Killing the President

Wow. I loved this book! It was funny, touching, in-touch, and edgy. I couldn't put it down, and hope there will be more to read from Teresa soon.

Teresa Bergen's novel Killing the President is a swiftly-moving tale that is both hilarious and deeply disturbing. It easily one of the best novels I have ever read, and is one of those works that captures, as in a photograph, a specific moment in history (when the Bush Administration seemed all-powerful), and uses it as a springboard to develop universal themes, which in this case include paranoia, romantic love, oppression, and fetish capitalism. Bergen's prose is as excellent as any other modern writer I have encountered and has the added virtue of being delightfully enjoyable and accessible; her writing is clear and concise, almost journalistic, and Bergen is never seduced by the beauty of her prose at the expense of the plot. Her characters somehow seem more real than real than real people! Although politics play an important part in the narative, there is no didactic propaganda here - Bergen is no polemicist. Without revealing too much of the plot, let me merely note that the twin stories concern a young Portlander who goes underground after becoming convinced the government is after him, and his ill girlfriend who finds a very unusual refuge for herself after his disappearance. The way these two plots are resolved is highly unusual and is another quality of the book that makes it remarkable. Bergen is a major talent and it is my hope more of her work becomes available soon to the public - it is my suspicion we will all be hearing her name more and more in the years to come. Lovers of fiction, rejoice: put away your dry tomes with their lugubrious yarns of lawyers and divorcees, and get your hands on a copy of this book immediately - if you don't like it I'll kill the... oh, never mind.

If you are a human rights advocate who proclaims the dignity of all people, a Buddhist who believes all sentient beings have Buddha nature, or a Christian who seeks God in everyone, read Killing the President and apply yourself to those at the lower end of the bell curve. The novel's young protagonists, Justin and Zoe, are untalented, unattractive, uninteresting, unmotivated nobodies, surrounded by lacklustre acquaintances in sleazy Portland settings. Someone who, amazingly, does care about these people is author, artist, and oral historian Teresa Bergen, writing from firsthand observation in Portland. Bergen tracks her protagonists in the humble settings through which their lives flow. They take paths of least resistance under benevolent guidance or exploitation by acquaintances, never rising to the status of sympathetic victims. Justin's course is skewed by an undercover FBI agent who overhears his inane speculation about a golfing companion killing the president with a well-aimed golf ball. Among the stations of his flight, always directed by others, is a group home for the mentally retarded. Zoe's course is skewed by an unnamed, debilitating illness, which delivers her to a good-and-evil home for dying girls supported by an internet porn site. The brief crossings of their lives teach the unromantic lesson that love, like work, depends on initiative and competence. The storyteller has quite an ear for language, trained by years of transcribing oral history interviews. Readers who can read through the foul language of many careless speakers will transcend with Zoe and Justin to small epiphanies of human agency and care for others. Small but instructive for we readers who believe ourselves more masters of our fates than they.

This book made me laugh out loud. In a coffeeshop. Actually, I didn't just laugh- I snorted and then kept snickering, oblivious to the disbelieving stares of the hipsters surrounding me. The author just nails the internal experiences of her characters- they're so real, so human and flawed and pathetic and beautiful. So, in addition to being funny, the book has heart. It also contains concise political and social commentary, without descending into jingoism or preachiness. I loved it. Best contemporary book I've read in a long time.

I've been looking for a novel of this caliber for awhile from a new writer and finally I found it! Not only is Killing the President hard to put down, but the novel makes us question what we think is real and what is really going on. Bergen's novel will make you ask: what exactly is going on with Homeland Security, behind the walls of residential homes, or among the hipsters at local coffee shops? Hmmm...read Bergen's book, and then you'll know you know nothing. This book is relevant to the times, and a must read for every politically aware but semi-apathetic love struck average Joe/Josephine.