Disappointing start with yet another dead horse in a stupid macho bet.

Fay Fern was not only abundantly self-centered, but she locked into dimwit radicalism
in contrast with how smart she was reputed to be. She also sacrificed her relationship with her son
while leaving him clueless about his father and, duh, the father so clueless about the son that,
NASA though he was, he could not do the math to see his own child in front of him. Geez. ( )

I heartily and sincerely recommend this novel for those who loved [b:Fates and Furies|24612118|Fates and Furies|Lauren Groff|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1434750235l/24612118._SY75_.jpg|43913972], or who love the novels of [a:Michael Ondaatje|4030|Michael Ondaatje|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1390116915p2/4030.jpg].

While these authors don't superficially resemble one another much, to me they all seem to share a Proustian-like interest in paying rapt attention to every quotidian thing that happens along the way to telling their story. To me they're "crème brûlée, crème brûlée! Let's have the same dessert every day!" kinds of writers. Each and every sentence is so rich and creamy that after a while I personally start longing for a sentence that's more like a stale heel of bread. The style here held me at arms' length from the story and its characters, but it's exactly what will draw other readers in. ( )

Sometimes I liked it, other times it dragged and dragged. The motivation of the characters was muddled. I came across one editing error while telling the tale of the first time he appeared on LIFE magazine cover. He gave his age and a location he could not possibly have been according to the timeline and people present. A lot of the side stories were ponderous and held minute details perhaps to make the non essential characters more meaninful and not some last second inclusion to make sense of the story.
The sister, Charlie, was a much more interesting character than the main character. Fay came across as self centered , narcissistic, and totally unlikable. Nothing to admire. I was left wondering why (as smart as she was suppose to be) didn't she find better use of her "power" of intellect and social status to weaponize. Throwing "bombs"of biting criticism in the written word would have been so cool! It would have deviated from the path the story was headed, but much more plausible.

Teeth were mentioned over and over, like a fetish.

The space aspect was suspect. Like the author watched The Right Stff and had a crush on the Sam Shepherd character and wrote a high brow fantasy about space man meets the Weatherman.
I couldn't wait for this book to be over. The last two books I've read seem to encompassesd too big of a broad stroke. Too much, too many moving parts.

One laugh out loud moment with a story told by irrelevant character, Jean, about seeing someone on the street he believes is one of his one night stands. This group of characters were entertaining.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

Please give me a good book to read and spare me the mediocrity posing as intellectualism. ( )

What drives people to achieve greatness or infamy? In America Was Hard to Find, Kathleen Alcott tells the story of a brief love affair and the child who resulted. It beings in the late Fifties where Vincent Kahn, a married jet pilot marking time while hoping to join the space program has an affair with a young woman named Fay Wren. Fay does not tell him she is pregnant, aware of the harm they have done Vincent’s wife and, perhaps, realizing how unworthy he is. Strangely both of them will become famous, one for walking on the moon and the other for political terrorism.

The story is told in three parts. First the love story, then the story of Vincent and Fay achieving the fame and infamy that seem fated. Fay raises their child Wright in precarity, with the future uncertain, often on the run and underground. Vincent achieves his goal, but seems to be emptied out, an empty man.

Wright grows up longing for normalcy. One of his big rebellions against his mom is going to a public school for a day. He gets that normalcy when he goes to live with his grandparents, but it’s not all he hoped for. No one has ever told him who his father is, but time and again, people tell him he looks like the famous astronaut, the first man who walked on the moon. He suspects they may be on to something He seems alienated from himself, even as he begins his own self-discovery in the San Francisco of the Eighties.

I liked America Was Hard to Find a lot even though it left me with so many questions. I cared about Fay and Wright and even Vincent. I wondered how differently their lives would have progressed if they had been honest about their emotions. That is what I want from a book, the questions and sometimes the anger about how a character behaves. I was angry with Vincent, Fay, and even Wright.

Alcott does a great job of setting the stage in terms of the history and the social milieu. She based Shelter on Weather Underground and did a lot of research and interviews with astronauts to get an authentic sense of who Vincent would be. The main characters seem emotionally broken and I wonder if that is the point, that they cannot be so obsessed with their causes if they were not broken.

America Was Hard to Find will be released on May 14th. I received an e-galley from the publisher through Edelweiss.

America Was Hard to Find at Ecco Books | Harper Collins

Kathleen Alcott author site

★★★★
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/10/9780062662521/ ( )