Like Franzen or DeLillo, Alcott brings awe-inspiring exactitude and lyricism to her dive into three of America’s most iconic moments ... In her exquisite and poignant reimagining of historic events, Alcott dissects their impacts in a sweeping yet intimate saga that challenges assumptions and assesses the depths of human frustration.
It’s possible to log this scene with the moon-shaped lamp as a throwaway on first reading, a moment of peak twee in the kind of hermetic reality that only exists in the imagination of certain film auteurs, or the authors of literary fiction. But Alcott is a wider-angle novelist than this, and the book’s final third opens up a different frontier altogether ... It is an overtly feminist response, in the covert action of fiction, to the literature of the space program that came before it—think of Norman Mailer’s Of a Fire on the Moon (1970) and Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff (1979)—and a bold self-guided launch into the thermosphere from which the Major American Novel winks down indifferently at us ... It’s not easy to graft so many cultural touchstones and political movements into one convincing narrative whole, and the procedure doesn’t always take ... Alcott is unsparing in her account of the depersonalizing effects of sexual relationships with men ... Fay’s ambition, at the start of America Was Hard to Find, is to make life 'happen more deeply inside her.' Alcott’s novel is a finely calibrated machine that does the same for us.
...sprawling but absorbing ... The emotional heart of the book belongs to their son, Wright, whose childhood Alcott renders with supreme tenderness ... As Alcott’s ambitious (if slightly overstuffed) book ranges over three decades of American history, the era’s defining events drift in and out of the lens. The reader can almost imagine leafing through a pile of old Life magazines ... the real energy of the novel is not in Alcott’s rendering of these events, but rather in shimmering, knife-sharp descriptions of small and often devastating moments of individual experience within those larger histories ... Some of the book’s most memorable sections offer glimpses of the period through the narrow aperture of everyday human longing, like the way Alcott masterfully captures Wright’s humble wish for the kind of middle-class American childhood his mother rails against.
Ms. Alcott is an impressionistic stylist capable of lovely, luminous effects on the brushstroke-level of the sentence ... The book’s chapters are short and evanescent, inspired sketches rather than developed scenes. The vagueness of the aesthetic fits incongruously with a decade-spanning historical chronicle, and particularly with subjects like the Vietnam protest movement and, later on, the AIDS epidemic. Such writing seems well suited to fantasy, and because nothing is more like a fairy tale than space travel, it makes sense that Ms. Alcott is at her best in zero gravity.
Kathleen Alcott writes with pulsating, intense prose ... The voices of Fay, Vincent and Wright are marvelously crystal-clear ... Alcott has a powerful ability to separate these three characters into equal and opposing forces ... Her extensive research into the Apollo program, the Weatherman underground protest group and the AIDS crisis in America serve her well as she intertwines facts with fiction. America Was Hard to Find leaves readers wanting more of this story and everything else Alcott has written.
The elegance of Alcott’s writing poses an interesting contrast to her heroine’s inner life ... The loveliness of Alcott’s writing stands in contrast to Fay’s austerity. At times, the two tug against each other, Fay trying to make herself ugly...while Alcott insists that every paragraph in the novel be beautiful ... Alcott does not offer full redemption to any of her three protagonists. Nor does she offer complete answers to her readers. She could easily have presented AIDS activism as a correct middle way: successful, radical, non-violent protest designed to save marginalized lives. Instead, she skates away from suggesting any one way to resist, or to behave. As a result, America Was Hard to Find is a messier, grayer novel ... What lasts is America itself, and the ethical trouble inherent in living in a nation powerful enough to destroy another, or to send a man to the moon ... But does Alcott think inward change is possible? America Was Hard to Find seems to present a world in which no matter how far we range, we’re each uniquely contained in our own histories, our own set of previous decisions
... literary remedy. Like the moon reflecting sunlight, Ms. Alcott’s tale of the late 20th-century and its discontents mirrors and contextualizes our current times ... Alcott’s characters capture, in miniature, our nation’s struggle to reconcile generational values and historical events ... The narrative easily switches between character perspectives with detached compassion; though it’s clear where Alcott’s sympathies lie, she refuses to indulge in either/or thinking. Instead she explores actions, moods and motives with a nonpartisan eye, inviting readers into the depths of the characters’ psychological makeup ... Readers who value elegant style will savor Alcott’s musical sentences and dreamlike pacing, while those who demand historical accuracy will appreciate the endnotes: well worth a peek; they demonstrate a serious commitment to research and a cogent argument for Alcott’s writing choices ... The results, however, speak for themselves: readers will repeatedly lose themselves in the past only to be shocked back to the present by issues that still trouble America today. The connections are subtle, but the impact is striking, especially if you lived through any of the eras in question ... One thoughtful novel can’t unpack all of America’s generational damage, but Alcott’s story is a good step in the right direction...Thanks to Alcott, readers who enjoy literary fiction have a golden opportunity to not just look, but also to really see. Highly recommended, with liberty and justice for all.
Alcott (Infinite Home, 2015, etc.) portrays in evocative snapshots an inner core of solitude and fiercely individual rectitude in each that binds the lovers yet precludes a lasting relationship ... The book’s final third, centered on Wright’s adult life in 1980s San Francisco, suggests that Alcott aims to synthesize three personal odysseys into a larger statement—but what that might be is obscured by her elliptical narrative development. Nonetheless, her empathy for troubled souls, rendered in haunting, impressionistic prose, makes a powerful emotional impact, giving the novel a staying power beyond that of more neatly finished fiction ... Uneven and at times frustratingly enigmatic but impressively ambitious and extremely well-written.
...[a] richly ruminative novel ... Alcott (Infinite Home) humanizes her characters by focusing intensively on their thoughts and feelings as they grapple with the grand significance of their times and personal experiences ... Alcott’s novel is a sharp and moving reminder of the human dimension of even the most outsize historical events.
... a beautifully strange read about the turbulent, fragmented era of the Vietnam War and the Apollo program, both of which dwarf and distort the personalities of those involved. Vincent and Fay are not exemplary characters in what is not America’s finest hour. However, they accurately depict the 1960s through the 1980s along with American patriotism and dissidence in this powerful work of historical fiction.
