True Believers: A Novel [Hardcover]

Kurt Andersen (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 10, 2012

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
The Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle

In True Believers, Kurt Andersen—the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Heyday and Turn of the Century—delivers his most powerful and moving novel yet. Dazzling in its wit and effervescent insight, this kaleidoscopic tour de force of cultural observation and seductive storytelling alternates between the present and the 1960s—and indelibly captures the enduring impact of that time on the ways we live now.

Karen Hollander is a celebrated attorney who recently removed herself from consideration for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her reasons have their roots in 1968—an episode she’s managed to keep secret for more than forty years. Now, with the imminent publication of her memoir, she’s about to let the world in on that shocking secret—as soon as she can track down the answers to a few crucial last questions.

As junior-high-school kids back in the early sixties, Karen and her two best friends, Chuck and Alex, roamed suburban Chicago on their bikes looking for intrigue and excitement. Inspired by the exotic romance of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, they acted out elaborate spy missions pitting themselves against imaginary Cold War villains. As friendship carries them through childhood and on to college—in a polarized late-sixties America riven by war and race as well as sex, drugs, and rock and roll—the bad guys cease to be the creatures of make-believe. Caught up in the fervor of that extraordinary and uncanny time, they find themselves swept into a dangerous new game with the highest possible stakes.

Today, only a handful of people are left who know what happened. As Karen reconstructs the past and reconciles the girl she was then with the woman she is now, finally sharing pieces of her secret past with her national-security-cowboy boyfriend and activist granddaughter, the power of memory and history and luck become clear. A resonant coming-of-age story and a thrilling political mystery, True Believers is Kurt Andersen’s most ambitious novel to date, introducing a brilliant, funny, and irresistible new heroine to contemporary fiction.

Praise for True Believers
 
“Funny, fiendishly smart.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“A great American novel.”—Vanity Fair
 
“A big, swinging novel . . . [a] colorful story . . . This could be the most rambunctious meeting your book club will have for a long time.”—The Washington Post
 
“Intelligent and insightful . . . Think The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Atonement, a ’60s-era female Holden Caulfield. . . . Andersen is an agile storyteller. . . . [There are] witty, occasionally even profound observations about the ’60s and today.”—USA Today
 
“So epic: Part thriller, part coming-of-age tale, the novel alternates between the present and the 1960s, capturing some of America’s most pivotal moments in history like a time capsule.”—Marie Claire
 
“This is an ambitious and remarkable novel, wonderfully voiced, about memory, secrets, guilt, and the dangers of certitude. Moreover, it asks essential questions about what it means to be an American and, in a sense, what it means to be America.”—Booklist (starred review)
 
“Fascinating and wisely observant.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Funny, fiendishly smart.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“A great American novel.”—Vanity Fair
 
“A big, swinging novel . . . [a] colorful story . . . This could be the most rambunctious meeting your book club will have for a long time.”—The Washington Post
 
“Intelligent and insightful . . . Think The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter and Atonement, a ’60s-era female Holden Caulfield. . . . Andersen is an agile storyteller. . . . [There are] witty, occasionally even profound observations about the ’60s and today.”—USA Today
 
“So epic: Part thriller, part coming-of-age tale, the novel alternates between the present and the 1960s, capturing some of America’s most pivotal moments in history like a time capsule.”—Marie Claire
 
“This is an ambitious and remarkable novel, wonderfully voiced, about memory, secrets, guilt, and the dangers of certitude. Moreover, it asks essential questions about what it means to be an American and, in a sense, what it means to be America.”—Booklist (starred review)
 
“Fascinating and wisely observant.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
 
“Exhilarating . . . sober, thoughtful . . . accessible and often funny . . . an absorbing, well-told tale.”—Fortune

About the Author

Kurt Andersen is the author of the novels Heyday and Turn of the Century, among other books. He writes for television, film, and the stage, contributes to Vanity Fair, and hosts the public radio program Studio 360. He has previously been a columnist for New York, The New Yorker, and Time, editor in chief of New York, and co-founder of Spy. He lives in Brooklyn.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Random House; First Edition edition (July 10, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400067200
• ISBN-13: 978-1400067206
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.3 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (107 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #280,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

KURT ANDERSEN's latest book is True Believers, a novel about youth, secrets, lies, politics, love and James Bond.

