In The Dakota Winters, Barbash has vividly captured the end times feeling of this period in America and has populated his sad and funny tale with a highly engaging mix of real people and fictional characters who take us to its ordained and dreaded finale, Lennon’s death ... The book’s engine is conversation, used to great effect. Barbash’s characters talk all the time. It isn’t that they don’t act or think; it’s that they act and think out loud—thoughtfully, humorously, movingly ... Barbash has given Lennon a captivating voice, catching his cadences and playfulness, as well as his astuteness ... Barbash has sprinkled The Dakota Winters with Beatle dust. Lennon is alive in its pages.
Fleet-footed...brain-whirring ... Punctuated by clever dialogue and crisp social critiques, Barbash’s incisive, funny, and poignant portrait of talented people and a city in flux illuminates the risks of celebrity and the struggle to become one’s true self.
Keen and understated ... relies too heavily for tension on the reader’s awareness that an assassin’s bullet will fell Lennon, but allows the rock star some choice observations on the nature of his and his friend Buddy’s status ... Despite its occasional sluggishness, The Dakota Winters retains a stubborn appeal. The reader wants to find out how Buddy’s attempted comeback fares, and what effect the dreaded but inevitable assassination of Lennon has on an emotionally vulnerable Anton.
Most of the historical context feels authentic; some of it is rote; a few bits are wholly implausible. Teddy Kennedy (who called his wife 'Joansie,' not 'Joanie') converses no more believably than Lennon ... With his considerable talents, the author can’t help but do a number of things very well... but there’s an airless slow motion to the production as a whole ... . The book might have benefited from the multiple points of view employed in the author’s first novel. Some episodes are overelaborated, and some incidents that we only hear about seem to be lost opportunitie ... by underlining so many of the book’s themes and meanings, the author makes the reader lazy, asks so much less of him than [Barbash's] compacted short stories did ... Like the proverbial thin man trying to get out of a fat one, a half-dozen stories could break free from this book. In Mr. Barbash’s capable hands, their individual effects would be greater than the sum of this novel’s parts.
Barbash at times leans too heavily on the specifics of his richly drawn New York setting, and ultimately, Anton’s story is eclipsed by references to the era’s celebrity culture ... Throughout this colorful novel, questions loom of where Anton fits into the picture and how he can build a life apart from his father without rejecting the vibrant city he grew up in.
From beginning to end, and through its many twists and turns—including a true-life-based uniquely Lennon-ish sailing trip from Rhode Island to Bermuda accompanied by wonder, fear, and some scarily life-threatening weather—the book is cleverly suffused with New York sensibilities, politics, pop culture, and celebrity as it seamlessly segues between fact and fiction.
Tom Barbash’s new novel, The Dakota Winters, neither glamorizes nor sneers at what goes on inside [the apartment building]. Fame and its discontents are his major themes, as is the tangled father-son bond ... Barbash excels at bringing alive the New York of this era, as his characters turn up at the Oak Bar at the Plaza, the Central Park Zoo or the Explorer’s Club. His dialogue is superb, incandescent with witty repartee ... By contrast, Barbash’s depiction of Joan Kennedy, one of Emily’s buddies, as she campaigns with Ted for the Democratic nomination, comes off as wooden. And some scenes seem longer than necessary to make their point. But on the whole, The Dakota Winters is a very satisfying novel, entertaining and illuminating in equal measure.
Barbash has an energetic, engaging style. Almost immediately, the reader signs on for the ride: a coming-of-age journey, a magical mystery tour, vintage 1980 ... What’s also capturing the reader’s imagination is Barbash’s decision to re-create time and place with vivid detail and lavish use of references to specific current events of this era ... Using the familiar trope of damaged, brilliant father and parentified child, following the classic structure of a coming-of age-story, the author presents an authentic, difficult, believable father and son—passionately trying to work things out ... the loving misadventure of Anton and Buddy’s effortful and complex filial relationship is memorable.
Barbash’s choice to mirror Anton’s and Buddy’s conflicts with the wider societal conflicts broadens the story and provides an interesting context for the tale. The Dakota Winters is a charming, character-driven novel that is witty, clever and touching. Readers will revel in Anton’s descriptions of a city and an era that are long gone.
Spirited ... Barbash seamlessly mixes real-life celebrities into his fictitious narrative. All the backstage show business details ring true, as do the author’s exhaustingly encyclopedic cultural references for 1980. Though the central relationship between Anton and his father barely strikes any sparks, the book is packed with diverting anecdotes and a beguiling cast, making for an immensely entertaining novel.
Bittersweet, nostalgic ... Barbash convincingly imagines Lennon’s easy, sardonic humor while he helps the young man learn how to be confident without being star-struck. The downside is that those scenes throw the rest of the narrative a bit off-balance. Anton’s siblings and love interests rarely feel like more than casual walk-on roles ... Pleasurably endearing for anybody with a soft spot for pop culture, Annie Hall–era Manhattan, and 20-somethingdom at its most freewheeling.
