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Basket of Deplorables
Critics hailed Tom Rachman's smash debut and New York Times best seller, The Imperfectionists, as "spectacular" (New York Times), "superb" (The Plain Dealer), and "magnificent" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). Reviews for his second novel, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, were no less rapturous, with the New York Times calling it "ingenious".
Now, in the shadows of a seismic shift in American politics, comes his timely and hilarious new work. Basket of Deplorables takes an incisive and satirical look at the United States in the era of Trump data breaches, liberal self-righteousness, red-hat rancor, Starbucks macchiatos, Ultimate Fighting factories, and Internet sinkholes.
Written for Audible and featuring a shifting array of disparate voices, the five intricately linked stories take listeners from an Election Night party in Manhattan to a funeral populated by fake mourners in Lansing, Michigan, to an online date in an era when every email platform in the world has been hacked and, ultimately, to a reality where the impossible, the unthinkable, becomes all too real.
In Basket of Deplorables, Rachman has created an urgent and deeply satisfying work that will continue to cement his place among the great literary stylists and cultural observers of our time.
Now, in the shadows of a seismic shift in American politics, comes his timely and hilarious new work. Basket of Deplorables takes an incisive and satirical look at the United States in the era of Trump data breaches, liberal self-righteousness, red-hat rancor, Starbucks macchiatos, Ultimate Fighting factories, and Internet sinkholes.
Written for Audible and featuring a shifting array of disparate voices, the five intricately linked stories take listeners from an Election Night party in Manhattan to a funeral populated by fake mourners in Lansing, Michigan, to an online date in an era when every email platform in the world has been hacked and, ultimately, to a reality where the impossible, the unthinkable, becomes all too real.
In Basket of Deplorables, Rachman has created an urgent and deeply satisfying work that will continue to cement his place among the great literary stylists and cultural observers of our time.
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First published March 27, 2017
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About the author
Tom Rachman
8 books591 followersTom Rachman is the author of four works of fiction: his bestselling debut, The Imperfectionists (2010), which was translated into 25 languages; the critically acclaimed follow-up, The Rise & Fall of Great Powers (2014); a satirical audiobook-in-stories Basket of Deplorables (2017); and an upcoming novel set in the art world, The Italian Teacher (March 2018).
Born in London and raised in Vancouver, Tom studied cinema at the University of Toronto and journalism at Columbia University in New York. He worked at The Associated Press as a foreign-news editor in Manhattan headquarters, then became a correspondent in Rome. He also reported from India, Sri Lanka, Japan, South Korea, Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere. To write fiction, he left the AP and moved to Paris, supporting himself as an editor at the International Herald Tribune. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and newyorker.com, among other publications. He lives in London.
Born in London and raised in Vancouver, Tom studied cinema at the University of Toronto and journalism at Columbia University in New York. He worked at The Associated Press as a foreign-news editor in Manhattan headquarters, then became a correspondent in Rome. He also reported from India, Sri Lanka, Japan, South Korea, Egypt, Turkey and elsewhere. To write fiction, he left the AP and moved to Paris, supporting himself as an editor at the International Herald Tribune. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and newyorker.com, among other publications. He lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
August 26, 2017
Almost terrific collection of five stories which begins in light obvious not that funny satire and ends in a pall of thick dread. On the way, Tom Rachman invents a great idea for a whole novel which he then tosses away barely used.
The great idea is so blindingly simple it almost hurts. He calls it Leakzilla.
Hackers breached all the main email providers – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, iCloud, everything – and downloaded each personal email ever archived, posting the whole lot online. For a while the authorities battled to take it down. But the data dump kept appearing elsewhere. Log on to any of the mirrored sites, type in a name, and you could pore over the most intimate emails, be they from Bob Dylan or Kellyanne Conway or The Queen.
He points out straight away that a few categories of people were spared this public humiliation – the very young who don’t use email; the old who never learned how to (I would include The Queen in that group!); the very poor who never had internet access; and the paranoid, who were right all along. Some famous people, it turned out, never used email : Trump, Putin, Julian Assange. Everyone else’s most shameful emails were these to read for the whole world.
