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November 22, 1963
November 22, 1963 chronicles the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination. It begins that morning, with Jackie Kennedy in a Fort Worth hotel, about to leave for Dallas. Her airplane trip out of Dallas after the assassination forms the connecting arc for the book, which ends with Mrs. Kennedy’s return to the White House at 4 a.m. Interwoven throughout are stories of real people intimately connected with that day: a man who shares cigarettes with the First Lady outside the trauma room; a motorcycle policeman flanking the entourage; Abe Zabruder, who caught the assassination on film; the White House servants following Mrs. Kennedy’s orders to begin planning a funeral modeled on Lincoln’s; and the morticians overseeing President Kennedy’s autopsy. Adam Braver’s brilliantly constructed historical fiction explores the intersection of stories and memories, and reveals how together, they have come to represent and mythologize that fateful day.
206 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
Adam Braver
23 books19 followersADAM BRAVER is the author of Mr. Lincolns Wars, Divine Sarah, Crows Over the Wheatfield, November 22, 1963, and Misfit . His books have been selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers program, Borders Original Voices series, and twice for the Book Sense list. His work has appeared in journals such as Daedalus, Ontario Review, Cimarron Review, Water-Stone Review, Harvard Review, Tin House, West Branch, and Post Road. He teaches at Roger Williams University in Bristol, RI, and at the NY State Summer Writers Institute."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
June 22, 2010
Towards the beginning of the book someone (the author? a narrator? some other interloper?) questions a motorcycle cop, who rode alongside the Kennedy Car. The inquisitor tries to coax the ex-cop into telling what he felt that day, before or after the assassination; he, instead, tells the story of riding alongside the car, of turning onto Elm St., and the moment when he heard the first shot of gunfire. The narrator, or whatever he is, explains the ex-cop was trying to avoid this moment. He wanted to forget that part.
The above poorly described paragraph captures the essence of this book. Obviously, the book is about JFK's assassination, but it never goes into the actual moment. Like in the dead space between James Ellroy's American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand the bullet is never seen hitting JFK, he never dies in front of us. We've all seen it happen a thousand times anyway. Both, this book and Ellroy's are trying to show something beyond the image we are all anesthetized to after repeated viewings. Ellroy choose to shine a spotlight on the darkness creeping around the walls of Camelot, while Braver circles around the peripheries, swaying from the edges of the stories of faceless players in history: the people who would put up decorations in the White House for the funeral, the man who drove the body from the hospital in Dallas to the airfield; up to the names and faces seared into history. All of the characters in the book find themselves caught in the web of history that the country has yet to extricate itself from.
What I've written above sounds more than a little stupid. This short and relatively easy book raises many different questions without attempting to offer any answers. This isn't a bad thing, because they are the kind of questions that don't necessarily have any answers, but which are beneficial to be asked over and over again lest we forget some important lessons from history.
The above poorly described paragraph captures the essence of this book. Obviously, the book is about JFK's assassination, but it never goes into the actual moment. Like in the dead space between James Ellroy's American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand the bullet is never seen hitting JFK, he never dies in front of us. We've all seen it happen a thousand times anyway. Both, this book and Ellroy's are trying to show something beyond the image we are all anesthetized to after repeated viewings. Ellroy choose to shine a spotlight on the darkness creeping around the walls of Camelot, while Braver circles around the peripheries, swaying from the edges of the stories of faceless players in history: the people who would put up decorations in the White House for the funeral, the man who drove the body from the hospital in Dallas to the airfield; up to the names and faces seared into history. All of the characters in the book find themselves caught in the web of history that the country has yet to extricate itself from.
What I've written above sounds more than a little stupid. This short and relatively easy book raises many different questions without attempting to offer any answers. This isn't a bad thing, because they are the kind of questions that don't necessarily have any answers, but which are beneficial to be asked over and over again lest we forget some important lessons from history.
