Tim O’Brien crafts through tight prose and sparking dialogue. America Fantastica takes the reader back to just before the pandemic, keeping characters at center and creating a solid build-up of suspense.

“America Fantastica” by Tim O’Brien is a novel in the fine satirical tradition. It critiques a culture so saturated with exaggerations, not to mention outright lies, that people have lost the ability to discern truth from fiction.

The “truthiness” of the rhetoric in our recent past has turned into a full-blown national case of pseudologica fantastica—hence the title. Boyd Halverson is an accomplished disseminator of misleading information. He is a compulsive serial liar. When he decides to break out of his doldrums and experience something real, he tries to rob a bank. The ensuing adventure is a helter-skelter ride through our current cultural landscape, complete with crooked cops, incompetent hit men, amoral thieves, and other practitioners of the mythomaniacal arts.

Tim O’Brien has certainly not lost his ability to turn a phrase. He hits some big themes and does so in an entertaining way. America Fantastica is nonstop craziness and compellingly flawed characters. I have been a big fan of Tim O’Brien since Going after Cacciato, and I was not at all disappointed in this new book.

Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel.

My first inclination is to declare Tim O'Brien's "America Fantastica" as a worthy continuation of "Catch 22" for the new age of Covid and Trump. O'Brien follows in the Joseph Heller tradition of using humor and satire as a prophylactic against outrage and despair. However, just as there is seemed to be no protection against Covid or Trump early in the year 2020, the characters in this novel all willingly succumb to the American pathogen of mythomania, the love of lies and lying and liars. Mark Twain would understand where O'Brien is coming from and nod approvingly. The novel depicts a representation of recognizable American contemporary personality types: an earnest reporter whose dreams have been dashed by a vengeful billionaire, a morally righteous though demonic bank teller, a psychopath who plays on his resemblance to the actor Matthew McConaughey, another psychopath who seduces women using bottles of hot sauce, and yet a third psychopath who is a relative of serial killer Richard Speck. There is too much going on in the heads of these characters, reflecting the bombardment of lies and weirdness that has overtaken the nation.

O'Brien peppers his narrative with references that might be chyrons taken directly from the Fox News. An example: "The governor of Texas had ordered women to speed up the gestation process to provide 'fresh new troops.'" Mythomania has become the new rabies, he records, too accurately.

While there will be a flood of novels based around the Covid experience, and the Trump era of American decline into impotence and madness, O'Brien has written the first great book of this period. It will go without saying that his vivid portrait of a society gone nutzoid will have no impact on the one out of every three Americans who can't or won't read books, and whose rejection of most forms of reality has led us to this desperate state.

Thanks to #NetGalley for making this advance copy of #AmericaFantastica available to me. It is an important book that I strongly recommend.

If there was ever a doubt that Tim O'Brien was only a "war writer", this books puts those doubts away to rest once and for all. The story in this book is far away as one can get, in the plot sense, from a war story. A story of potential unfulfilled, the main character is a perpetual "window shopper", always seeing good things from afar but eventually he has had enough and without much forethought, he decides to do something that will start a series of chain reactions influencing not only his own life but also the life of others around him.
In this book, the depth of insight that O'Brien has about the psyche of his characters, who are living in contemporary America is astounding. The writing is fresh and full of unique insights about the world which is exactly what one would expect from a writer as skillful as Tim O'Brien.

I adored O'brien's new novel! Fun, hilarious and a thought-provoking romp. Not since John Irving's latest have I enjoyed a novel so much; they both share a similiar perspective.

Been waiting for a new TB novel since Tomcat in Love. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

A rollicking odyssey through the wasteland that has become America. Filled with strong characters and a fast moving plot, i really enjoyed this book.

This book was a little different, it had light suspense, intrigue, mystery, kidnapping and a few crazy twists and turns! The storyline was interesting and flowed nicely! It was a decent read but a little bit hard to follow! Its worth reading but just ok for me! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!