An original story line with a very interesting plot line that did not quite live up to my expectations. The characters, their back story and the forward thinking plot were all fantastic, well developed and easy to believe. But the story veered too often into a rant on the politics and policies that caused the main character to take his family into isolation in the first place. These side rants did not help the main story or advance the characters at all, just compaining for the sake of words written or opinions expressed.
I would definitely read the author's back library and any future titles, but I'd go into them with lower expectations. TRULY LIKE LIGHTNING is definitely worth reading, just fast forward over the speeches.

When I think of literary fiction, I think of books just like this one, that gives all the feels. This is a perfect book to snuggle up with on any day.

I could gush about how much I love the actor; just ask my ex-husband. Lol. Beyond that, I’ve gotten the impression that he is a brainiac with his Ivy League bona fides. So I was intrigued to see if he could write. He indeed can. Sometimes he does fall in love with his own knowledge and imparts a little bit too much, making for a little more dense reading than is necessary for this type of novel. Overall, I would recommend. Thanks to NetGalley for a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.

Just not for me. I love Duchovny's writting so much, "Miss Subways" was and still is my favorite book of all times, but with this one I struggle a lot to get into the plot and relate in any way to the characters. Giving it a 3 stars, cause his writting is still so flawless.

I’ve read several of Duchovny’s previous books, and each one is so unlike the next. I very much enjoyed this story and I look forward to his next book!

This novel’s plot is centered around Bronson Powers, an ex-stuntman from Hollywood that inherited an extremely large plot of land in the desert next to Joshua Tree National Park. The catch was he had to become Mormon. Being an auto-didactic Bronson took the faith back to the original writings and created his polygamous family. It’s more blended than it looks, with several of the children from prior relationships and the women being bisexual.

Twenty years they lived harmoniously until a drugged-up woman on mescaline discovers their homestead. Working for a greedy megalomaniac developer she devises a convoluted plot to get their land. A test of homeschooling versus public school for a year, sending three of the children out into the “real world” along with one of the mothers. There is no way this is going to work out well for anyone involved. The family is doomed from the moment an outsider decided to interfere.

The book reads like an over-the-top farce at many points. It reminds me a bit of Hollywood, but who can blame an actor with an ex-stunt man at the heart of the tale. If you can go with the flow, then it becomes an exciting saga. There are layers contained and the book throws in plenty of social issues, with climate change and politics not being left out.

I am a fan of his previous works, my favorite being BUCKY FUCKING DENT.
This book is much more complex, delving into Mormonism, climate change, immigration,racism, capitalism, and a clear hatred for Trump and his cohorts.
Positive aspects: you will learn a lot and fundamental Mormon beliefs, and he clearly shines light on the many ills of modern society. You also learn a lot about the desert, living/ surviving there, and appreciating its beauty and isolation.
Negative aspects:Duchovny an english major who has advanced degrees andhas studied with some of the greats in many many parts of the book seems intent on impressing us with his vocabulary and depth of knowledge of literature and obscure movies, ala late Salman Rushdie and Ayud Alhtar. I thought way overdone.
Further, at times it reads as a political liberal’s wish list, and an anti Trumpian diatribe( can’t tell you how many times he’s castigated in the book).
Best part: his in depth description of fundamental Mormonism and Joseph Smith-something I knew very little about and enjoyed learning about.

Thank you to both the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC of this fantastic title!

I adore the way David Duchovny writes. He clearly pulls on his life experiences and people he has met to create these incredible, but believable, characters. There are moments of sheer hilarity underscored by a deeper morality tale, a theme that runs throughout all of his fiction. I admit I did treat myself to the audiobook to hear him read this, and it was worth every penny. An absolute joy of a read.

I have yet to find again the thrill I experienced by reading Bucky F*cking Dent, but Duchovny is still an amazing, very literate writer.

Is it fair that David Duchovny is a good actor AND a good writer? No. But that's where we are right now. He wrote ANOTHER good book. I'm all about books about weird fundamentalists and this is in that vein (3 wives and 10 kids!). This book is about a family who is forced into the 21st century, and it wreaks all kinds of havoc.

Truly Like Lightning is a very engaging book which could easily transform to the large screen. The book was very well written and kept me interested throughout. The main idea is a polygamous family who just want to live off the grid in a remote section of Joshua Tree. The characters are well defined and interesting. There are times when it is very hard to read, but I could not stop reading because I had become so invested in the family.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are my own.

I've read all of Duchovny's books, and I have to say that this is my favorite. It's outside of his normal writing and I really liked both the setting and the topics addressed. I found myself being pulled in by the description and not being able to put it down. I'll definitely be recommending this one to patrons.

