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True Believers

by Kurt Andersen (Goodreads Author)

3.6 of 5 stars 3.60 · rating details · 958 ratings · 301 reviews

In True Believers, Kurt Andersen—the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Heyday and Turn of the Century—delivers his most powerful and moving novel yet. Dazzling in its wit and effervescent insight, this kaleidoscopic tour de force of cultural observation and seductive storytelling alternates between the present and the 1960s—and indelibly capture...more

Hardcover, 448 pages

Published July 10th 2012 by Random House

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May 30, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 3 of 5 stars

Sixty-five-year-old Karen Hollander is an attorney with Type I diabetes, a heavyweight résumé and a Wikipedia entry. Her CV includes (but not limited to) author of four best-selling books, dean of a law school, a corporate lawyer in a powerful law firm, and U.S. Justice Department official. She’s divorced, with accomplished, brilliant children, and she’s devoted to her granddaughter, Waverly, a seventeen-year-old on her way to becoming a likeness of the achieving Karen (with some cute malapropis...more Sixty-five-year-old Karen Hollander is an attorney with Type I diabetes, a heavyweight résumé and a Wikipedia entry. Her CV includes (but not limited to) author of four best-selling books, dean of a law school, a corporate lawyer in a powerful law firm, and U.S. Justice Department official. She’s divorced, with accomplished, brilliant children, and she’s devoted to her granddaughter, Waverly, a seventeen-year-old on her way to becoming a likeness of the achieving Karen (with some cute malapropisms that Karen corrects).

The book is told from Hollander’s narrative perspective, as a memoir, to gradually divulge a dangerous secret surrounding her activist activities in 1967, an undisclosed event that caused her to turn down a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. This secret, she feels, has emotionally crippled her (and likely the former friends involved). Andersen’s rugged skill and talent is displayed here, as he gradually develops a taut, thriller-type story that will keep you turning the pages, and echoes a past that surely is more passionate than its future.

If you enjoy stories about the 1960’s hippie/activist days, you will revel in the revolutionary spirit of the counterculture era--protests, sit-ins, intellectual debates--together with thought-provoking ideas that pad the story, but add to the theme and successfully loop into the narrative. Additionally, Karen’s 007-role-playing missions with her best friends, Alex and Chuck, define her pre-college years and add colorful background to the story. Their friendship was cemented during these risky and adventurous events that began in Wilmette, near Chicago, and peaked as Harvard freshmen. She now lives in LA.

Because of Andersen’s tight pacing and architecture, I was engaged in the story. But I was unconvinced with the incongruous voice of Karen. Hollander's résumé and leanings have all the makings of a Hillary Clinton (inside a size-6 body resembling a 45-ish Julie Christie). At Hollander's age and achievements, one would expect her memoir's tone to be serious, mature, and intellectually sober, and to reflect the weight of the story.

Instead, her narrative voice/tone is an octave too high and young and much too coy and chipper for her judicial years and leadership, not to mention the import of subject matter and this burdensome secret. Of all the voices for Andersen to imbue in Hollander, this contradictory one undermines the gravity of the story and the magnitude of her character. Try to imagine Clinton personifying a college freshman on a sleepover, terrified of spilling the awful travesty of Spring Break. No way! Yes, way! And Hollander periodically speaks in colloquialisms like "grok."

“Living here [in LA] makes me feel as if I’m always getting away with something. What I now clearly see—note to book clubs” [italicized]—“is a major theme of my life.”

The seminal incident of her life happened when Karen was 18, but she is telling it as a fully mature and accomplished woman. It is gnawing to hear her narrate a memoir in a teenaged tone, bright with a cavalier spirit that alternates with calculated contrition. Moreover, there’s too much authorial intrusion as apology—we are coaxed to acknowledge her self-blame, but her role as a martyr is too canny and deliberate.

Hollander’s past is part of the suspension of disbelief, but you are seduced to go along with it by an affecting, historic chronicle of heady 60’s activism. However, Hollander’s supernova status renders the rest of the characters pale and straw in comparison, as if they were set up primarily to prop up Karen’s immeasurable gifts. She hooks up with an ex-boyfriend, who she hasn’t actually seen in a decade, because he has the highest form of secret government clearance, “my friend the senior national security and intelligence-community apparatchik,” as she needs his acquisitive talents to provide secret documents to her. It was too fantastic to accept that he would so easily defy his coda to help her.

