MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewKeenly observed and fitfully propulsive ... In populating this world almost entirely with articulate, introverted, earnest-even-when-ironic East Coast types, Martin risks a novel weighed down with commentary, not to mention one in which the stakes...wash out somewhat. It’s not that the characters are hermetic, exactly, but they are monocultural, which means that the whole sometimes feels like less than the sum of its parts ... Generally, the secondary characters deepen and complicate the world more successfully than the primary ones ... The doubts are largely unwarranted, at least as far as the prose is concerned. It is good throughout, and often far better than that. The author sees the world sharply ... But the characters and the structure do not always rise to the level of the writing.
Christopher Buckley
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewBuckley’s Trump is sufficiently churlish and childish, but the novel is stranded between White House reflection and funhouse mirror. Some names are changed comically (Sean Hannity becomes Seamus Colonnity), some altered arbitrarily (Jored/Ivunka), others left intact (Rudy Giuliani) ... As the threat of extortion mounts and the president’s petulance rises to meet it, Buckley resorts to a deus ex machina and then a dense expositional epilogue ... Are there pleasures? Of course. Buckley is intelligent and ingenious and at times pitch-perfect...But more punches are thrown than landed.