I’m judging a 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory
glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“You would be forgiven if you assumed that this Momon cowboy jumping on a horse in the middle of the Mojave Desert adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park was not as well acquainted with Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Lao-Tze, and Marcus Aurelius as any tenured professor at Pepperdine, the school he dropped out of before the end of freshman year (after a balky knee and chronically sore shoulder cut short his baseball career) in order to pursue his taste for speed, controlled chaos, and beautiful machines as a Hollywood stuntman.” great characterization at work here

I had planned to read Truly Like Lightning by David Duchovny anyway, so when Farrar, Straus, and Giroux sent me an advance copy via NetGalley I was thrilled.

I'll be the first to admit that I am not a big reader of westerns, so a book about a cowboy is not something that usually makes my list. But a polygamist, Mormon cowboy? You've got my attention. Plus, I enjoyed Holy Cow and was looking forward to what this might turn out to be.

There's a lot more than just a cowboy and his family going on in this book. So much at times that it felt like you could have more than one book to follow all the tangential storylines. Duchovny hits all the big themes: religion, politics, race, sex...I'm not sure how he managed to do it in under 500 pages. I'm also not sure how he managed not to send me into a pit of despair about the world around us. The writing is surprisingly light (but not frivolous) given all the heavy topics and that helped propel me forward rather than getting mired down.

In the end, I felt the real lesson was to beware the perils of dogmatic thinking. When we get so bound up in our own narrative that we don't allow for any counterpoints, we are headed down a dangerous path.

Truly Like Lightning is an engrossing tale of an unconventional family of polygamists who are forced to deal with modern society by a predatory real estate developer.

There is so much description, character development, and hidden meaning here that I feel I may need a college literature class to decipher it all. If you like that sort of thing, it may take a few repeat reads to squeeze everything out of Truly Like Lightning. 4 stars!

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest novel by David Duchovny - 5 stars!

Bronson Powers is a former Hollywood stunt man who learns that he will inherit a huge piece of land in Joshua Tree, California, if he can prove himself to be Mormon. He immerses himself in the religion and becomes a true believer in the early teachings of the church. He builds a life totally off the grid with 3 wives and 10 children away from any contact with the outside world. Until Maya, working for a real estate development company, comes across their compound and has visions of turning a huge profit from the land, enough to position herself near the top of her company. She comes up with a plan - she tells Bronson that the State is aware that they are not properly educating their children and they could be taken away from him. But, she proposes an experiment - send 3 of the children to public school. If they thrive in their environment, proving that the Powers' education was not complete, Maya's firm would buy part of their property. One of the mothers accompany the children and get a crash course in 21st century living.

When I first started this book, I thought - I'm not smart enough to read it and I'm not sure I want to plow through 450+ pages like this. But never fear - Duchovny has written a complex, smart tale with so many layers that I was soon glued to the pages. I still am probably not smart enough to get full meaning out of everything but this is quite the story. Bronson has raised his children to live off the land, following him and his beliefs. They work hard for the good of the family and the adults all take active roles in the children's education. But imagine children who have been totally isolated thrust into today's world. The story is told through many of these characters' voices and you will be totally immersed in their feelings and decision-making. Lots to talk about with this book - religion, family, politics, sex. Don't miss this one!

David Duchovny writes books?! Who knew? Apparently, a lot of people as this is his fourth book. I requested it out of pure curiosity.

I was expecting something vaguely pretentious (I wasn’t wrong) and although I didn’t have high expectations, I was prepared to be pleasantly surprised. Turns out, and I didn’t know this going in, but DD is both the son of a novelist and an English Literature graduate himself (BA from Princeton, MA from Yale). So he has the credentials to save this from being a total celebrity vanity project.

Having said all that… I didn’t love it. Degrees don’t make you a great writer, but they help you not to be a terrible one I suppose. Was there a story here? Yes, but, this book’s main purpose appears to be to tell us how much DD hates Trump (23 mentions), laments racism, destruction of the environment and possibly Mormons (it was unclear how to me in the end what the message about Mormonism was, or perhaps it was religious extremism?). We get it, most people who pick up the book are going to agree on all those issues but the lack of subtlety in making the points got a little tired.

As I said, there was a story: Bronson Powers, ex-stuntman, converted Mormon, lives off-grid with his wives and kids in the desert until greedy real-estate investors come looking for an opportunity. It continues from there and the story is entertaining although I was left with the feeling that certain lines of plot were just vehicles to get us to another place and were never really tied up.

The main problem I had with this book was there seemed to be a lot more telling than doing. About 20% in I found parts interesting but I didn’t really feel invested because it felt very narration-heavy. The characters didn’t come alive for a long time.