The author of the ripe and historical HEYDAY, a resonant novel of the 19th century with a credible female protagonist, is not as successful in drawing out a lead woman character in this second novel. It’s hard to be a true believer, but the tight plot and vivid walk down memory lane convinced me of its earnest desire, if not its plausibility. The wobbly credibility was eased by moments of sensitive introspection about a time that is now too often remembered with bumper sticker slogans and vintage fashion. The heart of the story—of a woman who dares to tell the truth in 2013, an era of avatars and fabrications, Facebook and Twitter--and risk her spotless professional legacy--managed to almost balance the false notes with an exuberant belief in itself.

Almost a 3.5

Thank you to Shelf Awareness for a copy from the publisher.(less)

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Jul 16, 2012 Phil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

I will not summarize or review the book's plot because you, dear reader, can find that done effectively and well by other readers.

Andersen at one points quotes Karl Marx' statement that history repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce. How very true of this novel as well. Andersen has to a remarkable degree captured the tenor of the times, first through the eyes of a teenager in the 1960s, and then through the retrospective vision of that same woman over forty years later. (Forget abou...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Diane Kistner rated it 4 of 5 stars

First, let me say that I was pleasantly surprised that a male author was able to get inside the head of a female character and present her like an intelligent person and not a subservient bimbo cliche. I really appreciate that. Second, let me say that I found the book to be too long; it kept going and going and going well after I thought it should have ended. I think it could have benefitted from some tightening, although surprises continued to present themselves up through the very end.

This nov...more First, let me say that I was pleasantly surprised that a male author was able to get inside the head of a female character and present her like an intelligent person and not a subservient bimbo cliche. I really appreciate that. Second, let me say that I found the book to be too long; it kept going and going and going well after I thought it should have ended. I think it could have benefitted from some tightening, although surprises continued to present themselves up through the very end.

This novel was a real blast from the past. I am only two years younger than the protagonist, and revisiting the period leading up to and following 1968 was intense for me. I had to suspend disbelief, however, because I found some of the relationships hard to believe. At least four of the major characters somehow involved with the intelligence services, even though they were kids? Maybe that happens in privileged families; in my own life, it was a stretch. I found the relationship between Karen Hollander and her granddaughter unbelievable as well. But if you can get past these issues and just let the whirlwind experiences unfold, the book is engaging and filled with little gems.

What I found of most value in reading this book was not the story so much as the periods of reflection I entered into with Karen Hollander as she tried to make sense of the strange brew that was the sixties and everything that's come thereafter. There were moments in this book that I felt like I was tripping or stoned; when the import of life then (and now) seemed so much deeper than it normally does to me; when suddenly things I have always taken for granted became charged, flamed out, like shining from shook foil. Even several days after finishing the book, I am still pondering the more philosophical aspects of "True Believers."

I'd love to see the author try his hand at a non-fiction book exploring the idea of hybrid consciousness evolving out of our immersion in metaphor and role-playing, that slipping into and only partially out of "an in-between realm where the metaphorical and the fantastical mingle[d] with the literal and the everyday." We're living that now and, for better or worse, it's shaping our history.(less)

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Aug 02, 2012 Jeannie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

Karen Hollander is a woman with a secret. She is a respected member of society with many years of community service. She has children, an ex-husband, a lover, and she was short listed to be a supreme court judge, but she backed out of the nomination and decided to let all her dirty laundry air. Not everyone is happy about this.

One of the major themes is the roles people play in society and how that can affect people you never even dreamed it would. Politics plays heavily in this book and even to...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Karen Hollender is 64 years old and has decided to write the story of her life. She was recently on a short list of candidates for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court but she has taken her name out of the running. In this novel, we find out why and what secret she has been hiding for many years.

In this wonderful book, we learn about Karen's loving, middle-class upbringing in Wilmette, Illinois. It is the early 1960's and she and her best friends Chuck and Alex are all James Bond fanatics and t...more Karen Hollender is 64 years old and has decided to write the story of her life. She was recently on a short list of candidates for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court but she has taken her name out of the running. In this novel, we find out why and what secret she has been hiding for many years.

In this wonderful book, we learn about Karen's loving, middle-class upbringing in Wilmette, Illinois. It is the early 1960's and she and her best friends Chuck and Alex are all James Bond fanatics and they like to act out clandestine and imaginative spy missions. Told in chapters that alternate between the present and the past. we follow Karen and her friends as they grow up during the turbulent 1960's. As the war rages on in Viet Nam, Karen becomes more radicalized and politicized as so many did during that time. But when that radicalization includes a subversive and criminal plan, everything changes.

