Brian Segrave's Reviews > America Fantastica

Ouch. Where to begin reviewing this travesty of contemporary fiction. Here goes.

This book is relentlessly smug. O’Brien’s condescending tone towards the imbecilic peasantry of flyover country leaps off every page. Apparently he’s trying to accomplish two things- a madcap tale of Americana hijinks and shenanigans set around 2019 - 2020 and provide satirical insight on the fake news/conspiracy theory phenomenon.

So firstly, the tale. It’s slow moving and unnecessarily convoluted. Some characters seem to be introduced just to embody another moronic trait he believes to be widespread in today’s America. In fact all his characters are silhouettes, none will demonstrate any complexity beyond what they display on first appearance. This isn’t necessarily a problem- masters of the harebrained saga genre like Tim Dorsey or Carl Hiaasen write similarly however both of these writers treat their characters with affection and good will. O’Brien essentially sneers “check out these halfwits”.

Secondly, the social commentary. It’s cringey. Despite O’Brien’s contempt for fake news he mixes real news (the El Paso shooting for example) with news stories he invents. 71 million Americans are QAnon believing, swastika adjacent racists? That’s some heavy-handed satire. Except over the (excessive) length of the book the satire becomes doubtful and it comes across as something O’Brien genuinely believes. It appears he’s overcompensating for being late to the social justice festivities- insert Steve Buscemi “hello fellow kids” meme here.

It’s unfortunate that O’Brien’s likely final work is so poor. I enjoyed The things they carried and If I die in a combat zone. I know it’s difficult for editors to intervene radically with late career legendary writers (see Cormac McCarthy) but it would have been a favor to him for someone/anyone to say “cut the word count by 30% and dial back the snark”.

But nobody did. So we have what we have. Hard pass.