Despite rave reviews from writers at NPR and the NY Times, I found myself agreeing more with the writer of this Slate Review. There was beautiful language (check), there were experimental elements (check), there was an attempt to engage with society at large and ask tough questions (check).
Problem for me was that it just didn’t hang together. It was super slow until it was super fast (kind of annoying), there were too many threads to pull—in fact as the writer of the Slate review notes, some plot points were dropped. It was as if they didn’t matter anymore once we got to the climax chapters. The characters were kind of one dimensional. It seemed to me that she was trying to address everything that the United States has gotten wrong in the last 200+ years, rather than focusing on letting the story lead me to ask relevant questions. It was didactic and preachy with nuance dropped like an inconvenient plot point.
Having said all of this, it is worth reading, if only for the language use and the Scarecrow bits, which were my favorites. Russell has been hailed as a literary giant, so reading this allows one to be conversant with current modes of literariness. Also, it is a novel of the Great Depression, which serves as a proxy in many ways for our current climate problems. There is plenty to discuss, and it would make a great book club choice.
Just be prepared not to have the plot make total sense or all the loose ends to meet up. If that is what you want, try The Anomaly or Station Eleven, both literary and both superior to this one, in my opinion.