Book corner (1): The Plot Against America

Just finished reading The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth. And blimey, fellow bookworms, it's a right riveting read.

The premise on which the whole dark narrative revolves is that instead of Roosevelt taking America into World War II when he did, the aviator Charles Lindbergh enters politics, takes over the presidency and keeps the country out of the war – while subtly pushing anti-Semitic acts through Congress and openly condoning the actions of Hitler's Nazis. (Lindbergh, like Henry Ford, did hold anti-Semitic views and regularly expressed them. There's a handy postscript to the book that features potted biographies of the major figures involved that helps the reader to distinguish the fact from the fiction.)

The book is told from the point of view of a young narrator, named Philip Roth, who watches the effects of the Lindbergh presidency on his immediate world – family, friends, neighbourhood. His father, who wants to believe the best of America and Americans, finds his high hopes constantly undercut by the race of events around him; his mother is wiser to the pace of change and wants to take the family off to Canada. His brother is sent off to the country to work on a farm as part of a work programme called Just Folks, an experience that he loves, and which sets him against his parents, who feel the government is using such projects to divide one generation of Jewish families from another. Later in the novel events take a more sinister turn as Jews are officially 'encouraged' to move and take up jobs outside major cities. The nation simmers and tensions flame up.

This is an intense read, but then every now and then we need one of those in our lives, don't we? Philip Roth gives you a recognisable, historical USA, and then subtly, bit by bit, introduces one small nightmare after the other until it becomes something very different indeed. His depiction of the insidious, ongoing rise of fascism in his fictional America is all too believable – so often we don't realise the damage that's being done to a people, or a country, until it's way too late, do we? Things are always so much more clear-cut in retrospect.

But it's not just the political twists and turns that the author handles with aplomb. He paints the intricate workings of family life with wonderful sensitivity too – the love, the frustration, the raging disappointments. Throughout the novel, he shows how events in the greater world trickle down and have repercussions on individual lives and relationships.

If you're looking for a light read, perhaps look elsewhere. But if you're up for a meaty novel that makes you think, The Plot Against America deserves your attention.