OVERTHROW

Another narrative of revolution from the author of Necessary Errors (2013).

Matthew is a graduate student in English. His cohort has graduated while he’s still fussing about with his dissertation. So, he’s alone in New York and adrift when he says “Hi” to a cute boy on a skateboard. This cute boy is Leif—not a boy exactly, but younger than Matthew and committed to a worldview that Matthew struggles to take seriously. Leif is a barista and a poet, but his real work is with Occupy Wall Street. He serves food to protesters. He’s also the charismatic leader of a “working group” devoted to using psychic power to infiltrate—and overthrow—the establishment. There’s a lot going on in this novel. Crain borrows elements from science fiction as his characters explore the use of occult weapons to disrupt capitalism. Crain’s characters find themselves involved in something like a thriller as government agencies become interested in their activism. The idea that Leif and his comrades can read minds becomes entangled with contemporary concerns about everyday privacy and the surveillance state. These fantastical and topical elements are, though, subservient to what is essentially a realist novel about human longing and the need for connection. Crain’s worldbuilding is meticulously naturalistic. There is hardly a detail that goes unrecorded—a scent, a gesture, an architectural flourish….It’s not difficult to imagine that some readers will become immersed in the character-driven universe Crain creates. At the same time, it’s easy to wish that the story moved along at a faster pace.

Personal, political, and really long.