holocaust, then takes them through the radical decades of Freedom Summer, Weathermen, Black Power, bombs, and courts-as both defenders and defended. Meanwhile, the group is immortalized through comic-book characters drawn in their image by another member of the group (Billy Bad Ears, in the comic), a genius and best-selling cult favorite. In Cantor's third novel (after The Death of Che Guevara and Krazy Kat), the writing is top-notch, the situations well realized, and the subject interesting. The result will appeal to those who share the book's demographic. As for those outside of it, many will start, but few will finish, as the book overwhelms our need to know. Inside this book there may be a stunning 450-page novel waiting to emerge. For large fiction collections.
Robert E. Brown, Minoa Lib., NY Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
