Overthrow

June 10, 2019
Crain’s ambitious if flawed novel (after Necessary Errors) portrays young utopians caught on the wrong side of a government security project. Amid the idealism and hubbub of New York City during the Occupy movement, Matthew, a lonely graduate student in his early 30s, meets the younger, beautiful Leif, a skater and poet who might just be telepathic. As Matthew and Leif’s relationship blossoms into romance, Matthew falls in with Leif’s group of friends and Occupy protesters: Elspeth, a fact-checker with her own empathic streak; Raleigh, a self-centered computer whiz; and Julia, a rich young woman delighted by the excitement of their movement. The group’s murky aims involve using their empathic and telepathic gifts to restructure society by trusting in feelings. As the group begins to realize what they want, they hack into a government contractor’s files and are arrested which tests the strength of their loyalties to one another. Crain crafts elegant, effortless sentences, but the shifting perspectives and alliances of the novel feel less compelling than Matthew’s initial, skeptical point of view. Just as these characters’ optimism cannot be sustained amid the realities of capitalism and control, neither can the novel’s momentum be sustained after their arrests, culminating in a legal battle. This novel’s promising premise is ultimately overshadowed by its shortcomings.

June 15, 2019
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.

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August 1, 2019

Floundering with his dissertation, English grad student Matthew is wandering about New York when he's passed by a beautiful "boy" on a skateboard (who's actually in his early twenties), and they click. The boy, Leif, introduces Matthew to his "working group," a set of idealists involved with Occupy Wall Street. Leif is (maybe?) telepathic, some of the others also have occult skills, and their vague aim is to use telepathy and empathy to transform society. The pace thus far has been painfully slow, but that changes when the group hacks the computer of a government contractor. The State becomes interested and arrests ensue; the book turns into a quasi-thriller for a while, then slows down again. Crain's (Necessary Errors) writing is serviceable and competent but suffers from a surfeit of detail, much of it unnecessary and relevant to nothing. There is a lot going on here, which means there is a lot to explain; the story would have been much better were it 100 pages shorter. VERDICT Overly ambitious and interesting in concept but flawed in execution; the sum of the parts far exceeds the whole.--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019
Crain's (Necessary Errors, 2018) second novel is set in New York at the time of the Occupy movement. Matthew, a graduate student studying obscure aspects of poetry and English kingship, meets a beautiful young man, Leif, who is skateboarding around New York. As they begin to date, Matthew meets Leif's activist friends and encounters their bizarre beliefs, including their conviction that Leif can read minds. The narrative fractures in the collision between a mysterious, tech-driven security firm and the group, after which each character's motivations and concerns are explored in detail as they try to navigate the legal maelstrom they find themselves in. Crain's novel, like Jonathan Lethem's Dissident Gardens (2013), is a fascinating depiction of the Occupy period, a moment that popularized a stronger critique of capitalism and led to even more overt forms of surveillance. As the characters' friendships strain, Crain offers many wonderful turns of phrase that evocatively demonstrate how surveillance affects how all of us think, relate, and communicate. Crain also pertinently explores the legal and moral challenges of the digital age.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)