America

America is historical fiction told with extreme realism. The four characters the novel focuses on - Troy, Mick, Tara, and Daisy - are between 10 and 12 when the novel starts in the mid 1950s. The grow up into young adults in their early 20s over the course of the volume, with their lives intertwining, separating, twining, and separating again as they age and begin to go their separate ways. Mick and Tara are siblings, and Troy is adopted by their parents very early on in the book, so the three are much more present than Daisy, who moves away, moves back, and moves away again; she vanishes for much of the book, and I would have liked to have seen more of her story. Despite describing itself as the story of four young people growing up in the 1960s, it is much more the story of the three siblings, with Daisy showing up occasionally and then vanishing again; only when all four leave to begin their adult lives do we see Daisy as separate from the other three. It would also have helped if Daisy were not also the name of a cow present in the early part of the volume; while it was obvious which was which, it would have helped if their names were not the same.

The historical piece of this book was very well done, and the fictional lives described fit well with the events in which they occur, with everything from the effects of a changing economy on the family farm to the Vietnam War. The earliest parts of the volume are appropriate for anyone; after about the first third, the rest, while equally well written, contains a great many detailed sex scenes that, while sociologically valid, are not appropriate for readers under about 16. Without those, this would be a fabulous book to use in high school history classes, to show how students might have actually lived at the time; with them - many of which could have been left out, or mentioned in much less detail, without impacting the plot in any way - it is simply not appropriate for such usage. That part aside, this is a very accurate depiction of what it might have been like to grow up in the mid 1950s to late 1960s, showing how the characters' understanding of the history they lived through changed as they aged and became more aware of the wider world. I will look for the next volume, to see what happens to these characters next, but I will hope that the gratuitous sex scenes will be fewer.