Libra

Rating:
Summary: A new look at an old story
Review: This book put a fascinating spin on the JFK assassination. Seeing the life of Lee H. Oswald from his own point of view really gives you a different sense on who the victims were and who the victimizers were. I just about sympathized with everyone BUT Kennedy! Interesting book.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing novel
Review: Don't be fooled into thinking "This'll just be another stupid waste of time about the JFK assassination." LIBRA is one of the best novels written in English since the Second World War. The characters are palpably real, the dialogue is beyond perfect. It's a meditation on history you won't forget in a hurry.

Rating:
Summary: Masterful
Review: Don Dellilo with Libra claims the title of the modern master of the Hemmingway iceberg -- a plot that pokes out of the surface of the water, leaving the reader to imagine the massive form below the surface that keeps it afloat... Or, less is more. Brilliant.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read; whether or not you buy the premise.
Review: The most plausible work of fiction concerning the JFK assassination that I have read. The fact that the dialogue (both external and internal) is truncated and unrealistic actually doesn't matter. The author is anxious to "show" us what happened and to "show" us the motivation of his characters (obviously largely based on real people) and is anxious to show us everything and does so, like a dedicated but pressed-for-time tour guide. So the dialogue is sacrificed but in a good cause. There are MANY things about the JFK assassination that argue AGAINST the idea of a wide-ranging conspiracy. Oswald's and Ruby's OPPORTUNITIES to commit their respective crimes both arose by happenstance. Most conspiracy buffs either disregard that or embroider the truth about that. Not author Dom DeLillo - he boldly acknowledges these random elements and cleverly incorporates them into his plot. DeLillo is, in short, an Oliver Stone with integrity and with his feet on the ground. Oh yes, his treatment of all characters, including bit players like David Ferrie, is also more understated and hence more realistic than Stone's. The "conspirators" are not heartless all-powerful manipulators in service of the forces of darkness but ordinary people with limited authority and human foibles who cross their fingers and hope for luck as does everyone who has ever punched a time clock.

Rating:
Summary: The book Libra explores the JFK assassination badly.
Review: This book does not in anyway influence the reader, and is one of the worst novels I have ever read. It is written so poorly and is so foggy, I urge the public never to buy this awful book.

Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding
Review: This is one of the most riveting and memorable novels I have ever read. DeLillo is a writer of power, and he has chosen one of the defining events of the century to work his magic. Blending fact with fiction where gaps exist, DeLillo provides a breathtaking and totally plausible interpretation of the forces and people that came together in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It's trip back in time to the days when Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union, the CIA, and the Mafia monopolized the American and world stage, made all the more bizarre because the reader often doesn't know whether he is reading fact or supposition. One thing is sure: The reader will never think of the JFK era in the same way again.

Rating:
Summary: Lee Harvey Oswald walks into your living room sits down.
Review: Lee Harvey Oswald walks into your living room sits down and says "Hi, Y'all".

The Assassination, even now after 34 years, has no closure. Into the information gap run Mr. DeLillo, Mr. Mailer and dozens if not hundreds of writers, film directors, columnist, and TV producers. The Assassination remains a cottage industry whose customers are the best of us and also the worst of us.

Mr. DeLillo's effort has the advantage of all the intervening years of facts and fiction between November 1963 and now; and he has fashioned a plausible Mr. Oswald and clearly plausible characters surrounding the Southern U.S. in 1963.

What you will get here is a Lee Harvey Oswald that is so close that you can smell him, you can also smell agents and low-lifes by the dozens for whom assassination, be it in Haiti, Chile, Cuba or Texas was just another assignment directed by "people of trust". Mr. DeLillo produces an environment that like Le Carre', he shows how an image is reflected by rumor in a mirror image of a mirror held by a triple agent holding 3 other mirrors.

In the end you will comfort yourself in the "fiction" classification of the book, comfort yourself that you have read the "truth", comfort yourself that DeLillo is just guessing, comfort yourself that DeLillo is exactly right.

Put this book up on your shelf right next to your copy of S.Hunter's "Point of Impact".

Rating:
Summary: "I didn't shoot no President" - Lee H. Oswald
Review: There's a certain school of thought that states that authors generally don't make good scriptwriters; they're too much in love with words, not dialogue. DeLillo falls into this category. His sentences are beautifully written (though some times he seems to be trying too hard), but his characters don't talk TO each other, they talk AT each other. Every person in the book seems to have some knack for speaking like wanna-be nineteenth century poets. Anyway, the novel itself is enjoyable, but DeLillo tries to cover all the angles. Oswald WAS a lone nut. But, unbeknownst to him, the CIA was really pulling his strings, designing their very own "patsy" before the fact. What? Isn't this an either or situation? Or maybe this is closer to the truth than DeLillo realizes; on November 22, 1963, just about anything seemed to have been possible.

Rating:
Summary: Libra is not just for for Kennedy assasination buffs
Review: I was seven years old when Kennedy was shot. A sad faced man came on the television screen and announced, "President Kennedy has died." People were crying everywhere. Libra was my first close look at the whole event that sent America into a tail spin, and DeLillo mixes Oswald biographical detail with his uniquely crafted sentences of flowing, aliterative fiction. I never was a Kennedy assasination buff and I'm stll not, but I loved reading this novel. The story kept me on the edge - this is a real page turner. Part-fiction and part Oswald's world, the story may be close to the truth of what really happened, or it could be a fantasy from DeLillo's vast imagination. It doesn't matter where the truth lies. It doesn't matter that we all know how it ends. Getting there is a mind-capturing ride. John Baker ([e-mail])

Rating:
Summary: JFK. Castro. Oswald. Russia. Ruby. Dallas. Creeps Galore.
Review: "Libra" is a "fictional" account of the Kennedy assassination. It makes The X-Files look like The Warren Report on 'ludes. The Truth is out there on a ledge with a rifle ready to jump feet first into a history determined to swallow it whole. Stay Away. Stay Far Away if you treasure your hypnotic state. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick....