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    True Believers: A Novel
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    True Believers: A Novel
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    True Believers: A Novel
    Audiobook18 hours

    True Believers: A Novel

    Written by Kurt Andersen

    Narrated by Vanessa Hart

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
    The Washington Post • San Francisco Chronicle

    In True Believers, Kurt Andersen-the New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Heyday and Turn of the Century-delivers his most powerful and moving novel yet. Dazzling in its wit and effervescent insight, this kaleidoscopic tour de force of cultural observation and seductive storytelling alternates between the present and the 1960s-and indelibly captures the enduring impact of that time on the ways we live now.

    Karen Hollander is a celebrated attorney who recently removed herself from consideration for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her reasons have their roots in 1968-an episode she's managed to keep secret for more than forty years. Now, with the imminent publication of her memoir, she's about to let the world in on that shocking secret-as soon as she can track down the answers to a few crucial last questions.

    As junior-high-school kids back in the early sixties, Karen and her two best friends, Chuck and Alex, roamed suburban Chicago on their bikes looking for intrigue and excitement. Inspired by the exotic romance of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels, they acted out elaborate spy missions pitting themselves against imaginary Cold War villains. As friendship carries them through childhood and on to college-in a polarized late-sixties America riven by war and race as well as sex, drugs, and rock and roll-the bad guys cease to be the creatures of make-believe. Caught up in the fervor of that extraordinary and uncanny time, they find themselves swept into a dangerous new game with the highest possible stakes.

    Today, only a handful of people are left who know what happened. As Karen reconstructs the past and reconciles the girl she was then with the woman she is now, finally sharing pieces of her secret past with her national-security-cowboy boyfriend and activist granddaughter, the power of memory and history and luck become clear. A resonant coming-of-age story and a thrilling political mystery, True Believers is Kurt Andersen's most ambitious novel to date, introducing a brilliant, funny, and irresistible new heroine to contemporary fiction.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 10, 2012
    ISBN9780449011812
    Unavailable
    True Believers: A Novel

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    Reviews for True Believers

