As a huge fan of A. M. Homes, I was looking forward to this book. Unfortunately, I had a hard time maintaining interest in the protagonist and his concerns. The setting of the 2008 election of Barack Obama was an interesting premise, but I just couldn't find the sympathy required to stick with the characters and their issues. Thank you to NetGalley for a chance at the ARC.

The Unfolding is pitched and listed as fiction but it reads like a real back-room political book that is only too easy to imagine actually took place. Older white men, secure in life with multiple dwellings and more money than they can spend are so flummoxed by Barack Obama's election that they scramble to find like-minded men who are just as worried about the continuity of white supremacy in America and begin to plan how to get America "back on track". Frightening in its clairvoyance and unputdownable.

A speculative history novel with an interesting premise that’s just a bit too talky for my taste.

The Unfolding deals with liminal spaces: between an election (Barack Obama in 2008) and the inauguration; between being a child and an adult; between not knowing and knowing a marriage is falling apart.

On Election Day in November 2008, Republican billionaire funder known as the Big Guy, his wife Charlotte, and their 18 year old daughter Meghan vote and then go to Phoenix to see the results with John McCain. When disaster strikes and Obama is elected, the Big Guy is stunned about the collapse of America and then stung into action to bring back the country that his brand of Republicans believes is the right way. Pulling together a ragtag team of rich white men - a judge, an accountant, a White House insider, a scientist, a communications expert, and so forth - they put together a plan for a revolution.

Meanwhile, Meghan finds that her simple trust in her world is misplaced. There are secrets that have not been shared with her because she was being “protected” like a child. As they are gradually revealed, she finds herself questioning and challenging her own identity.

Now as we all now know, the Republican Party swung heavily to the right and to the immoral and this change is presaged by the conversations and plans of the Big Guy and his cohort. Except is it? Of course, the writer has hindsight and knows what actually happens so is speculatively filling in the gap. It’s an intriguing idea but, for me, just drags on a little too much and to call it prescient ignores the obvious fact that it’s now 2022 and we know what happened. I did love the quirky characters like Twitch Metzger the ad man who forecasts the role of Twitter and makes candy in his spare time, but much of the policy talk is just a bit too inside baseball.

This rip in the worldview of the Big Guy is echoed in his family. Charlotte has felt stifled and corralled - the Big Guy’s views of women and their capabilities are not just old fashioned but also too parodically broad to be believable. When Charlotte reaches a breaking point, he finally realizes that what he thinks he knows may not be how things really are.

When I saw this was an “alternate history” I was frankly expecting something a little more alternate. As it is, it’s a speculation that doesn’t seem very far fetched at all and, while amusing, is not the out there satirical novel I was expecting.

Thanks to Viking and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

The election of President Barack Obama sent shockwaves through much of the elite conservative community. An unnamed father and husband is proudly ushering his daughter through her first experience of voting for a presidential election. They are a family of wealthy Conservatives and proud of the contribution their money makes toward fulfilling the American dream. With the election of President Obama, their family begins a strange evolution of thoughts and relationships. The father decides that Action must be taken and begins rounding up his own entourage of good ol' boys to make a dramatic change to the system. His wife begins to realize she want more out of life than being married to a rich, powerful conservative. And the daughter begins, completely by naïve accident, to begin studying history and learning that the American past is not as simple as she believes. Homes does an intriguing job bringing a political thriller into real world context. The Unfolding directs us to think about how the world is perceived by several different cultures and viewpoints all while looking at the exact same tableau. Homes builds a suspenseful mystery out of a history many lived through.

It disappointed me to write this, being a massive A.M.Homes fan, that I found the new noVel disappointing. Yes, it absolutely is the work of a fine mind with a notable sense of humor, and political and social perception. But it delivers very little that surprises or challenges. The Big Guy never seems to be a living, breathing figure, rather an imagining of what a rich, Republican tactician might be - and do. And we all know that the party has been playing the long game. So to posit this here, in a series of long scenes that amount to a lot of throat clearing and conspiracy theory mongering, seems rather to be stating the bleeding obvious. The family drama side of things didn’t much engage either. Maybe there’s another volume coming where Meghan fulfills her promise. Meanwhile, this is okay but not the groundbreaking, definitive work I’d been hoping for, from this source.

Set during the November 2008 election, the novel’s plot centers around a family crisis as well as the old, white guys’ club crisis. Difficult to like a novel when the protagonist is so unlikeable, but unlikeable he is meant to be and I couldn’t help but wish for his demise.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.