Libra
Don De Lillo
This novel is one that stopped me from wanting to read it from the very beginning. Nothing about it suckered me in. I know I should have been more excited about it, given that De Lillo is quite a celebrated American author, but I just wasn’t.
The intersecting plot lines are confusing, and often seem superflous. Just as De Lillo surely intended, I hardly cared about the plot to kill JFK, instead I wanted to know more of Oswald and what his hopes were. Oswald is such an enigma it is frustrating at times, but the insight that De Lillo makes into the character is interesting.
As I’ve alluded to, this novel is a fictionalised post-modernist account of the JF Kennedy assassination, the ‘seven seconds’ that broke the back of America, or some such thing. It’s quite interesting to me, because before reading this novel I knew very little about the assassination.
I needed to read this novel in time for an exam, and I hate to admit that I didn’t get all the way through it. I started reading it early, but I simply couldn’t stomach the stretches in language. The language is the thing that is supposed to hold this book together, and in a way it does, but it also makes it very difficult for the average reader to get into.
I don’t have this exact cover, but I have one very similar It doesn’t draw me into the book any more than the actual story line does sadly. I want to say I wanted to like this book, and I did, but I simply couldn’t. Sorry De Lillo, you’re going to have to try and get me to read you again in some other manner.
Find it on: