Great Expectations by Vinson CunninghamMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Really more 3.5 stars.
Having decided to try to read all the 2025 Tournament of Books shortlist, I started with Great Expectations and I'll resist troping the title in this review.
A debut novel by New Yorker theater critic Vinson Cunningham, it traces the rather passive existence of David Hammond, a twenty-something Black man who almost unwittingly winds up as a staffer on Obama's 2008 presidential campaign (although in the book, the former president is never identified by name). Cunningham was actually a staffer, so one wonders how much of this "novel" might actually be memoir, and that actually becomes important as the "plot" isn't really much of a draw. It isn't about the campaign, to be sure, but we are treated to some smarmier moments of life on the campaign trail, but interspersed with David's musings on his past: his time in the Pentecostal church as a child, his rather incidental fatherhood, his hookups, his childhood in Chicago... It is difficult to get a foothold in the narrative sometimes. There are sentences that sing (and there's a good deal of sonic and musical emphasis in the novel), but then there are more stream-of-consciousness babblings that seem to be aspirational Saramago.
I had a tough time sustaining my attention (two renewals on Libby!), but the last quarter of the book finally seemed to pick up a bit, although I'm hard-pressed to tell you why. There is a little bit of intrigue and controversy that hits the campaign, but David also seems to take that in as a passive observer. It is hard to call him a protagonist as he doesn't seem to be actively or emotionally invested in his own life or observations. They are just there.
It is a good book--and with some of the detritus cleared and perhaps a bit more interest in the trajectory of narrative, it could have been great. Certainly it was enough that I'll be curious to read what comes next from Cunningham, and I hope there is a "next"!
View all my reviews
A debut novel by New Yorker theater critic Vinson Cunningham, it traces the rather passive existence of David Hammond, a twenty-something Black man who almost unwittingly winds up as a staffer on Obama's 2008 presidential campaign (although in the book, the former president is never identified by name). Cunningham was actually a staffer, so one wonders how much of this "novel" might actually be memoir, and that actually becomes important as the "plot" isn't really much of a draw. It isn't about the campaign, to be sure, but we are treated to some smarmier moments of life on the campaign trail, but interspersed with David's musings on his past: his time in the Pentecostal church as a child, his rather incidental fatherhood, his hookups, his childhood in Chicago... It is difficult to get a foothold in the narrative sometimes. There are sentences that sing (and there's a good deal of sonic and musical emphasis in the novel), but then there are more stream-of-consciousness babblings that seem to be aspirational Saramago.
I had a tough time sustaining my attention (two renewals on Libby!), but the last quarter of the book finally seemed to pick up a bit, although I'm hard-pressed to tell you why. There is a little bit of intrigue and controversy that hits the campaign, but David also seems to take that in as a passive observer. It is hard to call him a protagonist as he doesn't seem to be actively or emotionally invested in his own life or observations. They are just there.
It is a good book--and with some of the detritus cleared and perhaps a bit more interest in the trajectory of narrative, it could have been great. Certainly it was enough that I'll be curious to read what comes next from Cunningham, and I hope there is a "next"!
View all my reviews
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