Brilliantly imagined ... The will-they-or-won’t-they domestic drama of the Zimbalists, when it finally gets out of the driveway, is less than suspenseful; it is very much like spending a week in a car with three people laughing at a series of inside jokes and then explaining to you why those jokes are funny. But so what? ... What readers of The Breakup will come for, in this moment of what seems like unsustainable polarization and anger and wanton trampling of American civic institutions and ideals, is a vision of our near-term future that is violent and admonitory and cathartically terrible and yet somehow still survivable. On that score, Andersen delivers the dopamine hit that has made his previous work best sellers.
There is too much going on here for this novel to work, but Andersen is an uncommon writer, a skilled historical novelist as well as an astute cultural observer and historical interpreter ... It takes a while for the road trip to start, but once it does, I found myself invested in the well-being of these people ... Andersen keeps introducing threats, both external and internal, and the reader can’t help but worry ... A one-of-a-kind book that only this writer could produce.
Sprightly ... For a speculative state-of-the-nation novel, The Breakup is refreshingly full of absorbing characters ... Is in many ways an imaginative sequel to his recent nonfiction, except that his polemical gifts are coupled here with a Dickensian flair for comedy.
Hits pretty hard ... Is The Breakup a love letter to a country splitting apart, a way of life turning unrecognizable due to AI and the dumbing-down of politics? Partly. Andersen’s love and grief over what’s happened and is happening to this country spill onto every page. He writes rapturously of the United States.
The AI part of the story is a little undercooked and the political commentary none too subtle, but overall it’s an effective exercise in dystopian fiction with some nicely developed thriller elements in the mix ... A politically charged vision of what our civil strife might look like just a bit down the road.
