The Liberty Campaign

"The Liberty Campaign" a very introspection-heavy novel, focusing on the thoughts of a soon-to-be-65 marketing executive. It is a deeply nuanced novel, and though it has more thought than action I found it easy and enjoyable to read. The main character is forced to reconsider his life when faced with his looming retirement, his son's waning career as a professional baseball player, and the discovery that his long time neighbor may or may not be a former Brazilian war criminal in hiding. Though the last item in that list might seem a little shocking it actually gets about the same page count as the other two topics, which, balanced against the whole of the protagonists life is highly appropriate. The very fact that in the suburbs people can sit around and inactively contemplate a neighbor's alleged war crimes is one of the revelations the narrator sits around and inactively contemplates. The book asks and doesn't quite answer a lot of questions about our ability to know evil and judge others, about the what it is that make someone's life successful, and about the nature of repenting and forgiveness. Frankly, it's hard to list out questions like this without them seeming trite, but that's why you need a well-written novel to dance around the issues in a new and profound way if you want to really understand them.

an excellent book. sad, funny, always interesting. just enough elements of cinema to draw a reader in, seduce them into thinking they're getting nothing more than a well-written drama--which it is, only with depths that movies don't bother to ever aspire to find. the subtle, sad undertones floating throughout the story make this book a humane but dark book. i wish all adpeople would read it and recoil at how shallow most of our lives are.

Dee's book has a moral weight that you rarely see in American fiction, but the writing is not at all heavy-handed. An excellent accomplishment.

Main plot: retiring professional meets reclusive neighbor who turns out to be a wanted man. Good piece of fiction that develops the characters well. Characters become well known and the main character guides the reader to an understanding of how little it really takes to get us out of our little civilized shells into a bigger, scarier world beyond the US borders and beyond our sense of humanity. The initial smoothness of the reading makes the transition to deeper thoughts all that more involving and tedious.