    3.5/5

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    • 2/5
      Andersen strives to create a sense of suspense and period atmosphere; he succeeds at times. It is difficult for the reader to maintain interest in this story of Sixties protest and dissent that somehow has the possibility to affect the future. The story lags and it was with great effort that I persevered to the end.
    • 4/5
      Karen Hollander is a well-respected attorney with the Department of Justice and the dean of a law school. In 1968, she and several friends committed a crime, and now that she is writing her memoirs, she wants to know how much of that information is in her government files. She is surprised to find that there is nothing about it, and as she tracks down her friends to let them know she will be "spilling the beans," she finds out there is much more to the story that she did not know.This was an enjoyable read, with a lot of detailed information about what was going on in America in the 1960s and early 70s. The chapters alternate between what the "current" Karen is doing, and what are presumably the chapters of her book. Overall a good read, with a few minor irritants: There is entirely too much focus on Karen's diabetes, and it feels unnecessary and gets kind of distracting. And the revelation of the "crime" that is built up so much throughout the book was a letdown for me. Otherwise recommended!
    • 4/5
      Maybe it is my age, which is a few years younger than Karen Hollander. Maybe it is the ribbon of Liberalism that runs through the book? There were so many things on which I agreed with Karen, back in the day.That phrase, by the way, was not one of her favorites. Of course there was a difference, Karen was one touch chick! She and her best friends Alex and Chuck grew up together, and together followed a path that if taken by any of a million others would certainly have had a different ending. Oh and one other thing Karen and I had in common. We liked to play at being spies. Even when we were ready to go into high school, my friend and I would be spies. How thrilling! How funny. But in those days, how fun! How far does this play go?The Sixties were a very special time. The music, the ideas and ideals, the war, the drugs, sex and maybe most of all the fragility of all of those ideals. The fragility of the people. You disagree? I'm sorry, but I am sticking to that. The fragility of the ideals is what is the most dispiriting. We thought we had it figured out. We thought that ours would be the generation that would change things for the better, forever. Yeah, maybe delusional should be added to the list of things that made up The Sixties.I am like Karen in another way. I feel that truth telling is important. That is certainly not common these days, in my opinion. Honesty, integrity and even work ethics have deteriorated.That's just my opinion again.. I have a lot of them. Opinions. I loved that she was on a quest to tell the truth. It was a big truth, a huge truth, and an important truth. But perhaps it was more of these things to her.From a liberal, rowdy and perhaps troubled young girl, to a candidate for the supreme court, Karen's life was anything but dull. It's worth a read. It's a good book, an interesting story and maybe, just maybe it was written more for baby boomers than for anyone. Or not?
    • 4/5
      I'm a couple of years younger than the main character in this book. But not so much younger as to remember the craziness of the error. I graduated from high school in 1968, wen to college and joined SDS. I went to demonstrations, got tear gassed, and got radicalized. For a few years it was like living in a pressure cooker, and then abruptly the whole thing disappeared. (And just for the record never planned or did anything violent) Anderson almost got it right. But not quite. Somehow he lost the passion of the moment, without which there were no true believers. It might have been the whole James Bond schtick, which I found totally unbelievable. Or that he doesn't (perhaps couldn't) understand what it was like to be a young woman in this very male-centered group. And the whole line of stuff about why and how Karen left the group - just not real --At any rate I just couldn't buy it. A shame because he clearly did his research - but details don't equate with this particular time and place
    • 5/5
      I loved this book but struggled to review it. In order to avoid spoilers, I will say True Believers most powerful theme is youthful idealism; how strong-minded young adults can be so sure about their beliefs. As we become adults some of us grow into the realization that there is no one truth, but some of never get there. For me in real life this does help explain the existence and popularity of Fox News.Andersen's writing is peppered with detailed, well-researched information and the characters seem quite true to life. The only slightly negative comment I have is that the books is written with a woman's point of view, and I didn't always believe it.
    • 4/5
      Kurt Anderson is very smart, very erudite, and a very good writer. His book has an interesting plot, well-developed characters, and wonderful descriptions of what it was like to come of age in the 60s.Despite all this, this book could have used some help from an editor. Too much of it was dry: recounting of plot after James Bond plot; descriptions of college courses; boring encounters.Too bad: I was hoping to enjoy it more.
    • 1/5
      I really didn't enjoy this book at all. Not my favorite genre of novel and could not connect with characters.
    • 4/5
      I requested this novel from my local library because I was interested in the whole mystery of this famous,accomplished woman,the main character Karen Hollander. I had heard the author discuss James Bond books,and all things late 60's on NPR.As a literary device the author has Karen,a well known attorney who recently turned down a supreme court feeler for nomination writing her autobiography. There is a deep,dark secret she promises to reveal. Since Karen andI are of a certain age the telling of Her life storythat starts when she is ten was quite interesting to me as she goes through jr. high and high school memories. There are so many cultural referencesthat I had forgotten about that it did bring back some fond thoughts of those times. However,much of this section of the book is devoted to she and her two male friend's total immersion in all things James Bond. Including actually staging "missions". The planning and carrying out of these games will go very out ofcontrol for she and her friends as the 60's progress and the war in Vietnam becomes more unpopular.As I was reading this book I had to agree with her father who tells her that somewhere along the line Karen had "lost her sense of humor". So Karen and I are the same age butshe could not be more different from me and any one I was friends with at that time! Karen is so politically aware her entire time in high school and then onto her life at a 7 sister,ivy league college. To the exclusion of anything else. While a freshman she sees only the two boys from home that she played