The Radicals
A Novel
-
- $10.99
Publisher Description
An intimate, suspenseful, and provocative portrait of friendship and love at its limits, and a timely exploration of class tensions and corporate excess in America
When Eli first meets Sam Westergard, he is dazzled by his new friend's charisma, energy, and determined passion. Both graduate students in New York City, the two young men bond over their idealism, their love of poetry, and their commitment to socialism, both in theory and in practice—this last taking the form of an organized protest against Soline, a giant energy company that has speculated away the jobs and savings of thousands. As an Occupy-like group begins to coalesce around him, Eli realizes that some of his fellow intellectuals are more deeply—and dangerously—devoted to the cause than others.
A fiercely intelligent, wonderfully human illustration of friendship, empathy, and suspicion in the midst of political upheaval, Ryan McIlvain's new novel confirms him as one of our most talented and distinctive writers at work today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In McIlvain's splendid second novel (following Elders), the blissful rootlessness of narrator Eli, a 28-year-old graduate student, makes the novel a kind of adventure story of friendship and betrayal, in the same vein as On the Road. Eli is a socially conscious academic at NYU. His observations are casual but incisive, strewn with both scholarly and pop culture references including Sartre, Trotsky, Nadal, and Legoland. It's in a Marxist theory class that Eli meets magnetic and impulsive Sam Westergard. Their friendship, fueled as much by adrenaline as righteousness, takes a leap when Eli flies with Sam to Phoenix to help single mother Maria Nava, who's fighting eviction at the hands of an evil corporation named Soline. In no time, Eli is canvassing door-to-door, and activists of all stripes are pouring in, with disparate agendas. Heretofore, Eli's stances on social justice and activism have been mostly theoretical; he's totally unprepared for the mess and danger of real activism. Eli's commitment attracts his volatile ex Alex, whose affair with Sam puts a wrench in the bromance, not to mention Eli's engagement to his fiancee, Jen. McIlvain's prose is effortless and sharply perceptive; this is a consistently engrossing and thoroughly enjoyable novel.