Well, the amount of unexploded ordnance this situation creates is mindblowing. Marriages doomed. Of course. Politicians ruined, of course. Could businesses continue to function, with all their trade secrets revealed? It would have been such fun to see this worked out – a whole different kind of apocalypse – but Tom uses it to mess slightly with his characters and inflict a few satirical swipes in one story only, and then moves on. Tom! That is apocalypto interruptus! Very frustrating!
So the stories are, mostly lightly satirical and interwoven and very moreish, I read this in one day,
but it is very short, so short they have to print the type like
this with twice the space between lines
than there is in a normal book so it looks like a book for very
young readers.
The last story “How the End Begins” is the best, a real chiller with a sudden fantasy element – a website appears which will tell you the cause of anyone’s death, yourself, your family, your children, the President, anyone. The woman in this story, like most people, fools around with it and dismisses it as a hoax, and then finds out it’s completely accurate. Best horror story I have read in a long while.
This book’s title and marketing do it a disservice, it’s better than that. The Trump Generation-related satire is really sub-Tom Wolfe and not that great, but the whole thing speeds by so merrily and has this one great idea and then boffs you on the head with the last 40 pages so yeah, four stars.
The great idea is so blindingly simple it almost hurts. He calls it Leakzilla.
Hackers breached all the main email providers – Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, iCloud, everything – and downloaded each personal email ever archived, posting the whole lot online. For a while the authorities battled to take it down. But the data dump kept appearing elsewhere. Log on to any of the mirrored sites, type in a name, and you could pore over the most intimate emails, be they from Bob Dylan or Kellyanne Conway or The Queen.
He points out straight away that a few categories of people were spared this public humiliation – the very young who don’t use email; the old who never learned how to (I would include The Queen in that group!); the very poor who never had internet access; and the paranoid, who were right all along. Some famous people, it turned out, never used email : Trump, Putin, Julian Assange. Everyone else’s most shameful emails were these to read for the whole world.
Well, the amount of unexploded ordnance this situation creates is mindblowing. Marriages doomed. Of course. Politicians ruined, of course. Could businesses continue to function, with all their trade secrets revealed? It would have been such fun to see this worked out – a whole different kind of apocalypse – but Tom uses it to mess slightly with his characters and inflict a few satirical swipes in one story only, and then moves on. Tom! That is apocalypto interruptus! Very frustrating!
So the stories are, mostly lightly satirical and interwoven and very moreish, I read this in one day,
but it is very short, so short they have to print the type like
this with twice the space between lines
than there is in a normal book so it looks like a book for very
young readers.
The last story “How the End Begins” is the best, a real chiller with a sudden fantasy element – a website appears which will tell you the cause of anyone’s death, yourself, your family, your children, the President, anyone. The woman in this story, like most people, fools around with it and dismisses it as a hoax, and then finds out it’s completely accurate. Best horror story I have read in a long while.
This book’s title and marketing do it a disservice, it’s better than that. The Trump Generation-related satire is really sub-Tom Wolfe and not that great, but the whole thing speeds by so merrily and has this one great idea and then boffs you on the head with the last 40 pages so yeah, four stars.
November 4, 2024
“Basket of deplorables” is a term that Hillary Clinton applied to the xenophobic wing of Donald Trump’s supporters in a September 2016 campaign speech. Basket of Deplorables is Tom Rachman’s third of five books and I somehow had never heard of it until a good few years after its release. That surprised me because I’ve followed his career with interest and read his other works right at their publication.
Like Rachman’s The Imperfectionists and The Imposters, it’s a linked short story collection. The five stories are on the longish side but read quickly. In the opening title piece, a woman who went blind after an accident co-hosts a 2016 presidential election watch party with her husband in their Manhattan apartment. Their friends are uniformly left-wing and choke with disbelief as results start to filter through. In “Truth Is for Losers,” Glen agrees to stage a funeral for his billionaire brother Fleming, who has faked his own death. The memorial service is an opportunity for high farce, but I also warmed to Glen for his simple enthusiasm for his job as a Starbucks barista in Kalamazoo. This was my favourite of the stories; its depiction of the spread of fake news feels like a worthwhile analogy rather than a rehashing of headlines.