December 25, 2019
Adam Braver's book came highly recommended -- I had been told that it was a documentation of the experiences of ordinary people who had, in different ways, been minor characters involved in the background of the Kennedy assassination -- the ambulance driver, one of the motorcycle cops who had accompanied the motorcade, the mortician who had dressed the corpse and so forth. And that part--the first third of the book--was fascinating, But then, Braver suddenly gets into the mind of Jackie Kennedy, explaining her feelings throughout the tragedy. Clearly this part is fiction as I doubt he had interviewed her. Yes, the book is billed as a novel but it is only partly fiction and was thus a mislabeled mish mash. I wish Braver had spent no time in Jackie's brain and instead continued writing about the viewpoints of the real characters. Disappointing.
November 27, 2009
Interesting take on the dividing line between history and fiction. Aside from what the book is ostensibly about -- the JFK assassination -- it's also very much concerned with what it is to be a historian and researcher, how much of oneself moves in and out of a fixed story. There are a lot of ways to read this, I think, which makes it really engaging. Also the book itself is very beautiful, with a lot of attention paid toward the design and feel, which enhances the feeling of it being an interactive kind of text. This is something I could definitely reread at some point and have an entirely different experience.
October 22, 2015
This creative account of Dallas's darkest day is a balancing act, one that intermingles fact and fiction flawlessly.
July 27, 2025
An assemblage of voices related to the fateful day of November 22, 1963. Small shards that reflect the mournfulness of the days surrounding the Kennedy assassination, the daily movements or thoughts that become entombed forever because they are associated with such a monumental event. A requiem for the old. A requiem for the new. 3.5 stars.
October 13, 2024
DNF bc I thought it was a book about little stories of the History but it's actually part reality, part fiction and imagination... not what I was looking for when I started it
January 11, 2009
I want the world to see what they’ve done to Jack.
--Jackie Kennedy to Lady Bird Johnson on refusing to change for the cameras the pink, Coco Chanel designed, bloodstained dress she was wearing when her husband was murdered.
This November, forty-five years ago, Jack Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas. You would think that by now every and any thing that could have been written about the murder of the president has been said a dozen times over, that there is now nothing new, useful, or of consequence to add. Yet this outstanding piece of non-fiction fiction from Adam Braver manages to do so, and thus makes the book very much worth the time and money to buy and read. A warning: You must be ready to endure the painful burden of the story once again because Mr. Braver rips the still festering scab off America’s collective wound and thereby shows that Dealey Plaza isn’t so distant. A reader must also be willing to accept the unusual structure and strategy of this text, for November 22, 1963 is not ordered like most novels.
Braver’s take on these events, wherein a good deal of his originality with the well-known materials lies, means not giving us some polished, generic airport-novel account of the story told in routine prose. November 22, 1963 does not advance chapter by obvious chapter—1 and 2 and 3 and 4—as a smooth rehash to be easily consumed on the morning flight from New York to L.A. In addition to keeping the story fresh, this violation of customary structures of novel writing has the salutary effect of revealing the clichés of mainstream, entertainment fiction. In this way, Braver not only creates a unique work of art, he also honours the events.
Yet the novel does have a linear throughline—more or less. It begins in the Hotel Texas as Jackie and JFK leave to take part in the motorcade. It ends with the cleaning of the back seat of the Lincoln limousine a couple of days later, and the subsequent refurbishment of the car so it may be restored to government service. In between those start and end points, the novel builds and proceeds by firsthand accounts, interviews, medical analyses, direct address, interior monologues, flashbacks, tangents, odd facts, a photographic session with the corpse, film frames, opinions, flash forwards, and maddening bureaucratic details. Because of this composite method, Braver’s version of this infamous murder comes at the reader somewhat like a literary-historical Cubist portrait: in fragments large and small from multiple views, times, and narrative vantages.
So we meet Bobby Hargis, the motorcycle cop who rode right next to the limo and was spattered by the president’s blood and brains—only we meet him forty years or so after the fact. We meet Al Pike, the 25-year-old hearse driver from whom Mrs. Kennedy bummed a smoke as she waited outside the trauma room and called the only gentleman she had met in Dallas. We meet Abe Zapruder, who by sheer chance recorded the death on his brand new, never-before-used Bell & Howell 8mm home-movie camera and then, weeping, sold the footage to Life magazine to help put his children through college.
