I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Bill McKibben, Penguin Group Blue Rider Press, and Plume Blue Rider Press in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

This is an excellent political novel, and though extreme, also apt. Rebels in Vermont - a septuagenarian radio personality, a thirty something gold medalist in Olympic biathlon and a very young computer geek - begin making waves about seceding from the United States and becoming independent. Rather like a city-state in days of old. Labelled terrorists after their first few podcasts, the trio hide in plain sight and keep stirring the waters until Vermont's Town Meeting Day, where the citizens of Vermont can decide if they want to be a small independent nation or just get back to the weird that made them so special to start with. This is a book I will want to share with my friends and family. Thank you.

A quirky, parody about taking political action in modern America. With a good dose of humor, this was entertaining and enjoyable.

Vern Barclay is an aging radio broadcaster with a desire to keep things local and regionalized. An accident occurs in the new, much resisted Walmart, while Vern is doing a broadcast there causing him to become an outlaw with his band of mischief makers.
At times deep insights shine through this otherwise quirky book that was fun to read. Is this what secession could look like? My favorite take away was the authors clear desire to have an open dialogue without being so hostile to opposing views.
Thank you to the publishers for providing me with this arc through netgalley.

The Green Mountain state loves its freedom, all freedom in fact. It was the first sovereign state to outlaw slavery and then (after joining the union) the first state to do so, it was the first state to allow gay marriages. And in McKibben's fable it may also be the first state to secede the union. At least seriously think about and take a vote. Something of a libertarian wet dream, something of a pretty astute political commentary this novel, despite its humorous approach and quirky (occasionally too folksy) characters, proposes an interesting scenario, one that possibly has about as much realistic chance as Vermont's own Bernie Sanders at US presidency, but interesting all the same, because fiction is for speculation and ideas and inspiring thinking outside the box. And so in that the book does its job. It also entertains, even if you don't care for politics, it's a quick fun read. Then again if you do, it may not be the thing for you. The book doesn't really go out of its way to alienate specific mindsets, but it certainly does take a position, one made abundantly clear by the author's afterword. In this day and age it's refreshing to see a different kind of flag waving (literally), not the nationalistic jingoistic sort that's been ever so popular. Timely and well worth a read. Thanks Netgalley.

I stopped reading longer, more serious books, also supplied (like this one) by those generous people of Netgalley, to complete this book in two sittings. It read really quickly and easily. It was entertaining. It's hard to write in a clear and entertaining manner. It takes real talent. Also, the author took a clear and unmistakable stand about what he thinks is right and wrong, which is very welcome in this world of weasel words and intellectual bet-hedging. I salute the author, who did a better job than I could have.

Still, I'm going to complain about this book.

This book advertises itself falsely as a fable. It is a fantasy.

Definitions online of the word “fable” (example here) often say that fables include supernatural elements, especially talking animals, and also an edifying moral. An alternate usage is as a synonym for “falsehood”.

The definition of “fantasy” from the most reliable free online source includes the following: “the power or process of creating especially unrealistic or improbable mental images in response to psychological need”.

This book has no ghosts, or talking dogs, or easy-to-remember lesson for the edification and stupefaction of children. In other words, not a fable.

It is a fantasy for American liberals. Although not a Vermonter, I am one of the liberal tribe, so I enjoyed it. This book attempts to meet a psychological need for a narrative of victory for our tribe. However, in addition to being a member of the tribe, I am also a miserable and contrary old cuss, so I'm going to say that books like this not only do not meet any of my psychological needs. Furthermore, they are not part of the solution to our current woes, they are part of the problem.

An explanation what I mean, concentrating on a non-spoilerish incident at the beginning of this novel: Some madcap but determined balaclava-wearing Vermont liberals misdirect a Coors beer truck to an area without cell phone reception. They then stop the truck, force the driver to dismount, give him some superior locally-produced beer, and make him wait for hours while they hand-empty every bottle of villainous mass-produced beer (beer is an important part of this novel, so is recycling) before packing him back off to, presumably, whatever reprehensible out-of-state metropolis it is his misfortune to live in.

This is all written as a lightweight comic caper. Guns or weapons of any type are not mentioned. Still, I found it kind of creepy and threatening. What if the driver had had a gun? It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt.

What I'm trying to say is, if someone who didn't agree with the author's values read this, he or she might feel that a real threat of bodily harm, and the presentation of the cute comic caper was an attempt to whitewash what is, deep down, a real threat of violence.