“Leakzilla” imagines the complications of Internet dating in an alternate world where would-be partners can scour each other’s e-mail history at will – and find out that someone masquerading as clued-in voted for Trump in 2016. “Sad! Wrong! Not Nice!” follows Fleming, a Trump-esque blowhard, into his new life in Italy. The backstory of a minor character explains a mysterious moment from the first piece, and the sister of the woman from “Leakzilla” is then the protagonist of “How the End Begins.” Here, Kelly discovers with quiet horror a website where you can input any person’s name and view their future cause of death. There is a grim dystopian edge to this final story.
Rachman gave the book the tagline (not quite a subtitle) of “Almost-true stories.” I suspect it was written quickly in response to Trump’s election and it is rather thin, aiming at obvious targets and exhibiting wholly reasonable yet unsubtle liberal outrage. I found it so depressing to see how history threatens to repeat itself less than a decade later:
I can hardly bear to think about tomorrow’s election. The USA could elect the first woman president (of color, no less), or hand power back to a cretin – a convicted felon and probably the worst holder of the office in its nearly 250 years. It’s a choice between progress and regression. Between sanity and sleepwalking into destruction. And whatever happens at the polls, it seems inevitable that Trump will foment further violence and hatred.
Did I do all I could? I sent in my postal vote several weeks ago, and donated to the Harris/Walz campaign (which means I now get seven e-mails a day from them, but that’s fine). The local Democrats Abroad branch didn’t reply to me over the summer, so I missed out on the chance to volunteer with them, whereas in 2020 I colored in postcards to send to Democrat-registered North Carolina voters in the UK to remind them to get their ballots.
My leanings are clear, then, and I’m sure pretty much all my readers will concur. That I didn’t enjoy this obscure Rachman work more is due to my low tolerance for satire in general and to the fact that these stories of division and deception are not almost true, but all too true.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Like Rachman’s The Imperfectionists and The Imposters, it’s a linked short story collection. The five stories are on the longish side but read quickly. In the opening title piece, a woman who went blind after an accident co-hosts a 2016 presidential election watch party with her husband in their Manhattan apartment. Their friends are uniformly left-wing and choke with disbelief as results start to filter through. In “Truth Is for Losers,” Glen agrees to stage a funeral for his billionaire brother Fleming, who has faked his own death. The memorial service is an opportunity for high farce, but I also warmed to Glen for his simple enthusiasm for his job as a Starbucks barista in Kalamazoo. This was my favourite of the stories; its depiction of the spread of fake news feels like a worthwhile analogy rather than a rehashing of headlines.
“Leakzilla” imagines the complications of Internet dating in an alternate world where would-be partners can scour each other’s e-mail history at will – and find out that someone masquerading as clued-in voted for Trump in 2016. “Sad! Wrong! Not Nice!” follows Fleming, a Trump-esque blowhard, into his new life in Italy. The backstory of a minor character explains a mysterious moment from the first piece, and the sister of the woman from “Leakzilla” is then the protagonist of “How the End Begins.” Here, Kelly discovers with quiet horror a website where you can input any person’s name and view their future cause of death. There is a grim dystopian edge to this final story.
Rachman gave the book the tagline (not quite a subtitle) of “Almost-true stories.” I suspect it was written quickly in response to Trump’s election and it is rather thin, aiming at obvious targets and exhibiting wholly reasonable yet unsubtle liberal outrage. I found it so depressing to see how history threatens to repeat itself less than a decade later:
“David’s worry is that Trump won’t accept his defeat, throwing the whole democratic process into chaos”
“More a boomerang of history, where we keep throwing out the bad bits, and they keep flying back, hitting us in the mouth.”
