Reader Score
73%
73% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 5 reviews on
Martin Neumann, recently divorced, is living at Halcyon, the Virginia estate of renowned lawyer, family patriarch, and World War II hero Robert Ableson. It's 2004, and Gore is entering his second term as president, when news breaks that scientists have discovered a cure for death. Suddenly, Martin is forced to question everything he thought he understood about the world around him. Who is Ableson, really? Why has Martin been drawn into the Ablesons' most closely guarded family secrets? Is this new science a miraculous good or an insidious evil?
From pivotal elections to crumbling marriages, from the Civil War to the Battle of Saipan, Halcyon is a profound and probing novel that grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on the dual foundations of remembering and forgetting.
Elliot Ackerman is an author.
Lovely review in @nytimesbooks for HALCYON on pub day. “It is our own constant frustration and confrontation with history that threatens to drive us to a permanent state of rage-ennui, for history is not easily derailed.” @AAKnopf https://t.co/DUev2IY6DY
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What if Al Gore won the presidency in 2000? Elliot Ackerman’s novel “Halcyon” presents an alternate history of the early 21st century. https://t.co/xbEXGn9JW3
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.@elliotackerman prefers challenging questions over convenient answers, leaving ample room for readers to engage in leaps of imagination as bold as the ones he’s undertaken. @AAKnopf https://t.co/o9rCUSyqYh
"Halcyon is an entertaining thought experiment, and Ackerman writes with a gentle, graceful style . . . Ackerman delivers a potent critique of the what-if nature of talking about history . . . Ackerman, as much as any working novelist today, is invested in getting the facts of war and history right." --Mark Athitakis, Washington Post
"A blend of counterfactual history and futurism and a way to think about some of our thorniest social and cultural issues today." --Jeffery Gedmin, American Purpose
"Frightening, funny, and thought-provoking." --Mark Braude, The Octavian Report
"Ingenious . . . Elliot Ackerman prefers challenging questions over convenient answers, leaving ample room for readers to engage in leaps of imagination as bold as the ones he's undertaken . . . Blending alternative history with science fiction, Ackerman artfully explores several provocative issues that have become flash points in contemporary America." --Bookpage
"Thought-provoking . . . Visionary." --Publishers Weekly
"A novel of ideas in an age of opinions." --Kirkus Reviews
"A thoughtful and fascinating thought experiment, one that explores mortality, fate, and the malleability of historical memory." --Booklist