Book of the week: O: A Presidential Novel by Anonymous

The speculative account of the upcoming 2012 presidential election is “trite, implausible, and decidedly unfunny,” said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times.

(Simon & Schuster, 353 pages, $25.99)

“Well, now we know why the author of this much-gossiped-about book wanted to remain anonymous,” said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times. O is a serious disappointment, a “trite, implausible, and decidedly unfunny” speculative account of the upcoming 2012 presidential election campaign that no self-respecting journalist or author could possibly want to take credit for. Aggressively marketed as a Primary Colors for the Obama era, the book has none of the “panache or satiric wit” of the fictionalized portrait of Bill and Hillary Clinton that journalist Joe Klein published anonymously in 1996. The characters based on real-life figures are all “clumsily drawn caricatures.” Even the president himself is a “snarkily drawn cartoon”—an above-it-all intellectual whose narcissism rivals that of the Kardashians.

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What a missed opportunity, said Beth Fouhy in the Associated Press. Many readers hunger to know Obama better and would welcome a portrait that shows us more than the “gifted but detached figure he’s been since his debut on the national stage.” This stand-in offers no surprises. He “smokes, rolls his eyes at cable punditry, and puzzles at the way his efforts to rescue the economy have been misunderstood by voters.” Spending time with him might only be worthwhile for “political junkies who can’t wait for the next campaign to start.” For those who can wait, the real thing is bound to be more interesting.