I can hardly bear to think about tomorrow’s election. The USA could elect the first woman president (of color, no less), or hand power back to a cretin – a convicted felon and probably the worst holder of the office in its nearly 250 years. It’s a choice between progress and regression. Between sanity and sleepwalking into destruction. And whatever happens at the polls, it seems inevitable that Trump will foment further violence and hatred.
Did I do all I could? I sent in my postal vote several weeks ago, and donated to the Harris/Walz campaign (which means I now get seven e-mails a day from them, but that’s fine). The local Democrats Abroad branch didn’t reply to me over the summer, so I missed out on the chance to volunteer with them, whereas in 2020 I colored in postcards to send to Democrat-registered North Carolina voters in the UK to remind them to get their ballots.
My leanings are clear, then, and I’m sure pretty much all my readers will concur. That I didn’t enjoy this obscure Rachman work more is due to my low tolerance for satire in general and to the fact that these stories of division and deception are not almost true, but all too true.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
August 18, 2018
Five short stories interlinked. “Basket of Deplorables” is narrated by one-time celebrity photographer, Georgina Peet, married to Roger, and blinded in a freak accident. The pair are hosting an election night party at their Manhattan apartment, caterers serving canapes and volcano-region wines while the Trump-Clinton votes are counted. The guests move uncomfortably around Georgina as if she is invisible, and she is desperate to share a dark secret from her past.
Present are David, a professor of cultural theory at Bard, and his wife Kiara, producer of a reality TV show, on trans teenagers in backward rural communities in the south, watched by an audience of rich liberals in coastal urban communities. Also there is playwright Enson, whose off-Broadway musical “Purgatory” was panned by the critics but received a positive review of "achingly human” on an obscure online write-up. As the results from the tally room show a defeated Clinton, the room turns from optimism to panic.
In “Truth is for Losers”, the author of the afore-mentioned obscure write-up on “Purgatory”, Glen Pilczuk, is a middle-aged barista and theatre tragic in Kalamazoo, Michigan, charged with organising a memorial service for the dead brother who no one liked. To save his mother’s feelings (she brought the boys up as a single-parent), Glen hires actors to turn up as mourners, events turning to farce as the venue is a sports centre, exercise mats replace any seating, backed by a mixed-martial arts fighting cage...
In “Leakzilla” a man and woman in Portland, Oregon, arrange to meet on a date after exchanges on their cell-phones. He is a middle-aged bachelor, “Boo” is a younger Afro-American leisurewear designer from Tampa Florida, both over-anxious after a massive leak of emails going back years. Politics takes centre-stage again, with Clinton’s leaked emails (did no one tell her how to close windows???), Trump and Putin reputed never to use email, and the Russians blamed over the election result.
(Americans) never really liked democracy. We just like our guys to be the winner. You hear people say how disastrous Obama was, but I celebrate that guy. Because the legacy of every president is who succeeds him.
“Sad! Wrong! Not Nice!’ finds us in Italy, (links to the first story here) where the hated brother of barista Glen Pilczuk is hiding from extradition when a law student in Tampa, Florida, sifting through the leaked emails, finds he has faked his death. And finally, “How the End begins” has Kelly, the Tampa law student (and twin of Boo the leisurewear designer) becoming obsessed with a web-site from the nineties that predicts how people are going to die.
At first I found this a fun if noir read, with Tom Rachman tilting at pretentiousness and a political system geared to polarise opinion. But as the stories gained a more sinister edge, I was left to wonder if the author was telling a story, or like English writer Ian McEwan, toying with the reader.
Present are David, a professor of cultural theory at Bard, and his wife Kiara, producer of a reality TV show, on trans teenagers in backward rural communities in the south, watched by an audience of rich liberals in coastal urban communities. Also there is playwright Enson, whose off-Broadway musical “Purgatory” was panned by the critics but received a positive review of "achingly human” on an obscure online write-up. As the results from the tally room show a defeated Clinton, the room turns from optimism to panic.