Kennedy operatives, Secret Services agents, a funeral parlour owner, the man who had to clean up the Lincoln afterwards, Bobby, Lyndon, the Kennedy’s nanny, Ben Bradlee and his wife, and many others turn up in a scene, then vanish. For an extended section, “Mrs. Kennedy Is Coming Back”, one of the White House servants narrates the preparations for the receiving of Kennedy’s body. Even Abe Lincoln’s ghost puts in an appearance. Mercifully, we never meet the assassin nor the assassin’s assassin.
But most of all in this powerful recounting, we are with Jackie. November 22, 1963 is her novel. Many fragments take place in her mind. We are with her in her thinking at the Hotel Texas as she tries on her new dress on the morning of that terrible day. We are with her on the trunk of the Lincoln after the shots are fired. We are with her in the Dallas hospital. We are with her as she sits alone with the casket in the plane that carries her husband back to D.C., and at Bethesda as she waits during an autopsy on Jack that she tried to prevent. We are with her in her grief, even as she has the wherewithal to insist upon using Abraham Lincoln’s very catafalque to support JFK’s casket and that the White House be dressed exactly as it was for Lincoln’s funeral. We are with her as she has to suffer Lyndon Johnson’s false blandishments, and we are with her as she packs up and leaves the White House whose interior she had so beautifully redesigned.
Mrs. Kennedy’s courtesy, her courage, her grace, her despair, her madness, her loneliness, her beauty, her toughness, her perception: These elements form the desolate, heart-wrenching core of this work. True to the overall structural approach of the novel, the narrative does not exactly end with her (though it does), and there are substantial sections where she disappears entirely.
This fragmentation and lack of closure creates very unsatisfactory feelings when we reach the final page. And we, too, want to scream out a window that “history is not just a function of its parts.” This is as it should be. To have employed a customary narrative and ended with a neat suture and comfortable feelings would never do justice to the never-ending historical and personal effects and echoes of JFK's tragic murder.
Review by Neil Flowers
--Jackie Kennedy to Lady Bird Johnson on refusing to change for the cameras the pink, Coco Chanel designed, bloodstained dress she was wearing when her husband was murdered.
This November, forty-five years ago, Jack Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas. You would think that by now every and any thing that could have been written about the murder of the president has been said a dozen times over, that there is now nothing new, useful, or of consequence to add. Yet this outstanding piece of non-fiction fiction from Adam Braver manages to do so, and thus makes the book very much worth the time and money to buy and read. A warning: You must be ready to endure the painful burden of the story once again because Mr. Braver rips the still festering scab off America’s collective wound and thereby shows that Dealey Plaza isn’t so distant. A reader must also be willing to accept the unusual structure and strategy of this text, for November 22, 1963 is not ordered like most novels.
Braver’s take on these events, wherein a good deal of his originality with the well-known materials lies, means not giving us some polished, generic airport-novel account of the story told in routine prose. November 22, 1963 does not advance chapter by obvious chapter—1 and 2 and 3 and 4—as a smooth rehash to be easily consumed on the morning flight from New York to L.A. In addition to keeping the story fresh, this violation of customary structures of novel writing has the salutary effect of revealing the clichés of mainstream, entertainment fiction. In this way, Braver not only creates a unique work of art, he also honours the events.
Yet the novel does have a linear throughline—more or less. It begins in the Hotel Texas as Jackie and JFK leave to take part in the motorcade. It ends with the cleaning of the back seat of the Lincoln limousine a couple of days later, and the subsequent refurbishment of the car so it may be restored to government service. In between those start and end points, the novel builds and proceeds by firsthand accounts, interviews, medical analyses, direct address, interior monologues, flashbacks, tangents, odd facts, a photographic session with the corpse, film frames, opinions, flash forwards, and maddening bureaucratic details. Because of this composite method, Braver’s version of this infamous murder comes at the reader somewhat like a literary-historical Cubist portrait: in fragments large and small from multiple views, times, and narrative vantages.
