I will not be finishing this book. I was drawn to it by the title. I have a special love for California, so I was curious. However, I was turned off by it in just the first few pages. I personally do not read books with a lot of cussing or sexual content. There were too many cuss words in the first few pages of this book to continue. I also thought it was unnecessarily antagonistic towards more conservative viewpoints, and exaggerated them.

Such a great read! Highly recommend this one.

Many thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book is pitched as “for fans of Trust and North Woods” so I figured I had a 50-50 chance of loving it (I loved North Woods; I DNF Trust). The odds did not work in my favor. It had the makings of a juicy story with a braided timeline that weaved between 2024, the 1980s, and 1924.

My favorite character and period was the earliest. It featured Klaus Aaronsohn, a German-Jewish immigrant who restyles himself into Klaus von Stiegl, a mysterious German film director who finds fame and fortune in Hollywood. The 1980’s story stars artist Diane, who is Klaus’s granddaughter. She puts up with a no-good father and free-wheeling mother but manages to find artistic success. The 2024 story is about Tobey, a dropout who steals his father’s paintings. While well-drawn and interesting, I didn’t love anyone. In fact, I downright disliked some.

My criticism isn’t of the writing, which is insightful and deft and which I’d give 4.5 stars (do all authors feel compelled to curse now?), but I just needed to root for someone. The humor—the promo copy says the book is “gloriously funny”—was lost on me. I wanted this book to live up to the adjectives used to describe it—“dazzling,” “ambitious,” “daring”—but it didn’t for me.

Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for an advance copy to review.

I wanted to like this, I really tried, but I just could not make myself finish it. Jumping between characters and time frames plus the Interstitials was just too confusing and broke up the storyline. None of the characters was especially interesting or likable and the continued theme of fires and abandonment was depressing. However, the writing was excellent and I would try other books by this author, but this one was just not for me.

Didn't care for the story, didn't care for the writing, didn't care for the book. I read several chapters and then realized I was not going to finish the book, which I didn't. Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The Californians begins by explaining that in a few days Tobey Harlan, one of the book’s protagonists, will be arrested for the robbery of three multi-million dollar paintings that had long been thought lost to time. While examining key events in Tobey’s life, author Brian Castleberry is able to build a sprawling story about art and life and how it affects the book’s three key personalities: Tobey, Diane Steigl (cutting -edge famous painter, whose works will many decades later be stolen by Tobey) and Klaus von Steigl, (acclaimed silent film director and Diane’s grandfather). Their stories are expertly interwoven to form a layered and detailed narrative that explores the nuanced lives of these characters and the art that inspires them.

This is a richly described, character-driven novel that builds each protagonist’s world and different era in a compulsively readable way.
From the wonderful exploration of art and its place in our lives, to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and global warming in the present I appreciated the social commentary presented on each.

I really enjoyed the Californians and would definitely recommend it if you are looking for your next compelling read.

I received this free advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and feedback.

From the beginning of the book to the end, I was so drawn to the characters and this story. I absolutely loved this book! It was so well done.

The Californians is a multigenerational saga that chronicles the rise and decline of a family of 20th-century creatives. Spanning a century and four generations, the story technically follows two families, but they are spliced together in the second generation by irresponsibility and betrayal. These two themes shape the characters and drive the plot, along with the creative passion of protagonists Klaus and Diane, and a strong if unearned sense of entitlement on the part of several characters.

The structure of the novel is more complex than the typical family saga, and so requires a bit more effort on the reader’s part to follow it. Tobey, the fourth generation of this hybrid family, opens and closes the book in 2024. The other two point-of-view characters are Klaus, a silent film director in the 1920s and a television producer/director in the 1950s and ’60s, and his granddaughter Diane, a photorealist painter in the 1980s and a conceptual/performance artist in the 2000s. Each POV character’s story unfolds basically chronologically, but they are braided together so that the story jumps back and forth between and among time periods, with “interstitial” material between chapters in the form of a website, news clippings, letters, emails, text messages, ads, articles, a student essay, a blog post, book excerpts, reviews, and interviews. This material jumps all over the place chronologically, but with clear time markers.

As a big fan of braided narratives, I enjoyed the juxtapositions that resulted from this structure, though in the first third of the book, I did wish for a kind of genealogical chart to keep track of how the characters were related. Klaus’s son and Diane’s father, Percy, had a brief affair with Mrs. Harlan, who had been married to the star of Klaus’s best-known TV show. Percy left adolescent Diane with Mrs. Harlan and her son, Track (who became Tobey’s father). Diane and Track developed a close bond and looked upon themselves as “almost” siblings (though they drifted apart as adults), and Mrs. Harlan became Diane’s only reliable parental figure.