James Bond encounters with as they also have gotten into a Cambridge,Mass. school,Harvard! A fourth guy,an older student, a veteran of Vietnam is her beloved Chuck's roommate. Fueled by drugs they feed off of each other'sincreasingly paranoid feelings about the war in Vietnam and see LBJ as an evil war monger. The book moves back and forth between Karen's memories and the present time,2013 and on into 2014. She wonders how she evergot away with the terrible secret she is keeping. An occasional lover,Stewart is some kind of government operative who has access toall sorts of buried records. Those well below The Freedom Of Information kind. So he is enlisted to go digging. Much is revealed byhis research including very disturbing facts about her male friends that she never knew. Her 17 year old granddaughter finds her notes,reads them,confesses to her Gram promising never to tell the contents. This granddaughter seems very underwhelmed by the things her grandmother didforty six years ago. But then Karen supposes if her own grandmother was to tell her 17 year old self something she did during theWarren J. Harding era in 1920 it would have also had minimum impact on her.I think because I am old enough to remember the late 60's and have never read any serious discussion of the war in Vietnam orthe psychology behind some of the serious,radical protesters I was driven to keep going reading this book.Just a tad bit wordy toward the end but excellent writing and a satisfying ending.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this book, having thought it was complete fiction and not being aware that a few characters may have been modeled after real people, I thought it was very well informed with the feeling of the generation. I must say though that the "female" voice often missed the mark, maleness oozed through way to often in our main character.
    • 4/5
      True Believers is told from the point for view of Karen Hollander, jumping back and forth from the mid late 60's to about two years from present time. In the midst of writing her memoirs she seeks out more information regarding some big dangerous act her and some friends almost preformed in '68. She has been almost obsessed with James Bond since her early teens and was surrounded by some like minded friends who would go out and preform secret covert James Bond missions. Eventually the lines between a fictional character and his associated secret agencies and real life blend together though Karen is not privy to all of this until writing her memoirs. I liked how the story was told and progressed and mixed past and present. The wait for the reveal of the "big secret terrible thing" could have come a bit sooner but a lot of pieces had to fall into place with the story first. There was a bit to much name dropping and random occurrences for my liking. I refuse to believe everyone could have happened to see every important social and political figure speak or in passing in the the 60's as most books and films would suggest. Also I'm sure a lot of people will either be compelled to pick up Ian Flemmings books after reading this or avoid them after all the references, I'm not sure yet what category I will fall into but a little James Bond knowledge may have added something to the reading. Overall True Believers was an engaging read with an entertaining protagonist.
    • 3/5
      Warning: this book is VERY reflective. That shouldn't come as that much of a surprise if you've read the back of the book - a woman in her 60s in the present day withdraws her nomination for the Supreme Court because of something she did in the 1960s, which she tells the story of. Especially for the first chunk of the book until she gets to college, the chapters of her present can get very repetitive and boring, especially since the reader doesn't know what "terrible thing" she did besides the fact that there are many oblique references to it throughout these chapters.Once the story gets going, though, it really picks up. I did enjoy it once there was a stronger plot. I also thought the language was very beautifully crafted. This would make for a great book club book, as there is much to discuss in terms of imagery, symbolism, and the significance of all the small side stories in the past and present. Overall, if you're a child of the 60s (unlike me), have some interest in the time period, and can stick with a book that presents a slow beginning, I'd say check it out.
    • 2/5
      I hate to not like a book, because I know how much work goes into creating one. However, I did not care for this one and only continued reading because I felt an obligation to finish it so that I could write a review. None of the characters became important to me. After more than three hundred pages alluding to a crime committed in the past, I finally find out what it was, but by that time, I really didn't care. Unfortunately, even best-selling authors don't always write good books.
    • 5/5
      Kurt Andersen weaves together a beautiful story about life in the 1960s and the dangerous actions some made for the greater good (or at least what they thought was the greater good). I unfortunately was not around during the 1960s so I don't have experiences to compare with this book but I do live in the Chicagoland area so I was able to connect with this novel more through that.Karen Hollander was a nominee to be the next Supreme Court justice until she mysteriously took herself out of the running. She starts to write a memoir to finally tell the truth of what really happened with her and a group of friends in 1968.I love how fleshed out and complete this story felt. Readers who want to read a story and not just tons of action this is the story for you. Andersen is a master storyteller.This was a great historical fiction book. Reading this really felt like I was there with Karen and her friends protesting Vietnam. I would definitely recommend this to others.
    • 3/5
      In many ways this novel is like opening a time capsule from the sixties, a trip down memory lane. Definitely shows how the effects of the sixties have lasted many throughout their lives, as with the main character Karen Hollander who remembers innocent times in the early sixties and than radical times in the late sixties. How rapidly things changed. I have never been, however, a James Bond fan and their is quite a bit of that in this novel, I realize some of it had to be their to make what happened later believable but I think that part was a bit overdone. Grew up in Chicago, so I was also very familiar with the setting of Wilmette and I enjoyed reading about that. Loved the relationship between Karen and her seventeen year old grand daughter, Waverly. So there was much I did like, just not everything. Still in all I did enjoy this book.
    • 5/5
      This was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I've ever had. Karen Hollander recants the story of her life and chronicles the years she was a teenager and a new adult - the mid 60's to the mid 70's. The thing is that she is exactly my age. So her years were the same as mine with the same events and many of the same feelings about them.