So we meet Bobby Hargis, the motorcycle cop who rode right next to the limo and was spattered by the president’s blood and brains—only we meet him forty years or so after the fact. We meet Al Pike, the 25-year-old hearse driver from whom Mrs. Kennedy bummed a smoke as she waited outside the trauma room and called the only gentleman she had met in Dallas. We meet Abe Zapruder, who by sheer chance recorded the death on his brand new, never-before-used Bell & Howell 8mm home-movie camera and then, weeping, sold the footage to Life magazine to help put his children through college.
Kennedy operatives, Secret Services agents, a funeral parlour owner, the man who had to clean up the Lincoln afterwards, Bobby, Lyndon, the Kennedy’s nanny, Ben Bradlee and his wife, and many others turn up in a scene, then vanish. For an extended section, “Mrs. Kennedy Is Coming Back”, one of the White House servants narrates the preparations for the receiving of Kennedy’s body. Even Abe Lincoln’s ghost puts in an appearance. Mercifully, we never meet the assassin nor the assassin’s assassin.
But most of all in this powerful recounting, we are with Jackie. November 22, 1963 is her novel. Many fragments take place in her mind. We are with her in her thinking at the Hotel Texas as she tries on her new dress on the morning of that terrible day. We are with her on the trunk of the Lincoln after the shots are fired. We are with her in the Dallas hospital. We are with her as she sits alone with the casket in the plane that carries her husband back to D.C., and at Bethesda as she waits during an autopsy on Jack that she tried to prevent. We are with her in her grief, even as she has the wherewithal to insist upon using Abraham Lincoln’s very catafalque to support JFK’s casket and that the White House be dressed exactly as it was for Lincoln’s funeral. We are with her as she has to suffer Lyndon Johnson’s false blandishments, and we are with her as she packs up and leaves the White House whose interior she had so beautifully redesigned.
Mrs. Kennedy’s courtesy, her courage, her grace, her despair, her madness, her loneliness, her beauty, her toughness, her perception: These elements form the desolate, heart-wrenching core of this work. True to the overall structural approach of the novel, the narrative does not exactly end with her (though it does), and there are substantial sections where she disappears entirely.
This fragmentation and lack of closure creates very unsatisfactory feelings when we reach the final page. And we, too, want to scream out a window that “history is not just a function of its parts.” This is as it should be. To have employed a customary narrative and ended with a neat suture and comfortable feelings would never do justice to the never-ending historical and personal effects and echoes of JFK's tragic murder.
Review by Neil Flowers
December 30, 2019
Trovato questo libriccino all’usato del Libraccio. Da appassionata dell’argomento posso dire che mi è piaciuto. Ovviamente, non bisogna aspettarsi chissà quale analisi storico-politica. Tuttavia il libro riesce a scandagliare i singoli momenti, pensieri, istanti, attimi di alcuni attori di quel tragico teatro del 1963. Soprattutto, ne esce un’immagine di Jacqueline, elegante, raffinata, materna, donna, ma soprattutto forte come non mai. Bellissima figura.
July 11, 2010
According to the Historical Novel Society, "To be deemed historical...a novel must have been written at least fifty years after the events described, or have been written by someone who was not alive at the time of those events (who therefore approaches them only by research)." Author Adam Braver may have been alive when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated: Braver was born in 1963. But he obviously does not remember the event, and he has approached it through a fascinating combination of research and fiction-crafting in his new novel.
I thought I knew a lot about the assassination, which is an historical event for me, too (my parents were still a few months away from meeting each other on November 22, 1963). But Braver's book, which focuses in depth on the events of that day through the closely-drawn third-person eyes of everyone from a Dallas policeman to Abe Zapruder to Maud Shaw (Caroline and John-John's nanny) to, of course, Jackie Kennedy, opened up so much more.