The most tragic aspect of this story results from absent or inadequate parenting in each generation—Klaus was an orphan, and in each generation lapses in parenting produce painful and sometimes disastrous results. All the characters are deeply flawed, and many readers may find them unlikable, but I also sympathized with each of the protagonists. Klaus is terribly self-centered, and single-minded in his creative life—which by its very nature is collaborative—to the detriment of many around him. But he can be very generous and is helplessly in love with his wife. Diane spends much of her life in avoidance and denial, but she is also kind-hearted and capable of real focus when she finds her direction. Tobey has terrible judgment and is prone to escapism, But he yearns to be a good person and is trying to find a purchase for his moral compass.

The tragedy of the story is bolstered by the terrible effects of the AIDS pandemic, climate change, and tech-enabled corruption. However, it is also balanced by the artistic accomplishments and creative fire of both Klaus and Diane. What I really liked about this tale of creative people wrestling with their demons is that the greatness of their art is not dependent on the demons. Rather, they achieved a measure of greatness in spite of the demons. What might they have achieved in nurturing rather than undermining circumstances? Inside that tragedy is also a scrap of hope.

This is an extremely ambitious, expansive novel reaching across time from the era of silent films to the current wildfires of California. It is sprawling as are the changes in American life but it was hard to understand why it was structured the way it was.

For me, the framework was flawed and made it hard for me to engage. The book opens in the present when Tobey, whose life is going nowhere, loses what little he has left to the northern California wildfires. The beginning of the book is all about Tobey’s road trip with a neighbor to his father’s house to purportedly steal 3 paintings from his father painted by his famous aunt. His thinking is that when he sells them, he will be on easy street. That storyline disappears until the end of the book.

Most of the book centers on the lives and times of two characters. The first is the story of a German Jewish immigrant who travels from New York’s lower east side to Hollywood. He reinvents himself as German aristocrat Klaus von Stiegel. He is a brilliant, successful film director who finds fame in the silent film era. When that dies, he must reinvent himself. His is a story of egotism, fame, betrayal, and loss. He is incapable of having relationships.

The other main character is Klaus’s granddaughter, Dianne. She grows up with instability. Her grifter father (Klaus’s son) abandons her and her mother suffers from manic depression. Much of the readers time with Di, as she calls herself as an adult, is in the free flowing 1980s in New York City. It is a time of easy access to drugs, AIDS, and the slide into celebrity culture. She becomes very successful both artistically and financially as a painter during this wild time.

Overall, the book seemed very uneven. The major characters were so unlikable and their actions predictable that I didn’t care what happened to them. The many minor characters kept reappearing but I’m not sure what that did to make the story more cohesive. There were also intermittent sections called interstitials that might have been there to give another view of the characters but they just pulled me further out of the story.

In its favor, I would say the idea was a good one. The California dream. Reinvention. Adapting to the times. But the execution didn’t live up to its promise. Castleberry is a talented writer, excelling in character development.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Mariner Books for the opportunity to read this advanced readers copy and write an honest review.

Additional book reviews may be found at www.jantramontano.com/readerscafe.

I found this novel confusing and pointless. I should have liked it, but I couldn’t relate at all. The characters seemed unlikeable and unrelateable. I generally love novels about California history, especially including those about the film industry, but this one didn’t do it for me.

In a weird, derivative way, it was reminiscent of The Goldfinch, the brilliant Tartt novel.

I can’t recommend this novel, perhaps a different demographic might enjoy it.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. .

Ah, I wish I had written my review as soon as I finished the book. Then mine would have been the first review and rating for it. As is, someone got there first, with a two-star rating and a review consisting of nothing the author's name. Sad. Especially because this book deserves so much more.
Castleberry impressed and wowed me with his Nine Shiny Objects a few years back.
Now he's back, with another great American novel, albeit somewhat less so.
The range is still there: the novel spans a century, following intertwining families of artists and artist-adjacents as they navigate the turmoil of decades, politics, love, loss, and other harmful things people do to one another.
The writing is brilliant, satisfying as only true literature can. Castleberry brings his characters and their art to life in the way that can be best describe as ... artful. Masterful, perhaps, too.
But ... there's a but. The novel twists on itself exhaustively, hopping timelines and perspectives in a way that makes it something of an effort to get all the characters and their relationships to each other straight. (And this is coming from someone who successfully followed all the lines of succession in The Game of Thrones!) And the other thing is that once you do figure out the personae dramatis, you may find yourself not caring that much about them and their personal dramatics.
This is to say, the novel is populated by interesting and complex but not necessarily likable characters, which may limit one's emotional engagement.
All that said, it was still a very worthy read or a very high quality. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

I so tried to get into this story but it just didn't hold my attention. I'm sure it's a delightful novel but just not for me. It was topp dry and uninteresting. I'm sure others will enjoy it.

The Californians is a sprawling story about two California familes and how they intersect over almost a century. There are three intertwined stories, but the primary ones belong to Klaus (a silent film director who moves over to television) and Di (Klaus' granddaughter, a contemporary artist). The story begins with Tobey, related to the actor who starred in Klaus' biggest tv hit, stealing some of Di's paintings from his father's house after fleeing a wildfire. The story of the paintings are the basis for the rest of the book, but it's also about family, art, commerce, politics, and the choices we make to invent and re-invent ourselves. I really liked it.