RaveThe San Francisco ChronicleLindbergh becomes president, largely by promising to keep America out of the war, and Roth's childhood stumbles through a growing anti-Semitism in America. Sound impossible? The Roth family has trouble taking it seriously, too, and before long they're split apart: The Roth pater is sputteringly mad but stands firm, older brother Sandy rebelliously endorses Lindbergh's ideas, and live-in cousin Alvin troops off to Canada the better to fight Nazis overseas, returning wounded and utterly broken. The American Jewish family has been divided and conquered; unlike the Nazi techniques, Lindbergh's regime has put an American, can-do face on its anti-Semitic policies … The Plot Against America is an epic, unforeseen and unexpected even given its author. As crucial as history, it is also as ferocious.
Marcy Dermansky
PositiveThe New York Times Book Review...[a] sharp and fiery novel ... The novel’s furious action keeps the pages snapping by, but each incident, at times each sentence, is bubbling with equally furious ideas ... Is Leah fiercely self-actualizing in a world hostile to female desire and ambition, or should she just maybe stop drinking tequila in the daytime? Dermansky, wisely, leaves the contemplation to the reader, because Leah is forever in each tense and needy moment.
Patrick deWitt
RaveThe New York Times Sunday Book ReviewRising over its self-consciousness, Undermajordomo Minor not only salutes the literature of a bygone era but fully inhabits it, and the result is a novel that offers the same delights as the fairy tales and adventure stories it takes on, while reminding us that in the long game of literature, what lasts is what thrills.