In “Truth is for Losers”, the author of the afore-mentioned obscure write-up on “Purgatory”, Glen Pilczuk, is a middle-aged barista and theatre tragic in Kalamazoo, Michigan, charged with organising a memorial service for the dead brother who no one liked. To save his mother’s feelings (she brought the boys up as a single-parent), Glen hires actors to turn up as mourners, events turning to farce as the venue is a sports centre, exercise mats replace any seating, backed by a mixed-martial arts fighting cage...
In “Leakzilla” a man and woman in Portland, Oregon, arrange to meet on a date after exchanges on their cell-phones. He is a middle-aged bachelor, “Boo” is a younger Afro-American leisurewear designer from Tampa Florida, both over-anxious after a massive leak of emails going back years. Politics takes centre-stage again, with Clinton’s leaked emails (did no one tell her how to close windows???), Trump and Putin reputed never to use email, and the Russians blamed over the election result.
(Americans) never really liked democracy. We just like our guys to be the winner. You hear people say how disastrous Obama was, but I celebrate that guy. Because the legacy of every president is who succeeds him.
“Sad! Wrong! Not Nice!’ finds us in Italy, (links to the first story here) where the hated brother of barista Glen Pilczuk is hiding from extradition when a law student in Tampa, Florida, sifting through the leaked emails, finds he has faked his death. And finally, “How the End begins” has Kelly, the Tampa law student (and twin of Boo the leisurewear designer) becoming obsessed with a web-site from the nineties that predicts how people are going to die.
At first I found this a fun if noir read, with Tom Rachman tilting at pretentiousness and a political system geared to polarise opinion. But as the stories gained a more sinister edge, I was left to wonder if the author was telling a story, or like English writer Ian McEwan, toying with the reader.
June 13, 2017
Basket of Deplorables is a collection of five loosely connected short stories by American author, Tom Rachman.
Basket of Deplorables: Publisher Roger Peet is renowned for his election night parties, and the usual collection of guests is gathered as the results for Clinton vs Trump roll in. It’s a little different this year, though, because his wife Georgina has now been blind for a year after an accident. Perhaps because of that, or perhaps it would have dawned on her anyway, but she finds these party guests incredibly pretentious and shallow. Passing the time between reports, guests tell of the most shameful thing they’ve ever done, Georgie’s bombshell of a story fails, however, to have the impact she had intended. It might be because everyone is so shocked by the unexpected Trump victory, or it might be that she’s now not only unseeing, but unseen.
Truth is for Losers: After his late (but unpopular) elder brother is lost in a plane crash in the Congolese jungle, Glen is tasked with arranging a memorial service. He follows the suggestion of his boss at Starbucks and hires a troupe of actors to eulogise about his brother for the benefit of his heartbroken mother. Fleming was his mom’s favourite, and she never saw the cruel older brother he was. There’s a neat twist at the end of this one.
Leakzilla: some years post-Trump victory, the world’s email has been hacked and put on public display in a disaster dubbed Leakzilla, from which only the very young, the very old, the very poor and the paranoid were exempt. In his 50’s and getting a bit desperate for a partner, Tim goes on an Honour Date. People who promise not to trawl through their prospective date’s old emails use this site to hook up. But Tim has not been entirely honourable, and what he knows about Nelly Hawes backfires on him. A twist in the tail of this one too.
Sad, Wrong, Not Nice: an American fugitive from the Grand Jury who has faked his own death is hiding out in a village in Southern Italy under the protection of an Italian business man. He is bored out of his mind until his local minder dies and he encounters a Kenyan refugee.
How The End Begins: Law student Kelly Hawes, noting the absence of her local Mexican beggar, tracks him down to the hospital. His prognosis sends her searching the internet, where she happens on a bizarre website that predicts the manner of death for any name typed in. her morbid fascination threatens to overcome her usual positive outlook.
While the tales on their own are clever and topical, what elevates this collection is the links between them, the common elements, the characters cameoing in each other’s tales, the echoes that give the reader that “aha” moment. These satirical stories with their political comment may well be a true reflection of Americans today, but that is perhaps best judged by those closer to the scene. For human relationships and interactions, however, Tom Rachman nails it.