Most of us will never know what it was to be Air Force One as it bore the slain President's coffin back to Washington; Braver has imagined that. Most of us didn't witness the autopsy at Walter Reed; Braver has evoked it. Most of us can't imagine how Maud Shaw told six-year-old Caroline what had happened (I hadn't even realized that Jackie Kennedy had given the nanny that awful task); Braver shows us how it might have happened:
"They were the only two in the room, but...Miss Shaw could barely look at Caroline, tucked firmly in bed under the canopy of rosebud chintz, forcing a confident expression, though it was clear she knew something wasn't right; and Miss Shaw's eyes were tearing while Caroline stared at her, almost demanding an explanation other than Miss Shaw taking her hand and apologizing for the tears; and Miss Shaw knew she could wait until morning (Mrs. Auchincloss told her Mrs. Kennedy said it was up to her to gauge what the children did or didn't know), but she looked at Caroline and something told her it wouldn't be fair to send the girl to sleep, to let her wake up full of promise--better for the girl to wake up as part of the grief, and that way maybe she'll mourn more purely; then Miss Shaw inhaled so deeply her gut almost burst, and on the exhalation she said that there had been an accident; then she paused, realizing the sound of hope in the word accident, and corrected herself to say, 'He's been shot, and God has taken him to Heaven because they couldn't make him better in the hospital,' and then closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them she wouldn't see Caroline crying--that this had all been a dream."
This is historical fiction at its best: intensely researched (check out Braver's staggering list of acknowledgments, including the Oral History collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum [Maud Shaw's is among the transcripts Braver tells us he accessed:]) and beautifully written. I recommend it highly.
(This review was originally posted on Amazon.com and is based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.)
I thought I knew a lot about the assassination, which is an historical event for me, too (my parents were still a few months away from meeting each other on November 22, 1963). But Braver's book, which focuses in depth on the events of that day through the closely-drawn third-person eyes of everyone from a Dallas policeman to Abe Zapruder to Maud Shaw (Caroline and John-John's nanny) to, of course, Jackie Kennedy, opened up so much more.
Most of us will never know what it was to be Air Force One as it bore the slain President's coffin back to Washington; Braver has imagined that. Most of us didn't witness the autopsy at Walter Reed; Braver has evoked it. Most of us can't imagine how Maud Shaw told six-year-old Caroline what had happened (I hadn't even realized that Jackie Kennedy had given the nanny that awful task); Braver shows us how it might have happened:
"They were the only two in the room, but...Miss Shaw could barely look at Caroline, tucked firmly in bed under the canopy of rosebud chintz, forcing a confident expression, though it was clear she knew something wasn't right; and Miss Shaw's eyes were tearing while Caroline stared at her, almost demanding an explanation other than Miss Shaw taking her hand and apologizing for the tears; and Miss Shaw knew she could wait until morning (Mrs. Auchincloss told her Mrs. Kennedy said it was up to her to gauge what the children did or didn't know), but she looked at Caroline and something told her it wouldn't be fair to send the girl to sleep, to let her wake up full of promise--better for the girl to wake up as part of the grief, and that way maybe she'll mourn more purely; then Miss Shaw inhaled so deeply her gut almost burst, and on the exhalation she said that there had been an accident; then she paused, realizing the sound of hope in the word accident, and corrected herself to say, 'He's been shot, and God has taken him to Heaven because they couldn't make him better in the hospital,' and then closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them she wouldn't see Caroline crying--that this had all been a dream."
This is historical fiction at its best: intensely researched (check out Braver's staggering list of acknowledgments, including the Oral History collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum [Maud Shaw's is among the transcripts Braver tells us he accessed:]) and beautifully written. I recommend it highly.
(This review was originally posted on Amazon.com and is based on a copy of the book provided by the publisher.)
October 19, 2012
November 22, 1963 is a series of literary snapshots of the Kennedy assassination, from the point of view of Jackie Kennedy as well as others connected to the event: a motorcycle cop, the White House staff, the photographer at the autopsy, and others. There is a strong sense of nostalgia and of history-in-the-making. The atmosphere of awe and reverence around the president and his wife is striking; it resembles an attitude toward royalty more closely than one toward today's political figures.
I always enjoy a well-written historical novel, and I enjoyed this one, but I'm afraid it won't leave a lasting impression due to its broken narrative style and its brevity. It could have been longer and deeper, with the author inhabiting the character of Jackie more fully. Nevertheless, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a different perspective on the Kennedy assassination.