      Kurt Andersen paints those years just perfectly and amazingly credibly through a female voice. Reading this story was like remembering and being reminded of a time long ago that was critical to my own life.

      Plus, it was just, flat, an excellent story.
    • 4/5
      It's 2013. Karen Hollander, a 65-year-old law professor and well-known author and legal TV pundit, has taken herself out of consideration to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat. The reason? She has lived in fear for decades of something rash she involved herself in during her radical student days. and though she has avoided scrutiny until know, surely, she believes, a Supreme Court vetting would uncover it.

      And in response, to get the monkey finally off her back, she decides to write a tell-all memoir revealing her secret.

      Karen Hollander is my contemporary. I lived through the times her memoir covers. And that certainly played a role in my enjoyment of this novel. Furthermore, I enjoyed Karen's interplay with her granddaughter as the two generations try to understand one another. (They relate very well, by the way.) I also couldn't help resonating with the fact that young Karen and her friends had a James Bond fetish, which captured me as well "back in the day" of the Cold War with Dr. No and From Russian With Love.

      There is a dynamic to the story that moves it along. Only is it slowly revealed what secret Karen was hiding over her lifetime--it turns out to be something pretty far-fetched, but young radicals did pursue some crazy schemes in the '60s. And there's also a mystery to her past that even Karen must solve: with her prominence, why hasn't anyone discovered her secret sooner. Something's fishy there, and in the course of doing her memoir she uses her networks to uncover it.

      Karen was someone I was pleased to meet, and the story pulled me along. I recommend it.
    • 4/5
      How it felt to be 18 in 1968. I was more on the hippie side of the spectrum and these kids are more on the SDS side, but I recognized the ferociousness of their anger. Remarkable, powerfully written evocation of the era by a guy who was 14 at the time.
    • 4/5
      Vietnam, 60s/70s, LBJ, SDS, LSD, marijuana and college – hmm, sound familiar? This book was so much fun to read for me having come from a generation close to the fictional autobiographer’s of _True Believers_. And I could definitely relate to playing James Bond with others my own age just like her too. Andersen has written a story rich with character and very true to the time. Not laugh-out-loud funny most of the time, it nevertheless is filled with humor and pokes fun at today whilst wallowing in the redolent past.
    • 1/5
      Apparently I missed something with this book cause I could barley make it a 1/4 of the way thru before I gave up. Might give it a second try at a later date.3/10/14 second attempt.... same results. Not for me.
    • 4/5
      The blurb on the dustjacket reads like this is a pulse-pounding action tale but it's really closer to a historical novel set in the late 1960s, with a framing story we return to in alternating chapters. At one point or another I've felt annoyed with each one of the main characters, but by the time everything is through the author manages to generate enough sympathy for the viewpoints of each one, I think. The big secret that is at the center of the story isn't to me so much a letdown as an unfortunate episode brought about by the obsessions of each of the characters at the center of it. The narrator of the story is just beginning to understand how it all really happened and what led to all the subsequent years of anxiety about it.

      I used to go to school not far from the North Shore setting of the earliest events in the story, a decade after the time in question, but can only dimly see the outlines of those places in my own experience. Likewise with the Cambridge scenes just afterwards. The most vivid bits of scene-setting however were the ones from the present day, which is part of the reason I kind of liked them. Maybe a real James Bond fan would have had more of a good time with the scenes revolving around the three friends' self-assigned "missions" instead.