The other problem was the vocabulary. What have you got to prove? I’ve never used the word ‘palimpsest’ in my life, yet it appears twice in this book. I started highlighting all the big words because it started getting ridiculous. Some others: nomenclature, proselytizing, turpitude, extemporaneously, transubstantiated, pernicious. Towards the beginning, there were sentences I had to read two or three times to figure out.
Although I had a few things to pick at in this book, and around 30% I was tempted to set it aside, it’s far from the worst book I’ve read and I know there are people who will enjoy it. It reminded me a little of Jonathan Franzen (I can’t really say why – long and pretentious?). Will I read another of his books? Maybe. I’m a little curious but I have seen a few reviews call this one his best.

Thank you NetGalley for this opportunity to satisfy my curiosity!

This is the first book I have read by David Duchovny, and now I want to tear through his backlist. The story that he wrote was so unexpected and brilliant, I could not put it down.

Taking place in Joshua Tree, California, Bronson Powers in a former stuntman now living a polygamist life with his wives and 10 kids. Nobody knows they exist and they are able to live the life they want to live. Maya is introduced when she stumbles onto this land and wants to purchase it for her company to develop.

Of course Bronson does not want to sell his property, which is worth roughly 100 million dollars and it is their ticket to the freedom they want. Maya comes up with a plan, she will not go to child services if they enter into an experiment. Some of his children need to move to the city and go to public school for 1 year to see if they are more successful in school or being taught at their home.

This perpetuates this really smart fast-paced novel. The kids that go to the city have been a life with little technology and any pop culture. Duchovny bring in politics in a very non-evasive way. When an incident occurs with one of the children, the book takes a 180 that you will never see coming.

This is typically not my usual story, but I am so glad I read this. I absolutely can envision this being converted to a movie or mini-series as it was so cinematic. If you have not read David Duchovny before, like me, this might be a great place to start.

Thank you NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nothing Technically Wrong, Readers May Hate It Anyway. This is one of those books by a master storyteller that is at once too cerebral *and* too cliche. It is overall a good story, but there is so much to *not* like here. From the hard core leftist politics that get pretty damn preachy (including several anti-Trump diatribes blaming him for all the ills that have been present in this country since its Founding) to ... other events of a personal nature that get too close to spoilery territory to reveal. And yet there is nothing technically wrong here. The story is well edited, it flows well within its frame, it is reasonably researched (and then flung out to left field, X-Files style - though not to a scifi level), the characters are reasonable within the boundaries described in the book (though in real life many of their actions would leave an observer scratching their heads). Ultimately there is enough here to warrant reading the story - and enough here that no matter your politics, you're probably going to want to throw it down in disgust. And yet there is no objective "this is bad" thing to hang removal of so much as a single star on. And thus, this book is recommended.

The first ones to grab and read this book will be David Duchovny's fans. If it is your first encounter with his written work, all you need to know is that this is his forth novel and each is unique. You don't need to read his previous work as each book transports you in a different place and adventure to two are similar. You won’t regret reading this exciting book as it’s a brilliant original story you will want to read in one go.

The book starts with the lyrics of U2 well-chosen lyrics for the opening (expecting this song on next concert's set list) as the story is mostly set in the desert among Joshua trees.
In the first chapters, we get to know Bronson Powers, his past as a stuntman, troubled life and change of lifestyle. Nowadays a lot of people would like to escape the modern world and find refuge in nature and spirituality. Bronson’s motive to study Mormon religion was to inherit a plot of land that lead to conversion in believes and obsession. We also get to know the other main character Maya. A young ambitious woman trying to distinguish herself from the all-boys club and show her boss what she is capable of – a womacho. Followed by an introduction to the extended family of 3 wives and 10 children and their small farm in the desert.

The first tree chapters may seem slow with typical David’s name-dropping and extensive dive in the Mormon religion, culture and detailed introduction of characters. To quote Elsie Bovary »You getting frustrated with all the preamble? The mood lighting? That's the problem with you crazy kids and the video games – no patience.«

After the lengthy introduction the story picks up in pace and becomes a page turner you can't quit.
Maya in her pursuit of affirmation and success disrupts the secluded Power’s family life with a wager forcing 3 kids to move to the city that ignites a dilemma what lifestyle is better the family life based on tradition and religion or the modern school system and fast paced life focused consumerism, hate and greed. It is interesting how the three children cope with technology, peers and family. Maya although the instigator and at times with questionable behavior shows moral dilemmas in the business world that is losing core human values.
You might identify with some characters and ponder how your life would change, how you would cope or not. The author fills the pages with surprising twists and soon you are faced with a breathtaking ending.

I would recommend this book but keep an open mind on religion, sex and life choices not everything is just black and white. You have to open your mind see the grey area, the cracks where the light gets in and hear a different story.

I personally loved the book, my name, my country. I hope it makes its way to the screen. Can’t wait for the next one.