Publishers Weekly
★ 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.)
From the Publisher
"Tim O'Brien is 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
“O’Brien’s first novel in two decades was well worth the wait. . . . In the age of ‘mythomania,’ O’Brien takes aim at the lies that power this country, and how and why they sustain us. America Fantastica peers straight into the dark heart of the American psyche, and it's unafraid of the comedy and tragedy staring back.” — Esquire, Best Books of the Fall
“[A] compulsively readable, cackle-worthy social satire about our truth-challenged times. ... Without letting anyone off the hook, America Fantastica holds a cracked mirror up to a poisoned zeitgeist and dares you not to laugh. Resistance is futile.” — Boston Globe
“Tim O’Brien’s first novel in 21 years is an antic, caustic and funny condemnation of the way we live now in the United States." — Wall Street Journal
"This is the first novel in 20 years from O’Brien, a National Book Award winner, who is best known for The Things They Carried. The story is a madcap heist/road-trip starring a bank robber (who used to be a journalist) and his spitfire hostage, Angie. In hot pursuit are a bumbling private eye, a drug-fueled billionaire and a wannabe Charles Manson." — New York Times, "34 Works of Fiction to Read This Fall"
“[A] timely odyssey. ... O'Brien paints a new, unflinching portrait of Americana that reads like a road map to our modern age.” — Entertainment Weekly, “Must List”
“A satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit. ... There are echoes of his famous Vietnam War novel, Going After Cacciato, a book built on a darkly absurd pursuit amid individual and national uncertainty. ... 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 (starred review)
“Tim O’Brien is one of our greatest storytellers, and his latest—America Fantastica—is a beauty. Steeped in acute wisdom and hilarious wisecracks, this satirical romp through the ‘mythomania’ and ‘lying contagion’ that plagues our society is also a study in one man’s broken heart and the truths that have shaped it.” — Jill McCorkle
“Hunter S. Thompson meets Sacha Baron Cohen in this amusing and alarming road trip to the center of America’s mendacious heart. ... 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." — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“O’Brien’s farcical satire blends fierce social commentary and a searing indictment of our post-fact culture into a nonstop joyride.” — Booklist
"A desperate bank robbery morphs into a cross-country chase featuring hit men, a billionaire tycoon, jealous lovers, and several ex-cons. O’Brien hands America a mirror once more." — Goodreads, Most Anticipated Books of the Fall
"His searing accounts of the Vietnam War brought him fame and the National Book Award. Now, after a 20-year hiatus from writing fiction, a long-awaited new novel takes aim at contemporary America." — GQ
“A simultaneously raucous and surprisingly empathetic novel. ... If Elmore Leonard had collaborated with the Coen brothers to produce a screenplay, the result might loosely resemble America Fantastica.” — Bookreporter.com
praise for the author San Francisco Examiner
The best American writer of his generation.”
San Francisco Examiner praise for the author
The best American writer of his generation.”
Library Journal
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
DECEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
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
Kirkus Reviews
★ 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.
