Adam

It's a sharp picture of a time and place, and perceptive about teenage social interaction, but I didn't catch the fever.

Wow, this book is intense and long and horrifying and fascinating and brilliant. Incredible, vivid detail, fantastic set pieces, and intricate storytelling. How is the Haitian Revolution not taught in history class? Hard to follow the politics of the Haitian Revolution and the French one at the same time, and keep track of the wide cast of characters. The one drawback (besides the gruesome violence) is the doctor, who's a not-that-subtle stand-in for the author / reader perspective. But this book is well worth the effort – pretty much everything I want historical fiction to be.

Steinbeck plays the original Bill Bryson here, with fewer witty asides and a few more sweeping observations about America – “generalities”, he calls them. Writing at a time (1962) we look back on now as simple and stable, he drives a big loop around the country with a camper on his pickup and a poodle in the passenger seat.

I really liked the range of people whose stories he tells, and the characterization of Charley the poodle. Especially interesting are the parts where Steinbeck passes through your home states (praises flinty, forthright New Englanders; nostalgic, but gracefully self-aware about it, for the California of his youth).

Did he embellish some details and reconstruct some dialogue? Yep. Does it take away from the book? Not at all. A warm and wise chronicler of the country and its people.

Sunny, soapy vignettes of a different San Francisco. There's a refreshing openness about the social issues of the day here. It's easy to imagine a higher-handed literary treatment of the same place and time, but I liked the the serial-newspaper-column format and the present-day setting (at the time) – Tales of the City is free from the judgement and editing of hindsight.

The stories themselves are pretty pulpy, and wrap up a little too neatly at times, but that doesn't take away from the book as an entertaining snapshot of SF in the seventies. Easy reading, and a nice change of pace from serious or satirical historical novels, which seem to be the only flavors out there.

Wow, this was razor-sharp. Smart and intense. Great language and insights on every page, with a few incredible set pieces (the escape from Saigon, the set of the “Apocalypse Now”-like movie) to break up the spy thriller / immigrant story.