TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

True Believers (Random House), by Kurt Andersen, takes place in the near future and not so recent past. Its unflinching ⅛ narrator, Karen Hollander, describes herself on page one as a Reliable Narrator. Readers may be forgiven for putting up a red flag at this point, but not for turning away. An attorney, TV commentator, and former Justice Department official, Karen, in her mid-60s, has just stepped away from a likely Supreme Court appointmentand isworking on a memoirof her coming-of-age through the chaos of the anti-war movement of the 1960s. As she does some grueling detective work, seeking answers to questions about her own (and her friends') secret complicity in the madness and violence of the period, Karen lets her whip-smart teenage granddaughter be her sole and very astute reader. Andersen describes the lives of people growing up then (when war raged in Vietnam and on American campuses) and now (amidst the vague articulations and theatrics of the Occupy movement). The arc of the book, from the fading innocence and rage of the 1960s to the onanistic hipper-thanthou mirages of the mercantile and mediaintelligence-gathering age we are becalmed in, is beautifully drawn. This is Andersen's best book to date, which makes it a great American novel.

JON ROBIN BAITZ