Consider: what if the shoe were on the other foot?

Imagine, if you will, a book in which a long-haul driver of a truck full of kombucha (with perhaps a few cases of beard wax and artisanal mayonnaise as well) is lured off the Interstate in an especially lonely stretch of west Texas, where some friendly madcap masked citizens give him a couple of cases of Coca-Cola to enjoy while they dump his load of liberal-associated products. If you read this in a book, wouldn't the friendliness have an air of menace to it? In the movie of your mind, can you see some barely-concealed, but unmentioned, weapons lending an air of menace to this operation? The author doesn't have to mention the weapons. Instead, he just winks at the like-minded, and disingenuously denies any menace to the un-like-minded. But the message would be clear: be like us, O liberal, or regret it.

So it is with this book, only our side is doing the threatening.

I put it to you that this book is not only a fantasy, it is a revenge fantasy. Revenge fantasies are fun to spin out over the alcoholic beverage of your choice with similarly-inclined friends, but when they make it between (electronic) book covers, they are part of the problem. I know that people that you disagree with, O liberals, annoy you, especially if they end up with a dangerous amount of power and influence in our irredeemably flawed world, as they have now. The answer is not to replace the present world with a world that would annoy you less and others more, because eventually the wheel would turn again and you'd be back where you started, i.e., annoyed. The answer is to stop being annoyed at others, and hope (almost certainly in vain) that others will be inspired by your good example. Difficult? Yes. Do it anyway. Be an inspiration to the world. I know you can do it.

I received an free unfinished galley of the ebook for review. Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for their generosity.

When aging local talk radio star Vern Barclay accidentally appears to help flood a newly opened Walmart with raw sewage he ends up going to ground, wanted by the Vermont authorities as a ‘domestic terrorist’. The real culprit for this stinking episode, young activist and tech guru Perry Alterson, becomes his new accomplice, helping to broadcast a subversive podcast that calls for Vermont to break away as an independent nation. The nascent free Vermont movement champions small and local over big and corporate, most prominently promoting Vermont’s many independent breweries.

If that all sounds implausible, McKibben himself would probably be the first to point out this is not supposed to be a great work of realist literature but a modern fable. It’s certainly a tale with a point to make, though the satire is fairly even-handed and the home-grown localism that McKibben clearly supports comes in for its fair share of gentle mockery. Radio Free Vermont does, though, share some common flaws with other issue books. Characters can feel a little one-dimensional, while dialogue is often used to expound a philosophy rather than drive the narrative forward. In places it all feels a little forced. Eventually, though, the story picks up steam and races to a satisfyingly open-ended conclusion. A playful and imaginative commentary on modern capitalist society that feels especially timely in the age of Trump.

RADIO FREE VERMONT: A FABLE OF RESISTANCE (November 2017)
Bill McKibben
Blue River Press, 240 pages
★★

If a crusty Vermonter laced a pint of Ben & Jerry’s with a psychotropic, consumed it, and went off to bed, his dream might come out something like Radio Free Vermont. This uneven book is fun and pokes fun at Corporate America run amok, but the key to reading is embracing the word “fable” in its subtitle. I am a big fan of eco activist/journalist Bill McKibbin—one of the most important voices on climate change in North America. McKibbin has authored sixteen non-fiction books and has written for every publication from The Atlantic and The New York Times to National Geographic and Rolling Stone, but Radio Free Vermont is his first novel. Objectivity demands that I say that as much as I enjoyed the novel’s sentiments and politics, McKibben is, by disposition, a non-fiction writer.

Radio Free Vermont is the sort of book that those of us feeling alienated and hopeless in the Age of Trump want to love. Its central character is Vern Barclay, a radio talk show host weaned on Paul Harvey. He’s not a Vermont native, but at age 72 his Green Mountain pedigree is longer than most. After all, there were fewer than 390,000 Vermont residents in 1960 and now the state is approaching two-thirds of a million. Through a series of unplanned (but not necessarily unwanted) circumstances, Barclay becomes a pirate podcast broadcaster, the leader of a secession movement, and a fugitive from justice. He is aided by OCD technical wiz Perry Alterson; Sylvia, a lesbian firefighter from Starksboro; Trace Harper, a lesbian and former Olympian gold medal biathlete; his acerbic 98-year-old mother; and a host of snowmobilers, cross-country skiers, and backwoods folks who share his view that Big Money is ruining the state’s environment, character, and sense of community. On Ethan Allen Day* (January 21), Barclay launches a podcast campaign to have secession** placed on the March agenda of Town Meetings across the state—a half-jocular effort initially born out of frustration more than seriousness. As is transpires, it takes on a life of its own.