      I'll admit to being a little confused about the allusions to the Boca Raton incident in the first part of the book. It's all made up, right?
    • 5/5
      This is a story about coming of age in the 60s and reflecting upon it in the present day. Karen Hollander is an attorney in her 60s who has declined nomination for the Supreme Court because of a deep, dark secret she has hidden in her past. At the same time, she has decided to write a book, a memoir, and expose everything she and her comrades did in 1968 that has been haunting her ever since.Kurt Anderson is a master at building suspense in each chapter, captivating the reading by alluding to the secrets of the past and then doling it out slowly throughout the book as Karen recounts her childhood and young adult life. This novel is about the roles we take on in life and how the consequences of our decisions affect us and those we love.This novel is great choice for book clubs, classrooms and for anyone who enjoys an intelligent, thought-provoking story.
    • 2/5
      OMG! Talk about needing a good editor. This book was way too long with sections of boring irrelevant details. It was only mildly interesting, too confusing with all the government agencies, and there was supposed to be a surprise ending but I didn’t find it so. Can’t understand why reviewers and readers like it. I think some of it was the fact that it took place in the sixties and the baby boomers waxed nostalgic. 8/15
    • 4/5
      Kurt Anderson set True Believers in the near future, mainly 2014, but much of the novel is long flashbacks to the transitional decade of the 1960s when main character Karen Hollander was a teenager becoming more and more radicalized by the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights Movement. In the novel’s present day Karen Hollander has a teenage grandchild allowing her, as a first person narrator, to have lengthy digressions comparing the present to the past. These musings add substantially to the length of this 400+ page book, but as someone who lived through the rapidly evolving ethos of the 1960s I was often engrossed by those well thought-out reflections. True Believers vividly brings back to life an era I lived through, but while fascinating it’s not a completely comfortable trip. Someone said, “If you remember the 1960s you weren’t there,” but I’d amend that to, “If you’re nostalgic for the 1960s you don’t remember them.” Though in some ways it was a more innocent time, today’s divisions and demonstrations pale by comparison and many of them have their roots in that era. The book has refreshingly few anachronisms and it might be that the ones that jarred me were things I wasn’t aware of then; maybe people did do victory fist pumps in the early, prerevolutionary 1960s after something like a good round of bowling, but my memory is those clenched fists came later in the decade. Since the story is told in the first person, main character Karen Hollander can actually tell readers she’s a reliable narrator, but she’s also a narrator who relies on delaying information to create tension. She takes her time and teases the reader, slowly parceling out details about the subversive act she participated in during the late 60s that’s giving her the urge to come clean in a confessional tell-all. As someone who took herself out of the running for a spot on the Supreme Court, it’s a memoir that would capture a lot of attention, but that fact makes this mostly realistic character seem unnaturally cold. She has no concern for how publically revealing old secrets may affect her former friends, and when her actions cause tragedy she cries for a while but then moves on without any regret or second guessing of her choices. Minor quibbles aside, True Believers is enthralling, and a go-to novel for anyone interested in reliving or understanding the mindset of the 1960s.
    • 3/5
      One week before the publication date of “True Believers,” a novel about the '60s, Kurt Andersen published an oped in the New York Times suggesting that that storied decade, with exhortations to “do your own thing,” was the source of subsequent patterns of greed and selfishness in our culture. It was a provocative thesis that made Andersen a sought-after guest on politically-oriented TV talk shows that don't ordinarily host novelists. The ensuing discussion of the issue merged perfectly with promotion of the novel, just as the novel was hitting the street and the chattering class made this the must-read novel of the season. It was brilliant marketing and demonstrates how well Andersen, a cultural critic and radio personality as well as a novelist, understands the workings of the media. But how does ”True Believers” stack up as literature? “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!” Wordsworth was referring to the onset of the French Revolution. Karen Hollander quoted the line often at magical moments in her adolescence and college years in the '60s. Now she is writing a book that her publisher has described as “a candid and inspirational memoir by one of the most accomplished leaders and thinkers of our times.” But that's not the book Karen Hollander is planning to write. After a sterling career as lawyer, Supreme Court clerk, Justice Department official, professor, dean, author and television personality, she has just removed herself from the short list of candidates for the Supreme Court