America Fantastica by Tim O'Brien

 

Reading this novel reminded me a good deal of reading Processed Cheese. America Fantastica is more subtle, and the points it's making are ... more varied, I think--not just privilege and wealth and inequality (though that) but also identity and the lies people tell each other and themselves. It's either kaleidoscopic or disjointed, I'm not sure I know which, and I'm not sure the going is particularly worth the ride, though there are some passages that made me laugh out loud.