I have been hearing about Joan Didion for a very long time and I was dying to read her books ( the first one I heard about is The Book of Common Prayer) but it was impossible to find her novels as they could only be shipped from the US and at a costly sum.
Thank God for the World Wide Web.
Democracy is a portrait of an upper middle class family , that’s at the point of disentegration. The wife, Inez is having an affair with a CIA agent, the daughter is a drug addict , the son is a rebel and the husband is desperately trying to run for politics but is failing miserably. Oh yes Inez’s father is also a murderer , albeit an insane one.
Yes I’m know you’re inwardly groaning, but don’t forget Didion precedes Roth and Franzen so I guess she’s the main influence. Also saying that , the novel as a ton of interesting twists , the main one being that it is narrated by the author herself , as she is writing a book about Inez’s family AND in the process us readers are guided to the wrongs and rights of writing prose.
Democracy is interesting , intelligent and unpredictable. If you want to see where Franzen got his chops from – look here.
The Bobsphere 