The audio version is expertly narrated by Eduardo Ballerini, Robin Miles, Jonathan Davis, Oliver Wyman and Allyson Johnson.
Basket of Deplorables: Publisher Roger Peet is renowned for his election night parties, and the usual collection of guests is gathered as the results for Clinton vs Trump roll in. It’s a little different this year, though, because his wife Georgina has now been blind for a year after an accident. Perhaps because of that, or perhaps it would have dawned on her anyway, but she finds these party guests incredibly pretentious and shallow. Passing the time between reports, guests tell of the most shameful thing they’ve ever done, Georgie’s bombshell of a story fails, however, to have the impact she had intended. It might be because everyone is so shocked by the unexpected Trump victory, or it might be that she’s now not only unseeing, but unseen.
Truth is for Losers: After his late (but unpopular) elder brother is lost in a plane crash in the Congolese jungle, Glen is tasked with arranging a memorial service. He follows the suggestion of his boss at Starbucks and hires a troupe of actors to eulogise about his brother for the benefit of his heartbroken mother. Fleming was his mom’s favourite, and she never saw the cruel older brother he was. There’s a neat twist at the end of this one.
Leakzilla: some years post-Trump victory, the world’s email has been hacked and put on public display in a disaster dubbed Leakzilla, from which only the very young, the very old, the very poor and the paranoid were exempt. In his 50’s and getting a bit desperate for a partner, Tim goes on an Honour Date. People who promise not to trawl through their prospective date’s old emails use this site to hook up. But Tim has not been entirely honourable, and what he knows about Nelly Hawes backfires on him. A twist in the tail of this one too.
Sad, Wrong, Not Nice: an American fugitive from the Grand Jury who has faked his own death is hiding out in a village in Southern Italy under the protection of an Italian business man. He is bored out of his mind until his local minder dies and he encounters a Kenyan refugee.
How The End Begins: Law student Kelly Hawes, noting the absence of her local Mexican beggar, tracks him down to the hospital. His prognosis sends her searching the internet, where she happens on a bizarre website that predicts the manner of death for any name typed in. her morbid fascination threatens to overcome her usual positive outlook.
While the tales on their own are clever and topical, what elevates this collection is the links between them, the common elements, the characters cameoing in each other’s tales, the echoes that give the reader that “aha” moment. These satirical stories with their political comment may well be a true reflection of Americans today, but that is perhaps best judged by those closer to the scene. For human relationships and interactions, however, Tom Rachman nails it.
The audio version is expertly narrated by Eduardo Ballerini, Robin Miles, Jonathan Davis, Oliver Wyman and Allyson Johnson.
December 26, 2017
It's impossible not to see this book (esp its red-hatted UK cover - in the US, it only came out from Audible, it appears) and think that it's a lark. Coming out less than a year from the election, how can you possibly capture this moment with any kind of objectivity? What's more, with events speeding far beyond imagination these days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that this book must already be dated.
So what a pleasure to discover - or to be reminded - that Tom Rachman is a far, far smarter author than that. BASKET OF DEPLORABLES may start as a cry of liberal agony but it quickly moves into more interesting territory, territory that veers intriguingly into the speculative. A massive leak of EVERYONE's emails, a strange website that predicts the manner of your death (where *all* children are listed as dying from asphyxiation), a world where your charming liberal friends can now reveal the darker horrors of their minds... are we in fact the deplorables? All of us? Rachman wants to give you some food for thought - and I wish this book had received a better US bow. But at least we'll have his new novel out in the spring, even if it doesn't think about Trump at all.
So what a pleasure to discover - or to be reminded - that Tom Rachman is a far, far smarter author than that. BASKET OF DEPLORABLES may start as a cry of liberal agony but it quickly moves into more interesting territory, territory that veers intriguingly into the speculative. A massive leak of EVERYONE's emails, a strange website that predicts the manner of your death (where *all* children are listed as dying from asphyxiation), a world where your charming liberal friends can now reveal the darker horrors of their minds... are we in fact the deplorables? All of us? Rachman wants to give you some food for thought - and I wish this book had received a better US bow. But at least we'll have his new novel out in the spring, even if it doesn't think about Trump at all.