Quotes:
There are times in your life when no matter how much you've earned, you never really believe you've deserved it. (26)
Maybe that's when you stop asking questions and submit to the fact that what's been laid out behind you will forever be in front of you. (32)
It was so hectic that it felt slow. Like every movement mattered, engraving itself into the history books in real time. (35)
We know that loyalty and courage don't always mix. (119)
And that's the thing: it is like a movie, only one that we're inside of. It's as though we're the sets and the artifice surrounding us, but are caught in its drama. (120)
It's best not to look at the clock. It's best not to watch something passing that one can't slow down. Or just stop. (161)
At only thirty-two, she understands the sadness of experiencing a great moment, knowing that it's already passing even while it's fully alive. (180)
I always enjoy a well-written historical novel, and I enjoyed this one, but I'm afraid it won't leave a lasting impression due to its broken narrative style and its brevity. It could have been longer and deeper, with the author inhabiting the character of Jackie more fully. Nevertheless, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a different perspective on the Kennedy assassination.
Quotes:
There are times in your life when no matter how much you've earned, you never really believe you've deserved it. (26)
Maybe that's when you stop asking questions and submit to the fact that what's been laid out behind you will forever be in front of you. (32)
It was so hectic that it felt slow. Like every movement mattered, engraving itself into the history books in real time. (35)
We know that loyalty and courage don't always mix. (119)
And that's the thing: it is like a movie, only one that we're inside of. It's as though we're the sets and the artifice surrounding us, but are caught in its drama. (120)
It's best not to look at the clock. It's best not to watch something passing that one can't slow down. Or just stop. (161)
At only thirty-two, she understands the sadness of experiencing a great moment, knowing that it's already passing even while it's fully alive. (180)
January 5, 2019
In this book the author imagines what the people around JFK were thinking on the day of his assassination: Jackie, a Dallas police officer who was part of the motorcycle escort for the presidential limousine, the driver whose hearse was hijacked by secret service agents to take the casket to Love Field, the household staff at the White House, the photographer who took the official photos of the autopsy at Bethesda.
It's a quick, easy read. I felt sympathy for most of the characters, although LBJ was, in my opinion portrayed quite unsympathetically. He came off as a little bit creepy.
There are a couple paragraphs where the author tries to relate kinetic energy and thermal conductivity to the events of the day. I found those paragraphs irritating, as they were either awkwardly written or scientifically inaccurate.
I thought that one of the more interesting stories was that of Abraham Zapruder, referred to as "Abe" in the book. Abe is imagined to have regretted bringing his camera, always wishing to have seen President Kennedy with his own eyes rather than through the viewfinder of the camera.
It was interesting to read in the acknowledgements that much of the author's research was done in the Oral History collection of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Who would have thought there was such a thing? Or an Assassinations Archives and Records Center for that matter?
I would categorize this book as entertaining rather than enlightening. It came from the bargain bin at a used book store, and will get donated to either the Friends group at my local library or to the bakery that occasionally offers a free slice of cake to anyone who contributes five books to their take one/leave one bookshelf.
It's a quick, easy read. I felt sympathy for most of the characters, although LBJ was, in my opinion portrayed quite unsympathetically. He came off as a little bit creepy.
There are a couple paragraphs where the author tries to relate kinetic energy and thermal conductivity to the events of the day. I found those paragraphs irritating, as they were either awkwardly written or scientifically inaccurate.
I thought that one of the more interesting stories was that of Abraham Zapruder, referred to as "Abe" in the book. Abe is imagined to have regretted bringing his camera, always wishing to have seen President Kennedy with his own eyes rather than through the viewfinder of the camera.
It was interesting to read in the acknowledgements that much of the author's research was done in the Oral History collection of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Who would have thought there was such a thing? Or an Assassinations Archives and Records Center for that matter?
I would categorize this book as entertaining rather than enlightening. It came from the bargain bin at a used book store, and will get donated to either the Friends group at my local library or to the bakery that occasionally offers a free slice of cake to anyone who contributes five books to their take one/leave one bookshelf.
