One of the smartest and most involving American political novels I’ve read in ages ... Such cool, elegant ambivalence is everywhere in Great Expectations, even when one wishes, as it nears the finish line of Election Day, that the mood would intensify. In time Mr. Cunningham will want to cultivate a dramatic killer instinct. But for now this book’s grace and insight are more than enough to make it a wonderfully promising first novel.
Despite the novel’s steady drip of astute observations about Obama and his groundbreaking campaign, the excellent view David gives us is relentlessly introspective ... The result is a coming-of-age story that not only captures the soul of America but also feels the unquenchable thirst for meaning which passeth all understanding.
Vividly rendered ... [A] heady tension of aspiration, charisma, optimism, unbelievable timing and intellectual curiosity as well as a yearning for connection ... Cunningham takes a cinematic, fast-paced story and infuses it with the texture of humanity.
A novel of this kind lives or dies by the exactness of its observations and the grace with which they’re expressed. Cunningham rarely falters in either, even if he occasionally goes overboard cataloging everyone’s clothing and how well it fits ... The lovely aptness of Cunningham’s metaphors makes the loops and whorls of David’s search for a fitting sense of himself a pleasure to follow. His prose rests like a cool hand on a fevered forehead ... Captivating.
Brolic and dazzlingly written ... Cunningham captures the grind and the mundanity of the campaign with precision and humor ... Each time Cunningham moved away from the urgent present of the campaign and David’s close but amorphous connection with Beverly, it lost momentum. Also, with autofiction that incorporates so many obvious allusions to famous people — and some actual real people are named here, too — why this instead of a memoir? ... Rarer is a debut that announces a talent like Cunningham’s. This is a writer who clearly loves Black people. But this affection is also a challenge. A charge to interrogate the social and spiritual cost of currency. And a reminder not to look at the Candidate’s face for answers.
Minutely observed ... The vivid attention to detail in Great Expectations creates a singular, and sobering, mood — an ambient rumination on the recent, and seemingly very distant, past.
A thinly veiled political satire cum bildungsroman ... Keen ... Cunningham’s novel reminds the reader that simple solutions—the passage of one just law, the election of a single great leader—are seldom a match for American problems.
Can certainly turn a phrase. But his novel lacks bite ... The biggest problem is that in its core subject, politics, it has little new to say ... David enjoys a meteoric and, we’re told, undeserved rise through the campaign. He is stunningly uninterested in what is going on around him, which — given the pith of what he is involved in — makes him a frustrating narrator ... Readers would be well-advised to stick to that 19th-century classic instead.
The novel lacks the twisty plot and unforgettable characters of its namesake. However, Cunningham-as-David is an astute observer of the role that money plays in U.S. politics and the seductive allure of access to powerful and charismatic political leaders like Obama ... This book is sure to be catnip to those who believed in that hopey changey thing of long ago.
Of the many thematic throughlines that surface from Cunningham’s masterful prose, perhaps the most salient is the duality of politics and religion ... Cunningham’s novel is most compelling in the moments that dramatize that alchemy, the senator’s lineless skin peeled back to reveal gristle ... Deft.
Cunningham writes fairly well, but he relies too reliably on em dashes ... Without...interest, you need a real plot, an irony or two, a few laughs, anything at all to keep things lively.
This is a novel that is in many ways unapologetically Black—especially in its deep and rich evocation of the Black church, of Black intimate relationships, and the vibrant internal life of a burgeoning Black artist. Great Expectations is an innovative, resolutely distinctive book.
