True Believers: A Novel (2012)

It was just ok. It took way too long to get to a simple point, and I thought that the central crisis of the book was sort of hokey. They were stupid - incredibly so. But I thought Karen's calculated virtuous streak was, if anything, disgusting. She knew she would not be prosecuted for it. She knew there would be no point to it other than her own necessity to know what happened. She did that, but she had no real reason to write the book. Will she write another memoir about the fact that this possible book caused one member of their team to suicide in a gruesome fashion? I did not like the way that was swept under the carpet. This just makes the central character unrelatable and unsympathetic. ( )

This was a slow read. Interesting story that could've been about 100 pages shorter. Some of the subplots made the story drag. ( )

Karen, a prominent law professor is writing a book describing her involvement in a plot to kill LBJ in the 60's when she was a campus radical. Two of her co-conspirators are her childhood friends, Alex and Chuck (who becomes her boyfriend) and Buzzy who they meet at Harvard/Radcliffe. As teenagers, she, Alex and Chuck engaged in fake James Bond exploits, then at university became anti-Vietnam activists. The plan is stopped when LBJ announces that he's not running again but Chuck insists he's going through with it and disappears. The big reveal is who, besides Alex, is a CIA informer and it turns out to be her - she is responsible for Chuck's murder by CIA agents. Also, Buzzy, a very successful lobbyist, kills himself when she tells him about the book. Short on guilt, long on analysis of radicals then and now. Started reading but lost book and had to listen to it instead - annoying reader made it less enjoyable but still good although did not like Karen but wasn't supposed to. ( )

OMG! Talk about needing a good editor. This book was way too long with sections of boring irrelevant details. It was only mildly interesting, too confusing with all the government agencies, and there was supposed to be a surprise ending but I didn’t find it so. Can’t understand why reviewers and readers like it. I think some of it was the fact that it took place in the sixties and the baby boomers waxed nostalgic. 8/15 ( )

True Believers is a first-person account of an interesting life. As someone who was born in the late 1970s, the parts of this book that delve into the 1960s and 1970s were interesting and educational for me, though I couldn't entirely relate. Like Kurt Anderson's Heyday, this is an ambitious, wide-ranging (and somewhat messy) novel. Overall, this was an enjoyable read.