America Fantastica: A Novel
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"Tim O'Brien is the one American author whose works I look forward to the most. His new novel's ironic depiction of a post-Iraq war, mid-COVID, and mid-Trump world is piercing and razor-sharp." —HARUKI MURAKAMI
An American Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks "a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit" (Kirkus, starred review)
One of Esquire's 20 Best Books of the Year * Named one of Fall 2023's most anticipated books: New York Times, Associated Press, Kirkus, Goodreads, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more
At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.
"How much is on hand, would you say?" he asked the teller. "I'll want it all."
"You're robbing me?"
He revealed a Temptation .38 Special.
The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing, collected eighty-one thousand dollars.
Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag.
"I'm sorry about this," he said, "but I'll have to ask you to take a ride with me."
So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson—star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager—and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday the pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd's past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.
In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O'Brien's modern classic, The Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.
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Tim O'Brien. (2023). America Fantastica: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Tim O'Brien. 2023. America Fantastica: A Novel. HarperCollins.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Tim O'Brien, America Fantastica: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2023.
MLA Citation (style guide)Tim O'Brien. America Fantastica: A Novel. HarperCollins, 2023.
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TIM O'BRIEN received the National Book Award for Going After Cacciato. Among his other books are The Things They Carried, Pulitzer Finalist and a New York Times Book of the Century, and In the Lake of the Woods, winner of the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. He was awarded the Pritzker Literature Award for lifetime achievement in military writing.
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"Tim O'Brien is the one American author whose works I look forward to the most. His new novel's ironic depiction of a post-Iraq war, mid-COVID, and mid-Trump world is piercing and razor-sharp." —HARUKI MURAKAMI
An American Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks "a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit" (Kirkus, starred review)
One of Esquire's 20 Best Books of the Year * Named one of Fall 2023's most anticipated books: New York Times, Associated Press, Kirkus, Goodreads, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more
At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.
"How much is on hand, would you say?" he asked the teller. "I'll want it all."
"You're robbing me?"
He revealed a Temptation .38 Special.
The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing, collected eighty-one thousand dollars.
Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag.
"I'm sorry about this," he said, "but I'll have to ask you to take a ride with me."
So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson—star journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney manager—and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday the pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota. On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts of Boyd's past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.
In the tradition of Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty, and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy, while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters, readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic human beings—the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O'Brien's modern classic, The Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war, America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.
- reviews
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May 1, 2023
In August 2019, discredited journalist Boyd Halverson walks into the Community National Bank in Northern California and steals $81,000 at gunpoint, then brings teller Angie Bing along on an extended ride that reveals the country's flattened morals and morale. Along the way, they're chased by hitmen, angry lovers, an heiress, a billionaire, and assorted others as Boyd seeks vengeance for the wrongs one man did him. The masterly O'Brien's first novel in two decades. Prepub Alert.
Copyright 2023 Library Journal
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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August 15, 2023
A satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit. One day in 2019 a man named Boyd Halverson, who feels his life is "a breathtaking failure," robs a bank in Fulda, California and kidnaps the teller, a 4-foot-10-inch talkaholic named Angie Bing. They light out for Mexico and soon become reluctant allies as Boyd seeks to confront his former father-in-law, an unscrupulous industrialist named Jim Dooney. He ruined Boyd 10 years earlier--and forestalled a damaging news article--by revealing all the falsehoods on which the younger man, a compulsive liar, had built his journalism career. Dooney, fearing Boyd wants to kill him, moves from one mansion to another in Texas, Minnesota, and California. Angie's boyfriend, "a piece of stupid wrapped up in cowboy clothes," goes after his gal but gets waylaid by two ex-cons, on whom he gets medieval with a hoe. Dooney's successor at his conglomerate (and the current husband of Boyd's ex-wife) tells his CFO, a sadistic thug distantly related to mass murderer Richard Speck, to find Boyd and hurt him. The owners of the Fulda bank, who've been cooking the books for years, decide to rob the bank themselves. Running through all this amusing chaos are the shadows of Boyd's existential crisis, not least of which is the mystery behind his toddler son's accidental death. O'Brien also periodically pauses to rant on the national affliction of mythomania or lying, and takes swipes at the White House, fake news, big business, racism, and the extreme right. There are echoes of his famous Vietnam War novel, Going After Cacciato (1977), a book built on a darkly absurd pursuit amid individual and national uncertainty. O'Brien is less focused here, favoring scattershot barbs and humor over cohesion. Yet it's one of those books where you can sense the author enjoying himself and it's fun to be along for the ride. A broadly engaging and entertaining work.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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August 1, 2023
