The Plot Against America (Vintage International)

by Philip Roth

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The chilling bestselling alternate history novel of what happens to one family when America elects a charismatic, isolationist president whose government embraces a folksy anti-Semitism—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Pastoral.

“A terrific political novel.... Sinister, vivid, dreamlike...You turn the pages, astonished and frightened.” —The New York Times Book Review

In an extraordinary feat of narrative invention, Philip Roth imagines an alternate history where Franklin D. Roosevelt loses the 1940 presidential election to heroic aviator and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh. Shortly thereafter, Lindbergh negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.

• ISBN10: 1400079497
• ISBN13: 9781400079490
• Publish Date: 27 September 2005 (first published 1 January 2004)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Vintage Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 416
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781400079490

Reviews

[ibeforem]

As soon as you find out that the main character in this book is Philip Roth, a boy growing up in the same place and the same time as the author Roth, this book takes on the feel of a memoir. Essentially, this book is not about the alternative world Roth has created by changing one election, but about how the Roth family lives and survives in this world. Much of it is seen through the eyes of 9 year old Philip, but as he would explain it years later, as an adult. The language and analysis of events is not that of a child’s.

The alternative history holds up pretty well, until the "bad days" begin. At that point in the book, the narrative starts to fall apart as you get a straight summary of events of the next 10 days. Is this by design? I’m not sure. I felt like it interrupted the flow of the story. I also felt like Roth cops out a bit at the end… I was expecting a story where Hitler wins and the world is forever changed. What you get instead is just a blip in the WWII timeline… a delay of the events that really happened.

Overall, it was a good read and I’m glad I read it, despite the concentration it took to get through some of Roth’s run-on sentences. Would I read another by him? Based on the writing style alone, no, but if the story interested me I’d pick it up regardless.