and her book will reveal why. She will tell “the whole truth” about her involvement in an episode that took place in 1968, a shocking secret she has kept for forty years that would have derailed her court appointment. She wants the story to come out on her terms so she will tell it herself. She assures us that she is a reliable narrator. I was intrigued after those first few introductory pages, looking forward to spending time with Karen Hollander, expecting to indulge in some nostalgia for an era I remember well, expecting also some measure of suspense. The book alternates chapters between the past and the present (actually, 2013). In the contemporary sections, Karen tries, with some help from a friend, to nail down the evidence she needs to fill in gaps and fully document her story. We also meet her adored and adoring 17-year-old granddaughter, whose inclination for political activism plays out in the Occupy movement, with Karen as chaperone. In the chapters that go back to her youth in an upscale Chicago suburb, Karen and her two precocious adolescent friends fixate on the James Bond novels, poring over them for meaningful details and enacting real-life Bondian missions that thrillingly have the potential for real danger. As college students in 1968, helpless with rage in the face of a catastrophic war and lying politicians and desperate to take action as their hero would, these “true believers” call on their inner Bonds to hatch the outlandish plot that will have disastrous consequences and that Karen will reveal forty years later. My initial enthusiasm for Karen's story waned as I read on. The best historical fiction seamlessly integrates the history and the fiction, immersing the reader in the period and conveying the historical details organically. In this book, I too often found myself taken out of the characters' lives and felt like I was reading a Kurt Andersen essay about the culture and politics of the '60s. Andersen is an articulate critic and he has done extensive research but I was put off by the inclusion of too many brand names, songs, TV shows, and news items, as if the reader might only understand the characters in the context of every possible bit of popular culture. In a paragraph early in the book, as Karen realizes in hindsight that she and her friends were overwhelmed by “all the newness,” Andersen gives us this: “The sudden arrival, all at once, of stereo records and the Beatles, Bic pens and Instamatic cameras and live transatlantic TV broadcasts and in-flight movies and printed circuit boards and TouchTone phones, area codes and zip codes, Frisbees and Slip 'N Slide and Silly Putty, instant tanning lotion and stretch fabrics and bikinis, McDonald's and Tang and SweeTarts and Sweet 'N Low and zip top cans of Tab.” At one point, Karen, her granddaughter and the girl's teenage friends compare and contrast the present day and the '60s, a discussion that doesn't ring true for the characters but wouldn't be out of place in a history class. There are descriptions of demonstrations, occupations and meetings that read like journalism. The piling on of historical detail bloats the novel and breaks the spell that good fiction casts. And the crux of the story, the 1968 action and its aftermath are over-plotted, with twists and turns and betrayals that echo genre suspense novels. “True Believers” is well written and mostly absorbing but may be more successful as cultural commentary than as literary fiction.
    • 4/5
      Another book about my generation – yes, I’m a boomer. I worry that my growing nostalgia for my youth predisposes me to liking this new novel by Kurt Andersen. Fortunately, I have read a previous work of his that I also enjoyed (Heyday) which wasn’t about the 1960s.The protagonist of this novel is intelligent, successful, sexually attractive and in her sixties. Karen Hollander, a successful attorney, has kept a secret about her activities in 1968 and is now coming clean with a memoir that may ruin her reputation and perhaps the reputation of other successful people. The chapters alternate between her youth and her current life – between remembering her past and verifying some crucial facts about that past. There’s intrigue, passion, humor! I loved this book.
    • 4/5
      Karen Hollander’s seems to have life by the tail – law school, Supreme Court Law Court, Legal Aid attorney, white glove law firm corporate impresario, top official at Dept. of Justice, professor, law school dean and possessed of a precocious teenaged granddaughter. But, no – she harbors a secret dating to her college years which has haunted her ever since. To exorcise her demons, she intends to write her painfully honest, introspective memoirs of the years leading up to that fateful moment. To fill in critical gaps, she enlists the aid of her former spook boyfriend and contacts several fellow travelers with unexpected results. Set in the near future, the book flashes back to Karen’s nerdy childhood in early ‘60’s northern Chicago suburb, reveling with pals Alex and Chuck in James Bondian fantasies. Her increasing political awareness culminates her radicalized Harvard undergraduate years. We find a nice counterpoint between late ‘06’s SDS protest and granddaughter Waverly’s Occupy and ecological concerns. The book was an enjoyable reflection on ‘60’s culture. Reading the book in one day, I cannot echo others concerns with its length.