May 11, 2009
I read _Mr. Lincoln's War_ a couple years ago, at a time when I was struck by its novelty as much as anything else-- the idea of recreating a historical experience from this fractured perspective seemed really exciting to me. Beyond that, I remember a) the chapter that sort of parallells the one in _Life of Brian_ when the two profane soldiers listen to the Gettysburg Address, and some other nonsense about the grieving Mary Todd Lincoln.
This new book, which reconstructs the scene around JFK's assassination, mostly but not entirely from the POV of Jackie O, didn't really tickle me in the same way. It might be because the event is so much closer and more accessible, linguistically, but I felt like Braver's prose here was unnecessarily fussy-- there are good spots where there's some vagie dialect work going on, like the chapter from the POV of the White House staff, but not enough of it for my taste. And the project of the book, which you'd think would allow for a range of responses to Kennedy and the events of the day, instead doesn't seem aware of variety of all-- no one has mixed emotions about JFK, no one seems to really hold him accountable for anything. It's hagiography, and honestly a little dull for all that.
I don't mean to be unduly harsh. But this seemed, I don't know, less than you might have expected.
This new book, which reconstructs the scene around JFK's assassination, mostly but not entirely from the POV of Jackie O, didn't really tickle me in the same way. It might be because the event is so much closer and more accessible, linguistically, but I felt like Braver's prose here was unnecessarily fussy-- there are good spots where there's some vagie dialect work going on, like the chapter from the POV of the White House staff, but not enough of it for my taste. And the project of the book, which you'd think would allow for a range of responses to Kennedy and the events of the day, instead doesn't seem aware of variety of all-- no one has mixed emotions about JFK, no one seems to really hold him accountable for anything. It's hagiography, and honestly a little dull for all that.
I don't mean to be unduly harsh. But this seemed, I don't know, less than you might have expected.
February 1, 2014
I thought this book would be a quick read and it was, but it was also a hard read because it is Jackie's story of the awful day. Even though everyone who was alive on that day remembers it as painful, this books lets us experience this day through her eyes. I was a child when this happened, but now as an adult, it is hard to think about losing a husband to murder. And not only murder, but witnessing it right in front of your eyes! And then having to deal with all of the government stuff? Wow. After reading this book, I come away with more of the same feelings I had back then: shock, sadness, and insecurity, but mostly admiration towards the first lady. She always was so classy, sophisticated, and dignified. The way she carried herself during this day and during the funeral and even after she left the White House is testament to the great woman that she was. She is someone we can look up to and model our lives after.
October 25, 2012
November 22, 1963 is a series of literary snapshots of the Kennedy assassination, from the point of view of Jackie Kennedy as well as others connected to the event: a motorcycle cop, the White House staff, the photographer at the autopsy, and others. There is a strong sense of nostalgia and of history-in-the-making. The atmosphere of awe and reverence around the president and his wife is striking; it resembles an attitude toward royalty more closely than one toward today's political figures.
I always enjoy a well-written historical novel, and I enjoyed this one, but I'm afraid it won't leave a lasting impression due to its broken narrative style and its brevity. It could have been longer and deeper, with the author inhabiting the character of Jackie more fully. Nevertheless, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a different perspective on the Kennedy assassination.
I always enjoy a well-written historical novel, and I enjoyed this one, but I'm afraid it won't leave a lasting impression due to its broken narrative style and its brevity. It could have been longer and deeper, with the author inhabiting the character of Jackie more fully. Nevertheless, I'd recommend it to anyone interested in a different perspective on the Kennedy assassination.
February 3, 2009
Interesting, very interesting. A book that follows Jackie Kennedy through out The Day - largely imagined but very well thought out. And written in a dry, detached style that adds to the pathos and tragedy.
Anyone who had memory in 1963 remembers where they were when they heard that Kennedy had been shot, and this book plays on that: on the people who encountered Jackie, the White House ushers who hastily assembled the trappings of a State Funeral, the White House mechanic feeling deeply accountable even though he couldn't have been. But mostly it follows Jackie from the time that she puts on her pink wool suit early in the morning until she takes it off 20 hours later.