I have read several books about the 1960's and the counterculture movement and this may be one the best ones I've read. I thought the author nailed the descriptions of what it was like during that decade and I also thought his observations about the culture both then and today were persuasive and compelling. There were unique things about the 1960's for sure, and no doubt America did lose its innocence and change after the assassination of John Kennedy. But as this book so brilliantly shows us, much of what we thought was so exclusive to that time is more universal and relevant today as well.

This novel is not just an astute look at our culture then and now, it's also the author's shrewd observations about time and memory. Perhaps it's because I am old enough to remember Kennedy's assassination, but I felt that this book absolutely spoke to me. I have dog-eared so many pages of this novel because I thought there were so many passages that were so spot-on and so clever. I don't know if someone much younger would get as much out of this book as I did, but for me this book was just terrific. Although I thought it was a little slow-go towards the start, it soon became a page-turner for me and when I put it down I couldn't wait to pick it back up. I am writing this book at night after having just finished it, and I know I will be thinking about it for a long, long time. I can think of no higher compliment than that.(less)

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Jan 30, 2013 Noralo rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've been busy and it took me a long time to read this, with many breaks, but I always looked forward to returning to it. It's a fun adventure story with political intrigue; I liked the disenchanted and practical-minded narrator. There was a lot of depth and nothing was entirely simplistic. The one thing that I hated was the dialogue between the narrator and her teenaged granddaughter - it felt unrealistic and silly.

The things the narrator focused on must have been things Andersen himself is str...more

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Oct 22, 2012 Liz rated it 5 of 5 stars

True Believers is, hands down, the best book that I've read all year. Alternating between the almost-present day (my guess is that the book is set sometime a few years from now, though we never know for sure) and the 1960's, this endearing and sometimes tragic novel tells the story of Karen Hollander, a law professor working on her memoir. Hollander removed her name from consideration for the Supreme Court, fearful that a secret from her past would finally be revealed if she were vetted too thor...more

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Sep 28, 2012 Sharon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Really went back and forth on how many stars to give this one . . . 3.5? I liked the first-person narrative and the back and forth between the present and the past. I also enjoyed the recounting of Karen's crush, her relationship with her two best friends and their childhood James Bond adventures. But throughout Karen reflects on the 'terrible things' they did in 1968. The set up to the big reveal of the terrible secret was at first suspenseful and, as it went on and on, a bit frustrating and te...more

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Sep 26, 2012 Jaylia3 rated it 4 of 5 stars

Kurt Anderson set True Believers in the near future, mainly 2014, but much of the novel is long flashbacks to the transitional decade of the 1960s when main character Karen Hollander was a teenager becoming more and more radicalized by the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement. In the novel’s present day Karen Hollander has a teenage grandchild allowing her, as a first person narrator, to have lengthy digressions comparing the present to the past. These musings add substantially to the leng...more Kurt Anderson set True Believers in the near future, mainly 2014, but much of the novel is long flashbacks to the transitional decade of the 1960s when main character Karen Hollander was a teenager becoming more and more radicalized by the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement. In the novel’s present day Karen Hollander has a teenage grandchild allowing her, as a first person narrator, to have lengthy digressions comparing the present to the past. These musings add substantially to the length of this 400+ page book, but as someone who lived through the rapidly evolving ethos of the 1960s I was often engrossed by those well thought-out reflections.

True Believers vividly brings back to life an era I lived through, but while fascinating it’s not a completely comfortable trip. Someone said, “If you remember the 1960s you weren’t there,” but I’d amend that to, “If you’re nostalgic for the 1960s you don’t remember them.” Though in some ways it was a more innocent time, today’s divisions and demonstrations pale by comparison and many of them have their roots in that era. The book has refreshingly few anachronisms and it might be that the ones that jarred me were things I wasn’t aware of then; maybe people did do victory fist pumps in the early, prerevolutionary 1960s after something like a good round of bowling, but my memory is those clenched fists came later in the decade.

Since the story is told in the first person, main character Karen Hollander can actually tell readers she’s a reliable narrator, but she’s also a narrator who relies on delaying information to create tension. She takes her time and teases the reader, slowly parceling out details about the subversive act she participated in during the late 60s that’s giving her the urge to come clean in a confessional tell-all. As someone who took herself out of the running for a spot on the Supreme Court, it’s a memoir that would capture a lot of attention, but that fact makes this mostly realistic character seem unnaturally cold. She has no concern for how publically revealing old secrets may affect her former friends, and when her actions cause tragedy she cries for a while but then moves on without any regret or second guessing of her choices.

