November - theme: Political
It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
A Guardian quote on the cover calls this book "eerily prescient" and it's right. Those are the only two words really needed to describe this book.
I found this book extremely hard to get into and if it were not for this challenge I am certain I would not have made it past page 6. The first few chapters on the book describe in mind-numbing detail a rotary luncheon only tangentally related to the story. Our protagonist spends most of it in the corner talking to noone and almost unmentioned in the prose.
However. It gets better, it gets actually good. I went from counting the pages and working out how many I would need to read to actually finish it in November to devouring the rest of the book in about a week.
All throughout the book I was in a constant daze of surprise - wait that DID happen in the 40's (in Germany or Italy or Britain), wasn't this book written in 1935. Oh yes it was, how did he know....
As the book reaches about a third in the pace changes and the stultifying slowness of the first section becomes a hell for leather descent into chaos a la a John Wyndham dystopia. That was the point that I really got on board. I enjoy a bit of societal collapse in my books.
The prose was beautifully written - what Lewis lacks in pace he makes up with a fantastic vocabulary.
Alex's suggestion of a political book during an election season really gave this book an edge. I will forever remember reading it sat in the YMCA while Ella had ballet while a family decked out in MAGA swag walked past.