Anyone who had memory in 1963 remembers where they were when they heard that Kennedy had been shot, and this book plays on that: on the people who encountered Jackie, the White House ushers who hastily assembled the trappings of a State Funeral, the White House mechanic feeling deeply accountable even though he couldn't have been. But mostly it follows Jackie from the time that she puts on her pink wool suit early in the morning until she takes it off 20 hours later.
April 22, 2009
braver’s examination of one of the most tragic events in american history pays no heed to the controversies of the jfk assassination or his adulterous history. instead, he focuses of individuals directly effected by the assassination, from jackie kennedy to abe zepruder to white house day care staff. although not lyrically gifted, it’s hard to read this book and feel incredibly empathetic. braver handles his subjects with white gloves, and the result is an incredibly emotional and touching narrative.
March 25, 2010
I've been reading through the list of book club books a bunch of coworkers put together. This book was a total surprise. It was such a great mix of imagination, fact, research and storytelling. The author writes with such compassion and empathy that the reader is forced to live the stories through the characters wondering "what if". The level of detail with which Braver writes the emotion of the characters really drew me in. This book also makes me want to research a time in history I know little about, while exploring my own personal history simultaneously.
May 9, 2010
I love anything Jackie Kennedy related so I bought this book excited to read about the events of that day through the fictional Jackie character. I was highly disappointed, the author I felt lost me at times and I didn't know what was going on. The character of Jackie never seemed like we've seen her or as though she was the First Lady. Two stars because it was interesting, but just not my type of book.
July 19, 2009
Not much to say really. Not as powerful in the end as it seemed in the beginning. I think it wanders around a bit to much. I thought if they had focused more on Jackie, it would've been much better. It was still a worthwhile read. I thought the most touching moment was when Jackie puts the hearse driver at ease by asking him where he is from and then bums a cig off of him.
December 22, 2008
This is one of those books that takes a significant event in history and tells a fictional story based on the people involved. I slogged through this hoping that the author would offer something new. He didn't. Instead, he tried to guess what the major players were thinking and he introduced some minor characters and didn't do much with them. Overall, an unsatisfying read.
November 29, 2010
Intriguing, but a somewhat disturbing fictionalized account of JFK's assassination. Our book group had a lively discussion about it, but it was most meaningful when the group shared our memories of hearing the news of JFK's murder (only one person in the group was born after that time). That personal sharing made the book more meaningful. It's all about perspectives.
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March 7, 2013I did not finish this book, even though it was very well-written, because it was just too painful for me to keep reading. You see, I have vivid memories of the day President Kennedy was murdered, even though I was just a child. When I could not see the print because of my tears, I closed the book and put it away.
September 26, 2008
Very well written but not sure if those who aren't into this subject would like it., Told in a modular way, generally like a curator going through the odds and ends of a box of recovered papers. Distant and cool in tone.
April 20, 2009
This read more like a non-fiction book,but I guess since he was weaving together fact and fictional conversations it has to be fiction. It reminded me a lot of the movie "Bobby," except it deals with JFK and how Jackie dealt with the day of his assassination.
May 4, 2014
A fictionalised account of the day JFK was assassinated, told from the points of view of various people who were present. It was a little strange in parts, especially the way the format of the narrative kept changing, but it broke down the historical event into a more accessible read.
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July 15, 2016I stumbled across this book at Recycled Reads (public library thrift store) recently. Since i was a kid i have been curious about JFK's assassination. This book is written like a fictional narrative with tiny details. I love tiny details.
November 12, 2008
Read the review before mine, Michael says it all.
July 16, 2009
Historical fiction that used many different characters to give their viewpoints/stories of the JFK assassination, with Jackie being the primary character. It was interesting, but not a page-turner.
August 5, 2009
It wasn't really a bad book. It was just so fucking boring. Quick read though, somehow.
November 12, 2010
Fictional account of an infamous day in history from the "perspective" of Jackie Kennedy and other people with unique "insights".
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