Minor quibbles aside, True Believers is enthralling, and a go-to novel for anyone interested in reliving or understanding the mindset of the 1960s.
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Aug 31, 2012 Darrenglass rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've enjoyed Andersen's work for awhile, ranging from SPY magazine and his public radio show Studio 360, to the woefully underrated novel TURN OF THE CENTURY. So I was quite interested in this new novel, which alternates between the tale of a teenage girl and her friends growing up in the 1960's and dealing with the political turmoil of the era and the story of that girl as an adult in the year 2014 writing a memoir about some of the things her friends did during that time.

There is quite a bit...more

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Aug 05, 2012 R. Honey rated it 4 of 5 stars

I requested this novel from my local library because I was interested in the whole mystery of this famous,accomplished woman,
the main character Karen Hollander.
I had heard the author discuss James Bond books,and all things late 60's on NPR.
As a literary device the author has Karen,a well known attorney who recently turned down a supreme court feeler for nomination writing her autobiography. There is a deep,dark secret she promises to reveal. Since Karen and
I are of a certain age the telling of...more I requested this novel from my local library because I was interested in the whole mystery of this famous,accomplished woman,
the main character Karen Hollander.
I had heard the author discuss James Bond books,and all things late 60's on NPR.
As a literary device the author has Karen,a well known attorney who recently turned down a supreme court feeler for nomination writing her autobiography. There is a deep,dark secret she promises to reveal. Since Karen and
I are of a certain age the telling of Her life story
that starts when she is ten was quite interesting to me as she goes through jr. high and high school memories. There are so many cultural references
that I had forgotten about that it did bring back some fond thoughts of those times. However,much of this section of the book is devoted to she and her two male friend's total immersion in all things James Bond. Including actually staging "missions". The planning and carrying out of these games will go very out of
control for she and her friends as the 60's progress and the war in Vietnam becomes more unpopular.
As I was reading this book I had to agree with her father who tells her that somewhere along the line Karen had "lost her sense of humor". So Karen and I are the same age but
she could not be more different from me and any one I was friends with at that time! Karen is so politically aware her entire time in high school and then onto her life at a 7 sister,ivy league college. To the exclusion of anything else. While a freshman she sees only the two boys from home that she played James Bond encounters with as they also have gotten into a Cambridge,Mass. school,
Harvard! A fourth guy,an older student, a veteran of Vietnam is her beloved Chuck's roommate. Fueled by drugs they feed off of each other's
increasingly paranoid feelings about the war in Vietnam and see LBJ as an evil war monger.
The book moves back and forth between Karen's memories and the present time,2013 and on into 2014. She wonders how she ever
got away with the terrible secret she is keeping. An occasional lover,Stewart is some kind of government operative who has access to
all sorts of buried records. Those well below The Freedom Of Information kind. So he is enlisted to go digging. Much is revealed by
his research including very disturbing facts about her male friends that she never knew.
Her 17 year old granddaughter finds her notes,reads them,
confesses to her Gram promising never to tell the contents. This granddaughter seems very underwhelmed by the things her grandmother did
forty six years ago. But then Karen supposes if her own grandmother was to tell her 17 year old self something she did during the
Warren J. Harding era in 1920 it would have also had minimum impact on her.
I think because I am old enough to remember the late 60's and have never read any serious discussion of the war in Vietnam or
the psychology behind some of the serious,radical protesters I was driven to keep going reading this book.
Just a tad bit wordy toward the end but excellent writing and a satisfying ending.
A funny aside: while reading thi(less)

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Jul 25, 2012 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed True Believers by Kurt Andersen. Karen Hollander is the narrator of the story and alternates what she is telling between the present (2013) and the past (1960s). She is writing her memoir, mainly dealing with her youth in Wilmette, IL and the 1960s (Martin Luther King, Malcom X, SDS, drugs, college and anti-Vietnam protests). Andersen has done a great job with the characters. To me they were believeable and likeable. It was very entertaining to reminisce about life in the 60...more