May 28, 2018
At first, this seems like a pleasing easy read; a slim volume; a collection of five loosely-connected stories apparently linked by the recent US Presidential elections, how Donald Trump’s election impacted a set of disparate lives. Each tale has a small twist - nothing spectacular, an enjoyable sting - towards the end. It’s not until you reach the fourth that you begin to see where this might be going, the dots are connecting, forming a picture. And then, at the final story, it all comes together. Like puzzle-pieces, thrown up into the air falling down, miraculously clicking into their rightful places and you see how it was all linked together from the start. It’s so intensely satisfying when you come to the stunning, inevitable end and it all comes into sudden, remarkable focus and you realise that Trump is just a hook to it hang all on, and this is not at all the book you thought you were reading. Quietly remarkable.
May 26, 2017
An overall disappointing collection of loosely connected short stories. Dubbed a "bipartisan skewering" it really was not. Overwhelmingly anti-Trump (as I expected, but had to confirm), not at all even-handed.
January 25, 2019
A fine lark of a light read, five very contemporary stories that weave in numerous flavors of modern dread and connect in stealthy ways. A great fiction time capsule of the Trump era.
August 10, 2018
Having come to Rachman via The Italian Teacher, which I found stimulating and thoughtful, I was disappointed in this. The first story, set at a NY liberal election-night party, feels as though it will retain currency only for a short time and similarly, I suspect the collection will fade away quickly. Rachman is both a fine story-teller and an incisive satirist but I did not find these stories made much use of either skill. In Basket of Deplorables, it is the NY liberal luvvies who are satirised, but gently and with little damage. In other parts of the book, the narrator is much more direct in overt criticism of Trump, referring to the "shallow cruelties and the dunderhead incompetence, the allies snubbed and the foes cuddled, the Twitter bombast that tripped into frightening confrontations".
The structure of five self-contained (?) stories which, nevertheless, had points of mutual contact puzzled me. My interest was most stimulated by the comparison of fates of George in story 1 and Shani in story 4, along with the connection between the two characters. This quietly implied some sort of cosmic retributive power, which then had some echo of determinism in story 5.
I found it all very easy to read, as I would expect with Rachman, but I don't see myself still thinking about any of it in a few months, let alone a few years.
The structure of five self-contained (?) stories which, nevertheless, had points of mutual contact puzzled me. My interest was most stimulated by the comparison of fates of George in story 1 and Shani in story 4, along with the connection between the two characters. This quietly implied some sort of cosmic retributive power, which then had some echo of determinism in story 5.
I found it all very easy to read, as I would expect with Rachman, but I don't see myself still thinking about any of it in a few months, let alone a few years.
December 15, 2018
This book could have been far improved by changing the title. It was clunky and tone deaf on Trump stuff. The first story was quite bad. But it really hit on the near-future dystopian stories. The third story, about dating after a universal data breach made it possible to read every email anyone had every written, was really great, and had six or so fun plot twists. The last story was also very chilling. Like Rachman's other books, the stories were independent of one another, but also tied together just enough to feel like a single work. It's worth reading for sure, and only takes a few hours.
March 4, 2018
I'm still trying to absorb/assess this book, as I think it can be "taken" in different ways. Perhaps this is Rachman's intent, the bipartisan skewering, as he calls himself a "realist." While it's not really anti-Trump, there are indeed disparaging remarks made. Thus I found myself reading between the lines...Liberal Self-Righteousness, Liberal agony?...so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. One thing is for sure, he nailed Portland as the bastion of liberalism.
I found the most comprehensive review of this book, not on Goodreads, but another website. Although I'm not familiar with Adam Cartrell, a political journalist, he purports that Rachman is not assigning blame specifically to individuals/parties, just opining with heavy satire and a keen eye on what is currently going on.
Once again, I find Rachman's sharp wit and compulsive writing of timely issues very thought-provoking.
