America Fantastica: A Novel

by Tim O'Brien

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The acclaimed author of The Things They Carried is back after his two-decade disappearance, and what a return it is. This is a true American novel that does not shy away from the social touchpoints that have polluted the modern day.

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 by a disgraced journalist sparks a cross-country chase through a nation corroded by shameless delusion and deceit.

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?”

“Not you,” Boyd replied, revealing a Temptation .38 Special.

Angie Bing, the teller, scraped together $81,000.

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 JC Penny 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 Boyd and Angie 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. 

America Fantastica marks the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. Just as 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780063359680
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/24/2023
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	695,912
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.18(d)

About the Author

TIM O’BRIEN received the 1979 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 in 2013.

Date of Birth:

October 1, 1946

Place of Birth:

Austin, Minnesota

Education:

B.A., Macalester College, 1968; Graduate study at Harvard University

Editorial Reviews

"The best American writer of his generation." — San Francisco Examiner

"A marvel of storytelling. ... A vital, important book—a book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well." — New York Times on The Things They Carried

"The Things They Carried is as good as any piece of literature can get." — Chicago Sun-Times

"This is writing so powerful that it steals your breath." — Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on The Things They Carried

"Rendered with an evocative, quiet precision, not equaled in the imaginative literature of the American war in Vietnam." — Washington Post on The Things They Carried

From the Publisher

★ 10/02/2023

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. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

The best American writer of his generation.”

praise for the author San Francisco Examiner

The best American writer of his generation.”

San Francisco Examiner praise for the author

12/22/2023

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

Library Journal

Oliver Wyman affects a sly, off-kilter tone to deliver O'Brien's funny/sad take on Trumpland as COVID-19 infects America. Wyman's portrayal of Boyd Halverson, a former journalist and retail worker, is characterized by a sense of forlornness as the standard crime-caper plot unfolds. Boyd walks into a bank and demands $300,000. He gets $81,000 and the teller, Angie Bing, in the process. The duo encounter a host of shady characters as they go on the lam across the Wild West. Wyman infuses his voice with a tone of tenderness as Angie eventually becomes Boyd's ally, and more. O'Brien's chilling and depressing take on propaganda, disinformation, and misinformation results in Boyd's having to resolve his life of lies and deception. R.O. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2023 - AudioFile

★ 2023-07-26
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.

Kirkus Reviews