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Mar 09, 2013 Susan rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a big book with ambition to tell the tale of America's passage through the 60s/70s from a 2010s perspective. (Perhaps more "historical" fiction is better told from the perspective of a writer only a generation or two distant?). I don't know Andersen's age - but I'm guessing he lived (or saw) some of those anarchist, revolutionary times. But I think what is so well done is that this historical American novel is told from one (interesting) woman's perspective. This is the tale of a nerdy,...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Alice Heiserman rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book evoked the atmosphere of the sixties--the antiwar fervor and the cold war, and the secret machinations of the government spying on its citizens. It captured the zeitgeist but the characters seemed playthings never quite believable. The first two-thirds of the book seemed strange--something happened that scared the main character but only toward the end of the book do we learn what the action was that caused her worry. The relationship among the three main characters was not quite belie...more

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Dec 31, 2012 Debi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Narrator Karen Hollander takes her time, acquainting us with her past and her present so that we can clearly see the links between them. She speaks like actual intellectuals do, using language that ranges from erudite to indelicate. [In fact, I relished having to use my dictionary app to learn some terms that I'm eager to begin using.] The other characters are interesting, though not necessarily likable.

I liked the book, its story, and its style, but although I can see the intent and method, I...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Jon rated it 5 of 5 stars

My review in Vanity Fair for Kurt's beautiful, enormous and athletic book:

True Believers (Random House), by Kurt Andersen, takes place in the near future and not so recent past. Its unflinching narrator, Karen Hollander, describes herself on page one as a Reliable Narrator. Readers may be forgiven for putting up a red flag at this point, but not for turning away. An attorney, TV commentator, and former Justice Depart- ment official, Karen, in her mid-60s, has just stepped away from a likely Supr...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Jeanette rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-fiction, america, cultural-and-social-commentary, av, four-star-fiction

I'm not sure how realistic this story is. There were some things that seemed far-fetched, but it had me turning the pages, so I'm not complaining. It was believable enough, and with fiction, that's enough for me. I finished the book in just a few days.

The premise is that Karen Hollander, age 64 in 2013, is in the process of writing a book about her life, culminating in the revelation of a huge secret she's been keeping since 1968. It involves serious criminal activity, and people died. That's al...more

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May 01, 2012 Ashley FL rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: giveaways

I received an ARC of this book from the Publisher. Based on the back copy, I was expecting a legal thriller and it took me a while to adjust to the book: it is most definitely not a legal thriller, but more of the main character's reminiscences and self-analysis of her experiences in the turbulent late 1960s. It is meandering and there is a lot of navel-gazing. I think if I had been prepared for that going in, I would have enjoyed the book more. It is long, and I spent many many pages waiting fo...more

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Aug 09, 2012 Alice rated it 3 of 5 stars

Looking back on this novel, I decided it wasn't anything ground-breaking. Perhaps because for me, it questioned a lot of things that I already question. Is the young generation of today aspoliticallyactive as the generation of the 60s, and should they be? With all the noise in the media and pop culture, is it even possible? Are we destined to be just like our parents, or do we strive to be the opposite? When we're looking for a partner in life, is our first, young choice destined to be terribly...more

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Feb 16, 2013 Susan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I couldn't put down this novel! When Karen Hollander, a highly esteemed lawyer, is on a short list of Supreme Court nominees, she takes her name out of consideration because of something that she did in 1968. She has kept this secret for over forty years, and as she begins to write her tell-all memoir, she tracks down her old friends for answers to questions she has.

This is a fabulous coming-of-age story of a woman who as an adolescent acted out wild, exciting "James Bond" spy missions with her...more

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May 28, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 4 of 5 stars

Karen Hollander lived through the sixties and remembers the time almost mnemonically. She is now in her sixties and “is reliable. I am an oldest child. Highly imperfect, by no stretch a goody-goody. But I was a reliable U.S. Supreme Court Clerk and then a reliable Legal Aid lawyer, representing with all the verve and cunning I could muster some of the most pathetically, tragically unreliable people on earth. I have been a reliable partner in America’s nineteenth largest law firm, a reliable auth...more Karen Hollander lived through the sixties and remembers the time almost mnemonically. She is now in her sixties and “is reliable. I am an oldest child. Highly imperfect, by no stretch a goody-goody. But I was a reliable U.S. Supreme Court Clerk and then a reliable Legal Aid lawyer, representing with all the verve and cunning I could muster some of the most pathetically, tragically unreliable people on earth. I have been a reliable partner in America’s nineteenth largest law firm, a reliable author of four books, a reliable law professor, a reliable U.S. Justice Department official, a reliable law school dean. I’ve been a reliable parent” as well. As the book opens, she is being nominated for a place on the United States Supreme Court and turns down her nomination. Why? You’ll have to read the book to find out. She is also in great shape, still a size six. Her tragic flaw is that she has Type I Juvenile Onset Diabetes.