The villains include Leslie R. Bruce, Vermont’s Trump-echo governor; the FBI; Walmart; and even some fellow Vermonters scared the secession would put an end to their Social Security checks, bank accounts, federal jobs, access to out-of-state goods, and pensions. In the post-9/11 world, Barclay is easy to package as a terrorist, and McKibben’s novel adopts a caper-and-chase structure punctuated with splashes of satire. Few other states have been as successful at creative-bordering-on-deceptive branding; that is, unless you think its hills truly are alive with shade-grown coffee beans, salsa fixings, cracker trees, and gin wells. McKibben gives this a gentle tweak by having Barclay open his broadcasts with plugs for real Vermont products, especially its craft beers. He also satirizes the promote-at-any-cost crowd by having feckless Governor Bruce build a retractable dome arena, which makes a nice foil for Barclay’s on-the-lam broadcasts that air under the tag line: “underground, underpowered, and “underfoot.”

To borrow the slogan from a very bad no-craft beer, Radio Free Vermont often tastes great, but it’s not terribly filling. Its climactic chase scene and Burlington showdown are absurd even for a fable, the dialogue and plot devices fall on the contrived end of the scale, and those who know Vermont will tell you that it’s not nearly as tolerant and PC as McKibben would have it. To pick one example, I suspect that most of its residents couldn’t even name a Nina Simone song, let alone choose her “O-o-h Child” as their national anthem. Naomi Klein (charitably) links Radio Free Vermont to stories from A Prairie Home Companion. I agree that it has the same sweet intentions, but McKibben is no Garrison Keillor when it comes to literary prowess. We don’t need him to be this; he’s a champion at what he does best: investigative journalism and environmental advocacy. Radio Free Vermont will certainly entertain you and it’s a welcome diversion from the 24/7 bad news coming out of Washington. Read it, but don’t expect McKibben’s insights into the Green Mountain State to be as sharp as what he has to say about green energy.

Rob Weir

*McKibben is more romantic about Ethan Allen than I. Allen’s role in the Revolutionary War and the Republic of Vermont is secure, but he was also rash, reckless, a self-promoter and a land speculator.

**McKibben isn’t being entirely fanciful in imagining an independent Vermont. It was independent immediately after the revolutionary War and, in the 1970s, some back-to-the-land hippies were involved in the “Free Vermont” movement. There is also a small contemporary group the advocates a “Second Vermont Republic.”

No review since I did not read eh whole book (see comments)

Radio Free Vermont stands as proof that resistance can be accomplished in a positive and clever manner which I found encouraging in our current depressing and frustrating time. Radio talk show host Vern Barclay creates a new underground radio show – Radio Free Vermont, “underground, underpowered, and underfoot.” While supporting the idea that Vermont citizens might be better off seceding, Barclay’s true mission is advocating for a better future. Through Radio Free Vermont, he cleverly and at times hilariously argues for solutions to climate change, education, and the importance of small town communities and buying local. He and his band of revolutionaries take over the broadcast system at a local Starbucks, switch out Coors for local beer on a delivery truck, and enlist their followers to pick the best theme song for their resistance.

I loved the shout out to Paul Harvey, the king of radio talk show hosts, and the references to soul music from the 1960’s and 1970’s. As a music lover, I enjoyed learning more about the non-Motown music from that era and revisiting songs that I haven’t listened to in a while. McKibben packs so much into this short but fabulous gem of a novel.

Radio Free Vermont is a joy to read from beginning to end and provides a positive example of effective resistance that is devoid of name-calling and dishonesty. Instead, McKibben encourages those wanting to work toward a better future instead of protecting large corporations and the very rich, perpetuating cycles of poverty, and ruining the climate for future generations. Thanks to Blue Rider Press and NetGalley for this very worthwhile and timely ARC.

Thanks to NetGalley I was able to read an early copy of this book. I have been a fan of Bill McKibben for several years now and was excited that he was writing a novel. I really enjoyed this, but have to agree with the other reviewers that he might have gone further with the story. Maybe there will be a sequel someday. Regardless, I think this book is going to make quite a stir when it comes out in the fall. It's great to see someone like McKibben deal with an idea that has mainly been the province of speculative fiction, and placed it quit firmly in a possible version of today's world.

Please see my review on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2021698666