American Subversive: A Novel
In Goodwillie's debut novel (after his memoir,Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time), an incisive depiction of radicalism's seductive roots, the central characters are a good girl gone bad and a would-be journalist turned blogger who wants to do good. Paige Roderick, laid off from her think tank job and devastated by the Iraq War death of her beloved brother, is an easy mark for a shadowy cabal of home-grown terrorists who recruit her from the ranks of weekend environmental warriors. Separately, Aidan Cole, a failed journalism student turned Manhattan gossip blogger, is drawn into her radical orbit (and into a romance) by a phantom from America's radical past: a former member of the Weather Underground. Part political thriller and part on-the-run love story, Goodwillie's glimpse of the lapsed idealism that might be fueling America's subversive underground falls somewhere between Bret Easton Ellis'sGlamoramaand John Updike'sTerrorist. The mix of mocking the jaded hip—the Gawker-like blogging empire that Aidan works for serves as a frequent punching bag—and exploring cultural and social unrest results in a comic and unsettling two-pronged dissection of a subset of contemporary America.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.