Karen and her school friends – Chuck and Alex – spent a great deal of their childhood playing out roles from James Bond books. They revisited various scenarios from the novels and played out their roles. This aspect of her life is very important to her. In fact, when she ends up giving the graduation speech at her alma mater, Harvard University, she tells the graduates that “we are all to some extent fictional characters of our own devising.”

During the sixties Karen, Chuck and Alex were radicals. They belonged to S.D.S. (Students for a Democratic Society), marched on Washington for Civil Rights and against the war in Vietnam. This book is a trip down memory lane for those of us who are of a certain age. Karen and her friends went a bit further than most, however, and she worries that her past will catch up with her at some point.

She is in the process of writing a book all about her past and she has notified those whose appearance in the book might be of concern. Her granddaughter, Waverly, with whom she is very close, is proofreading and editing the book and is surprised to learn all about her grandmother. She had no idea that her grandmother was involved in activities that this book is all about.

Karen sees herself as a reliable narrator so there is no issue here of her stretching the past, employing narrative that doesn’t exist, or making anything up. She has kept notes and files throughout her life – for more than half a century- “I’ve saved every diary and journal, every letter I’ve received, catechism worksheets, term papers, restaurant receipts, train schedules, ticket stubs, snapshots, playbills.” If she is not paranoid, or a legend in her own mind, then she is certainly preparing to give the world a snapshot of someone they will be seeing from a brand new angle.

Overall, the book held my interest but I found myself somewhat bored by Karen. She is an ‘every woman’ of the sixties, stretched to the max. Her character seems a bit unreal. How could someone so intensely radical become so much of a ‘citizen’ over night. There are also elements to some of the characters in the novel that just don’t ring true. They don’t stand up to their roles in ethical ways and the explanations for their actions are missing.

The book is definitely entertaining, a literary romp through the sixties with the privileged. The reader doesn’t spend time with the bourgeois but with the elite. This aspect of the book is not focused on but it is ever present. It is a page-turner and a fun book.
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Aug 05, 2012 Meghan rated it 3 of 5 stars

In a nutshell: former Supreme Court nominee Karen H begins a memoir with the proclamation that she will talk about 'everything' regarding Midwestern youth, Harvard in the late 60's, etc--and some horrible misdeed involving childhood friends (James Bond aficionados) that has never been revealed nor discussed with anyone.

According to the book, a 'believer' was what soldiers in Vietnam termed any recently killed comrade; the title comes into literal and figurative play several times through the bo...more

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Nov 18, 2012 DR rated it 1 of 5 stars

I wish that this novel had lived up to the lure of the line: “I once set out to commit a spectacular murder, and people died.” Confessing to an unstated crime in a potentially best-selling memoir is Karen Hollander--a famous attorney who has withdrawn herself from consideration as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. She’s been keeping a secret for 40 years--and, despite the confessional purpose of her narrative, she stays coy about specifics and mostly teases the reader or overloads with details about...more I wish that this novel had lived up to the lure of the line: “I once set out to commit a spectacular murder, and people died.” Confessing to an unstated crime in a potentially best-selling memoir is Karen Hollander--a famous attorney who has withdrawn herself from consideration as a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. She’s been keeping a secret for 40 years--and, despite the confessional purpose of her narrative, she stays coy about specifics and mostly teases the reader or overloads with details about her early years. Our protagonist prides herself on being a “reliable narrator,” even when she bops and weaves like a worn-out prizefighter trying to survive Round 15. She’s about to accuse herself of something really bad--the sort of crime only contemplated by the most hard-core revolutionary--but we sense (ever the lawyer) that she already has a solid legal defense planned. The feminine voice and perspective of the narrator never really persuades--and neither does the story.

Karen begins her story as a girl-geek obsessed with Ian Fleming novels (never met one of those, personally) who juggles two boys as her best pals/sidekicks. Karen keeps herself at the center of the story and everyone else in orbit around her wonderfulness. Pals Chuck and Alex are useful for straddling disparate plot points, but they don’t truly resonate as characters. Neither does Karen, whose long hardback memoir would have been better served as a mea culpa article in “Vanity Fair.”
Basically, TRUE BELIEVERS is a tedious coming-of-age flashback—kind of like the old Woody Allen joke about having someone else’s life flash in front of your eyes. Karen assures the reader that she has an excellent, even an eidetic, memory and a life-long habit of pack-ratting away the minutiae of her own life, but that doesn’t imbue her with a gift for storytelling.