His previous novels are Heyday, winner of the Langum Prize for Historical Fiction and a New York Times bestseller, and Turn of the Century, a Times Notable Book and national bestseller. He's also the author of Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America. In addition, he is host and co-creator of the Peabody Award-winning public radio program Studio 360.

As an editor, he co-founded Spy and Inside.com and Very Short List, and served as editorial director of Colors and editor-in-chief of New York. He has been a cultural columnist for The New Yorker and Time, as well as Time's architecture and design critic. He has also created television specials and pilots, and written screenplays and stage plays. He currently contributes regularly to Vanity Fair, Time, New York and The New York Times.

He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the author Anne Kreamer.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Remembrance of things past June 2, 2012

By sb-lynn TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Brief summary and review, no spoilers.

Karen Hollender is 64 years old and has decided to write the story of her life. She was recently on a short list of candidates for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court but she has taken her name out of the running. In this novel, we find out why and what secret she has been hiding for many years.

In this wonderful book, we learn about Karen's loving, middle-class upbringing in Wilmette, Illinois. It is the early 1960's and she and her best friends Chuck and Alex are all James Bond fanatics and they like to act out clandestine and imaginative spy missions. Told in chapters that alternate between the present and the past. we follow Karen and her friends as they grow up during the turbulent 1960's. As the war rages on in Viet Nam, Karen becomes more radicalized and politicized as so many did during that time. But when that radicalization includes a subversive and criminal plan, everything changes.

I have read several books about the 1960's and the counterculture movement and this may be one the best ones I've read. I thought the author nailed the descriptions of what it was like during that decade and I also thought his observations about the culture both then and today were persuasive and compelling. There were unique things about the 1960's for sure, and no doubt America did lose its innocence and change after the assassination of John Kennedy. But as this book so brilliantly shows us, much of what we thought was so exclusive to that time is more universal and relevant today as well.

This novel is not just an astute look at our culture then and now, it's also the author's shrewd observations about time and memory. Perhaps it's because I am old enough to remember Kennedy's assassination, but I felt that this book absolutely spoke to me. I have dog-eared so many pages of this novel because I thought there were so many passages that were so spot-on and so clever. I don't know if someone much younger would get as much out of this book as I did, but for me this book was just terrific. Although I thought it was a little slow-go towards the start, it soon became a page-turner for me and when I put it down I couldn't wait to pick it back up. I am writing this book at night after having just finished it, and I know I will be thinking about it for a long, long time. I can think of no higher compliment than that.

Recommended.

59 of 78 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not believable enough May 30, 2012

By switterbug TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Sixty-five-year-old Karen Hollander is an attorney with Type I diabetes, a heavyweight résumé and a Wikipedia entry. Her CV includes (but not limited to) author of four best-selling books, dean of a law school, a corporate lawyer in a powerful law firm, and U.S. Justice Department official. She's divorced, with accomplished, brilliant children, and she's devoted to her granddaughter, Waverly, a seventeen-year-old on her way to becoming a likeness of the achieving Karen (with some cute malapropisms that Karen corrects).

The book is told from Hollander's narrative perspective, as a memoir, to gradually divulge a dangerous secret surrounding her activist activities in 1967, an undisclosed event that caused her to turn down a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. This secret, she feels, has emotionally crippled her (and likely the former friends involved). Andersen's rugged skill and talent is displayed here, as he gradually develops a taut, thriller-type story that will keep you turning the pages, and echoes a past that surely is more passionate than its future.

If you enjoy stories about the 1960's hippie/activist days, you will revel in the revolutionary spirit of the counterculture era--protests, sit-ins, intellectual debates--together with thought-provoking ideas that pad the story, but add to the theme and successfully loop into the narrative. Additionally, Karen's 007-role-playing missions with her best friends, Alex and Chuck, define her pre-college years and add colorful background to the story. Their friendship was cemented during these risky and adventurous events that began in Wilmette, near Chicago, and peaked as Harvard freshmen. She now lives in LA.

Because of Andersen's tight pacing and architecture, I was engaged in the story. But I was unconvinced with the incongruous voice of Karen. Hollander's résumé and leanings have all the makings of a Hillary Clinton (inside a lean size-six resembling a 45-ish Julie Christie). At Hollander's age and achievements, one would expect her memoir's tone to be serious, mature, and intellectually sober, and to reflect the weight of the story.

