J'ai beaucoup de mal à mettre cinq étoiles à un roman (américain de surcroit diront les mauvaises langues). Mais voici un grand roman américain qui ne tombe jamais dans la facilité, ni, non plus dans le jargon verbeux... ( )

Trance is a fictional retelling of the Patricia Hearst/Symbionese Liberation Army saga. The author deftly recreates the mid-seventies: the muddy politics of the SLA, the bemusement and malaise of the American public, even quirky little details of everyday life (remember flash cubes?) and all without a hint of nostalgia. Although the reader has to cope with ever-shifting points of view, the story is engaging even if you 'know how it ends.' I started the book and put it aside. Once I picked it up again, I realized that the characters had wormed their way into my awareness and I absolutely couldn't put it down after that. ( )

http://forreststokes.com/wordpress/?p=220 ( )

I was in high school when Patty Hearst was kidnapped. The whole kidnapping and Symbionese Liberation Army seemed very far away, unreal but still interesting. My friends and I got in trouble for putting up pictures of Patty Hearst in our high school yearbook room. Why did we do it? Not out of some sympathy for the SLA's radical pseudo-leftist cant. Rather, it seemed cool in an abstract way. The school administrators of course read it totally differently, felt very threatened, and probably believed we were a nest of wannabe-violent revolutionaries...

This book brought back those memories and more. Sorrentino really gives us a feel for those mid-1970s years, a feel that I, growing up in suburban upstate new york, certainly didn't really have in my own life. The sputtering out of the 1960s idealism and radicalism, the day-to-day life of self-proclaimed revolutionaries, these are the things the Trance gives insight into.

Trance is a long read, but I liked Sorrentino's focus on the minutiae of day to day life, on his shifting focus to various characters, major and minor. The book really doesn't tell us much about the Hearst character herself. She remains a rather shallow and undeveloped person; of course that might be because that was her actual nature. Much more interesting are the snippets of life and description of other characters, SLA members, family and friends, victims.

Trance is a long read but if you're interested in 1970s or psychological insights into small group dynamics, well worth the time. ( )

Haven't read it, but the advance word is strong.