I found the most comprehensive review of this book, not on Goodreads, but another website. Although I'm not familiar with Adam Cartrell, a political journalist, he purports that Rachman is not assigning blame specifically to individuals/parties, just opining with heavy satire and a keen eye on what is currently going on.
Once again, I find Rachman's sharp wit and compulsive writing of timely issues very thought-provoking.
September 24, 2017
Fem fritstående noveller, hvor nogle af menneskene og omgivelserne er fælles. Scenen er en lille smule science fiction, idet det foregår ca 3 år inde i Trumps præsidentperiode, hvor flere af menneskers "hemmeligheder" ligger offentligt tilgængelige.
Beskrivelserne af mennesker og liv forekommer helt nutidigt, præcist.
Beskrivelserne af mennesker og liv forekommer helt nutidigt, præcist.
May 30, 2018
I'm not usually a fan of short stories - typically find myself wanting more - but this was a fabulous collection. I like how they unfolded, and all with a link back to the first one. Excellent writing, great changes in style to adapt to characters and the stories.
January 25, 2018
Sparkling collection of stories set in the new Trump-era America; witty and thought-provoking tales, each with a sly link to the other stories in the book. Quite wonderful.
July 21, 2024
Each short story adds more to the experience (even though they are technically isolated). Individually I didn't care much for them, but as a whole it was good.
September 24, 2021
I'm conflicted by this weird collection of five short stories. The author clearly has an impressive intellect, and the ability to interweave this disparate collection of Trump-era stories was narratively quite an achievement. I definitely felt a sense of satisfaction in how they were written, almost reminding me of the stories told in Black Mirror. However, it has already aged poorly. Some of the Trump references just made me cringe as they wallow in coastal, liberal agony. Has the air of a fairytale and this allows the author the freedom to get silly but it detracts from any kind of authoritative commentary on Trump-era politics. Despite this, I do think it is probably worth the ride, just about.
July 18, 2024
I finished this book several hours ago but I’m having a hard time writing a review. This book is satirical, but it also feels like a threat. The stories are disturbing, but not in a way I can easily put my finger on. They are ominous and foreboding, especially since they were published in 2017 and so much of the tension in these stories feels more relevant now than it did then. I enjoyed reading the stories- they are very easy to read, almost conversational in tone, and I loved how they were connected to each other. This is a strange little book, and I’d be interested to read it again in a few years to see if anything has changed (or if things have gotten worse).
October 21, 2019
Rachman goes political and with the current events well in hand. Because of the emotional connections with all this around us, this is, at times, not a comfortable book. Still, it's well-written and fully evolved. If you're a fan you'll need to read this one.
August 4, 2020
Cleverly interwoven, without feeling forced, this was a darkly comic look at a polarised America and Americans who all think they are on the "right side" but are as flawed as each other. it was more nuanced in its characterisations than I expected, and was an enjoyable light read.
February 19, 2021
Ce recueil de nouvelles peut sembler complexe au début par ses références à la politique américaine. Il faut cependant persister, car le talent de Rachman est de relier chacun des récits, qui à prime abord, ne semblent avoir rien en commun.
February 20, 2019
Quick notes about to run out of internet range.... Read it and all and stories all intersect in the end it seems.
November 2, 2019
Hilarious. The truth hurts. "We never really liked democracy. We just like our guys to be the winner." "The internet, she thinks, makes it so hard to respect humanity".
December 10, 2020
Five vignettes on modern life which are fine studies in character, satire and plot. Skilled author, skilfull stories which are quick to read and leave a fine impression. Leakzilla is the highlight.
April 7, 2023
Quick-reading, interconnected stories that don’t really go anywhere besides intending to spoof the post-election climate in 2016.
Want to read
December 2, 2025Anbefalet af Lone Theils
December 15, 2025
4⭐ really liked the interlinked nature of the short stories in this collection
August 26, 2025
Each short story started off well, and I liked how they were loosely connected, but every single one had a really disappointing ending with little pay off. Great set up, poor execution.
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