AMERICA FANTASTICA, by Tim O’BrienWhen scientists take a core sample of fiction from the post-Trump era, they will discover American novelists struggling to unpack the political and social repercussions of his reign. Just as historians work to document the facts of the last 10 years, so, too, do novelists try to reveal their meaning. In “America Fantastica,” a manic road-trip-meets-crime-spree novel, O’Brien — the award-winning author of “The Things They Carried” and “Going After Cacciato” — speaks through an omniscient narrator, one who regularly interrupts the story to describe the spread of this so-called disease:Bullyism skyrocketed. husband, her scheming billionaire father, the married owners of the bank in question (who don’t report the robbery because they’re too busy robbing the bank themselves) and Angie’s homicidal, reality-challenged fiancé, who sets off in pursuit. But by adding a veneer of topicality, O’Brien aims to turn his characters into case studies for a nation’s moral failure.

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Persons: Tim O’Brien, Tim O’Brien’s, Trump, O’Brien, ” —, Boyd Halverson, Penney, Angie Bing, they’re, fiancé, Elmore Leonard Locations: America, Fulda, Calif, Texas, Minnesota