Instead, her narrative voice/tone is an octave too high and young and much too coy and chipper for her judicial years and leadership, not to mention the import of subject matter and this burdensome secret. Of all the voices for Andersen to imbue in Hollander, this contradictory one undermines the gravity of the story and the magnitude of her character. Try to imagine Clinton personifying a college freshman on a sleepover, terrified of spilling the awful travesty of Spring Break. No way! Yes, way! And Hollander periodically speaks in colloquialisms like "grok." Additionally, she states that she is responsible "to a fault" yet she doesn't lock her computer documents??

"Living here [in LA] makes me feel as if I'm always getting away with something. What I now clearly see--note to book clubs" [italicized]--"is a major theme of my life." Too coy.

The seminal incident of her life happened when Karen was 18, but she is telling it as a fully mature and accomplished woman. It is gnawing to hear her narrate a memoir in a teenaged tone, bright with a cavalier spirit that alternates with calculated contrition. Moreover, there's too much authorial intrusion as apology--we are coaxed to acknowledge her self-blame, but her role as a martyr is too canny and deliberate.

Hollander's past is part of the suspension of disbelief, and you are supposed to go along with its historic chronicle of heady 60's activism. However, Hollander's supernova status renders the rest of the characters pale and straw in comparison, as if they were set up primarily to prop up Karen's immeasurable gifts. She hooks up with an ex-boyfriend, who she hasn't actually seen in a decade, because he has the highest form of secret government clearance, "my friend the senior national security and intelligence-community apparatchik," as she needs his acquisitive talents to provide secret documents to her. It was too fantastic to accept that he would so easily defy his coda to help her.

The author of the ripe and historical Heyday, a resonant novel of the 19th century with a credible female protagonist, is not as successful in drawing out a lead woman character in this second novel. It's hard to be a true believer, but the tight plot and vivid walk down memory lane convinced me of its earnest desire, if not its plausibility. The wobbly credibility was eased by moments of sensitive introspection about a time that is now too often remembered with bumper sticker slogans and vintage fashion. The heart of the story--of a woman who dares to tell the truth in 2013, an era of avatars and fabrications, Facebook and Twitter--and risk her spotless professional legacy--managed to almost balance the false notes with an exuberant belief in itself.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Apple pie and political dissent June 8, 2012

By The Ginger Man VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

While True Believers is a quick and enjoyable read, it also raises serious issues through the experiences of its main characters. In brief, the novel explores the feelings of a current member of the legal establishment who decides to write a tell all memoir about her flirtation with an act of ultimate political dissent in the sixties. Throughout this process, Karen Hollaender muses upon the responsibilities of an individual as part of a civil society which may be engaging in immoral actions as well as the need to expiate personal guilt (and the relationship of that need to Catholicism). Hollaender's moral/political journey also illustrates continuity in American life as well as how the character of an individual changes (and stays the same) as she/he ages.

Fiction and non-fiction narratives of "The Sixties" continue to be met with the same political polarization that characterizes discussions of social issues in 2012. True Believers tries to get both sides to examine the decision to dissent more impassively. The novel demonstrates how a child of the sixties transitions from obsessive fan of super policeman James Bond to potential political terrorist and back to supportive citizen. Karen Hollaender goes as far as to argue that she was never un-American. She thinks of herself as "anti-American, maybe, from age sixteen to nineteen" and describes her planned act of political terror as "a hell-bent, self-dramatizing, wildly optimistic improvised do-it-yourself scheme to improve the sinful world." She submits her final self-judgement as both a defense and explanation of her actions: "For those three months of 1968, we embodied that part of the American character that has troubled and scared me ever since...For better or worse, in 1968, I think we were very American. Terribly American." At the same time, Hollaender feels the need both to confess and to perform penance for her past intentions.

Another underlying theme of this book is the way in which personal identity and memory can be defined or distorted by narratives in popular culture. True Believers adds to this ongoing popular culture narrative even as it tries to provide more clarity around decisions that had to be made at another point in time. Given this challenge, the book succeeds both as a novel and as a reminder of the moral complexity faced by individuals who believe they retain ethical responsibility for the outputs of the nation state of which they are a member.