Once a promising journalist with Pulitzer potential, Boyd Halverson finds himself in reduced circumstances and even lower expectations. As store manager at Penney's, Boyd attends Kiwanis meetings and drinks too much, a shadow of his former life when he was married to the beautiful Evelyn, daughter of billionaire shipbuilder Dooney. Years earlier, Boyd's planned expos� of Dooney's shipbuilding malfeasance was dead in the water when Dooney preemptively destroyed Boyd's career by revealing Boyd's fictional academic and military record. Boyd is set on retribution when he holds up a small-town bank and takes diminutive spitfire bank teller Angie Bing along for the ride. So begins O'Brien's farcical satire that blends fierce social commentary and a searing indictment of our post-fact culture into a nonstop joyride. The resulting road trip is rich with colorful characters while Angie, the loquacious lilliputian, a devout Christian with selective morality, provides comic relief. The fantastical comedy of errors, the lauded O'Brien's first novel in many years, blends rom-com, caper, and buddy story into a relentless, skewering tale of greed, capitalism, betrayal, and ultimately, redemption. A sound bet for Elmore Leonard fans.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: National Book Award-winning O'Brien's return to fiction and the rollicking nature of this sharply comic tale will stir avid interest.COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from October 2, 2023
Hunter S. Thompson meets Sacha Baron Cohen in this amusing and alarming road trip to the center of America’s mendacious heart. In what O’Brien has claimed will be his final novel, the National Book Award winner (The Things They Carried) chronicles the downward spiral of former foreign correspondent Boyd Halverson. A long-ago Pulitzer Prize nominee, Boyd has seen his life torpedoed by his inflated résumé, which was leaked to the press by his billionaire ex–father-in-law, Jim Dooney, whose murderous corporate skullduggery Boyd was on the brink of exposing. After moldering for almost a decade while managing a JC Penney in fictitious Fulda, Calif., and plotting his revenge against Dooney, Boyd impulsively robs a nearby bank for $81,000 and abducts a none too reluctant young evangelical teller named Angie Bing. Shortly after setting off for Mexico, Boyd discovers he’s in over his head: not only because Angie’s disappearance has sent her jealous bozo of a fiancé on their trail, but also because the husband-and-wife bank owners, Douglas and Lois Cutterby, have brainstormed their own plan for recovering the stolen cash, since reporting the robbery through official channels would reveal their flagrant embezzlement. Then Dooney catches wind of Boyd’s long-stewing revenge scheme, triggering additional pursuit by psychopathic corporate muscle—and a full Fargo’s worth of darkly comic and intermittently deadly complications. Though the antic and off-color proceedings sometimes drag, particularly during some of Angie’s extended sermonizing, O’Brien keeps everything afloat on a cloud of pure gonzo bliss. If this is indeed the author’s valedictory novel, he’s bowing out with a star-spangled bang.
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December 22, 2023
For his first novel in 20 years, O'Brien (The Things They Carried) has penned a wild take on the contemporary malady of "mythomania," or misinformation and delusion. Boyd Halverson, a journalist disgraced for playing fast and loose with the truth, now manages a small-town California JCPenney. He also manufactures right-wing misinformation on the internet. One Saturday morning, he commits a bank robbery as part of a plan to exact revenge on his former father-in-law, Jim Dooney, whom he blames for his downfall. During the robbery, Boyd takes an overly talkative teller, Angie Bing, as a hostage. The two eventually become uneasy allies on a road trip seeking Dooney, all the while pursued by two people: Randy Zapf, Angie's ex-boyfriend and a small-time criminal who imagines himself a much bigger operator, and Henry Speck, a bumbling hitman hired by Dooney's former business partner. (Henry is related to serial killer Richard Speck.) Boyd and Angie's misadventures take them from California to Mexico, Texas, and Minnesota, and finally back to California. VERDICT O'Brien's comic touch leavens what is at heart a grim vision of a society infiltrated by political lies that ultimately multiply until they come to fill the whole of American life.--Lawrence Rungren
Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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"Tim O'Brien is the one American author whose works I look forward to the most. His new novel's ironic depiction of a post-Iraq war, mid-COVID, and mid-Trump world is piercing and razor-sharp." —HARUKI MURAKAMI
An American Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery sparks "a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit" (Kirkus, starred review)
One of Esquire's 20 Best Books of the Year * Named one of Fall 2023's most anticipated books: New York Times, Associated Press, Kirkus, Goodreads, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more
At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National Bank in Northern California.
"How much is on hand, would you say?" he asked the teller. "I'll want it all."
"You're robbing me?"
He revealed a...
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