American Subversive: A Novel
Written by David Goodwillie
Narrated by Tavia Gilbert and David Drummond
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
So begins an extraordinary journey into the dark soul of modern America-from a back-to-the-land community in the Smoky Mountains to a Weather Underground-like bomb factory in Vermont; from Fishers Island, isolated getaway of the wealthy elite, to the hip lofts of Manhattan's Meatpacking District. American Subversive is David Goodwillie's sharp and penetrating take on the paranoia of our times-and its real, untold dangers. In examining the connection between our collective apathy and the roots of insurrection, Goodwillie has crafted an intoxicating story of two young Americans grasping for a foothold in a culture-and a country-that's crumbling around them.
With this debut novel, Goodwillie announces himself as a major new voice in American fiction. Expertly written, relentlessly suspenseful, and bitingly funny, American Subversive is both an unnervingly realistic tale of domestic terrorism and a perfectly observed portrait of Manhattan in the digital age.
David Goodwillie
David Goodwillie is the author of the novels Kings County, American Subversive, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and the memoir Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time. Goodwillie has written for the New York Times, New York magazine, and Newsweek, among other publications. He has also been drafted to play professional baseball, worked as a private investigator, and was an expert at Sotheby’s auction house. A graduate of Kenyon College, he lives in Brooklyn.
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Reviews for American Subversive
35 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I love Goodwillie's writing style (and last name…). I can't even describe it; it's effortless to read. Aidan Cole is a New York society blogger who lives the typical socialite life. Paige Roderick worked with environmental causes before getting, how should we say… side-tracked. It seems hard to believe that these two people's lives cross, but they do, and I can't tell much more without spoiling the book. Goodwillie's characters and settings are described vividly, but things never get bogged down with flowery language. I had previously read his memoir and loved it, and his first novel did not disappoint. The story sucks you in from the beginning, and the suspense grows with each chapter. It is told using two first person narratives, but both characters are drastically different, in terms of lives and voices. Their paths cross, of course, and the suspense that follows is even better than the build-up.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Well written, interesting.
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Well, this is definitely going on the list of books I would never read if I didn't have to. Some highlights:
1) multiple 1st person POV -- ugh. Just, ugh.
2) female characters are all props -- you wouldn't think this would be possible when one of the protagonists is female, but she manages to have absolutely no identity that doesn't derive from a man; it would be an impressive feat if it weren't so maddening.
3) plot makes NO LOGICAL SENSE -- especially the "romance" bits.
4) infodumps boring, tangential details, then glosses over things that might have been interesting.
Basically: I recommend this book to NO ONE EVER. The only good part was the title. ARGH. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book made me go "Wow, I never thought of things that way." Depending on circumstances that could be me or someone I know and I totally get it. Things aren't always what they seem. This is a fast paced thriller that makes you look at the label terrorist in a whole different context.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Summary: Aidan Cole is a thirty-something media blogger, spending his days moving through the hipper-than-thou scene of disaffected New Yorkers. The city is slowly returning to normal after a bombing of a downtown office building, when Aidan receives an anonymous e-mail with a picture of a pretty young woman and the message "This is Paige Roderick. She's the one responsible." Aidan knows he should call the police, but instead he sets out to investigate on his own. As he learns more and more, it seems like he understands less and less: if the e-mail is real, and not some elaborate hoax, why would this average American woman be involved in acts of terrorism? And what's going to happen to her - and him - if he gets involved?Review: This book was an intensely slow start for me. I struggled to get to page 60, and at that point, I hated both of the main characters, and still had no clear idea where the plot was going. I have extraordinarily limited patience when it comes to reading about hard-partying hipster urbanites, and I was more than ready to abandon the book if it meant not having to spend any more time with them. I decided to give the book until page 100, and if I still wasn't interested, then I'd give it up as a lost cause. However, when I picked the book up the next night, the plot finally got kick-started, and while I still didn't like the characters much, I was pulled into their story, and I read straight through to the end of the book, barely even moving except to turn pages. I'm still not sure that I even liked the story, exactly, but it sure as hell was crazy-compelling.Part of the reason that I had a problem connecting with this book was its hyper-realism. I'm normally an escapist reader, and American Subversive is the polar opposite of escapism: it's brutally critical of the modern world, and it demands that its readers wake up and take a good hard look at themselves and at our society, and a lot of what it had to say was almost uncomfortably insightful. However, the brutal criticism was pretty unrelenting. Goodwillie's scathingly critical of the current state of things, and scathingly critical of those who don't try to change the current state of things, but also scathingly critical of the ways in which everyone in this book *does* try to change the current state of things. It's a book that seems to demand something of its readers, but I'll be damned if I could figure out what exactly that something was, leaving me with a feeling like I'd just sat through a scolding I wasn't sure that I deserved. So, overall, it was an (eventually) compelling read, and an interesting change from my beaten path, but I came out the other side not feeling entirely edified or particularly hopeful. On technical grounds, it's an impressive debut novel, it just didn't work so well for me. 3 out of 5 stars.Recommendation: People who like modern (especially post-9/11) fiction or political thrillers more than I do may have an easier time of this than I did.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Paige Roderick's brother dies while serving in Iraq, and this event jars her to such an extent that first she becomes an activist, and then a revolutionary. She joins a small cell that plans Actions, i.e. bombings, which are not intended to kill, but to draw attention to the target, which would be some corporation, and thereby expose its misdeeds, and through that process alone put a stop to them. Aidan Cole is a thirty-something Manhattanite, living a self-absorbed life, working as a blogger who comments on the media and partying the nights away with others of his ilk. He is friends with a rich South American playboy, and he is in the middle of breaking up with his girlfriend, although he does not yet fully realize that. Then, out of the blue, he gets an anonymous e-mail identifying a culprit in a recent terrorist bombing in New York City. Attached to the email is a photograph, showing a young woman, Paige Roderick, as she is crossing the street outside the site of the bombing, the Barney's building. Instead of immediately posting the picture on his blog, he decides to investigate and try to find the woman. The book then describes how this decision affects Aidan's life. At the beginning of the book, we see that he and Paige are in hiding in separate locations, fugitives from the authorities, and what we are reading has been written by each of them to explain how they got to that point. The book alternates between the writings of each of them, occasionally jumping forward to showing Aidan in hiding.I found the book very enjoyable and engrossing. The only problem that I have with it was that it occasionally becomes a monologue, with one of the characters speaking at length to describe a history or to state a political viewpoint. I found this technique to be annoying.