Wikipedia says Kurt Anderson was born in 1954, but he doesn’t “feel” like a fellow Boomer. Although we’re re-visiting a joyful, wild, dangerous, unpredictable time (the Sixties), the author manages to make it all seem as dry and dusty as an archive of newspaper clippings.

Karen Hollander reminisces early on: “The space program was the first time I ever experienced sequel boredom” (p13). TRUE BELIEVERS, unfortunately, feels like a sequel to an unrelated historical novel written by an archivist.
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Apr 18, 2012 Terry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: first-reads

Surprisingly suspenseful, despite not being a “who dunnit.”

Written from the point of view of Karen Hollander, a successful, 65-year old female lawyer who withdrew her name from consideration for nomination to the United States Supreme Court, with frequent flashbacks to her life from age 8-20. Although the reader knows from the beginning that the pivotal events in her life occurred during her early college years and suspects that these pivotal events are the cause for the withdrawing of her name...more

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Jul 27, 2012 Connie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: war-novels

This is romance in the people-in-love sense but more a romance of the 60s. The action in the 2013 setting revolves around research into the past, so it’s a tale told through filtered memory and research - just like history. The 64 yr old law prof main character writes a memoir to set the record straight on her 60s activism before she starts to lose her memory, and knowing "how memory and history are sugar coated," she tries to arrive at the truth. The mystery is secondary to the 60s social histo...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Andersen may have been a bit young during the 1960s (born in 1954) but he captures quite a bit of it in True Believers. Karen Hollander grows up enacting Bond plots with her male friends alluding to something beyond play acting for a good part of the book as she reflects back on her life from the comfort of a law school deanship in 2013. We only learn what that event is near the end providing a bit of mystery. In spite of her youthful exuberance she has gone on to a distinguished legal career. S...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Viccy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: crime-fiction

To classify this as crime fiction does it any injustice. While crimes take place, it is their impact 40 years later that create the tension in the book. Karen Hollander is writing her memoirs. She has led an exemplary life, except for one small incident. Along with her best friends, Chuck Levy and Alex MacAllister, Karen believed in the ideals of King Arthur from T.H. White's "The once and future king", might does not make right. At Harvard, Karen, Chuck and Alex meet Buzzy Freeman, a Vietnam ve...more

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Sep 12, 2012 Nancy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-miscellaneous

Some memoirs are written in the style of fiction (such as Salman Rushdie's new book, Joseph Anton, which I'm putting on my to-read list). This book is fiction written as if it is a memoir in process. I enjoyed watching the past unfold intermittently throughout the current life of Karen Hollander.

Karen is a successful lawyer, professor, Supreme Court nominee, and author. Her decision to write her (this) autobiography is not to document her prestigious career but to confess a secret she has held o...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Amanda Wheet rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

Full Disclosure: I received this book from Random House as an ARC. My "markdowns" on the book may have since been edited out, but I'm reviewing this book as it was sent to me, even though it was received after the publication date for the regular edition.

Until "True Believers" I had never even heard of Kurt Andersen, and probably would not have picked up the book based on synopsis alone. But there is something truly lovable about Karen Hollander and her story, part political thriller, part famil...more

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Feb 24, 2013 Kasa Cotugno rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: awards-winners, era-late-20th-century, genre-political-fiction, themes-coming-of-age, subject-boomers

What a read. Karen's story is told in two timeframes: present day alternating with her coming of age memoir which she plans to publish and thus "out" herself. This novel deals with such heavy issues, but does so in a witty way, immediately accessible and engaging much better than most books of this type that purport to explain America in 1968. It's the young who are the activists, and Karen's family produces four generations of smarter than average, more perceptive than usual people. Her closest...more

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About Kurt Andersen

Kurt Andersen is the author of three novels -- Heyday (a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2008 Langum Prize for historical fiction), Turn of the Century (a national bestseller and New York Times Notable Book), and the new True Believers.

He is also host of the Peabody Award-winning weekly public radio program Studio 360, and a contributing editor to Vanity Fair.

Previously, Kurt was a co...more

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