One of the most well-read people I know told me that her all-time favorite book is The Book of Daniel by E. L. Doctorow. Trusting her guidance, I downloaded the book on my Kindle.
I tried to read it four or five times, but each time, I got bogged down and my interest flagged, and I moved on to something easier. Recently, though, I've been sick in bed with the plague for (what seemed like) weeks at a time, and I realized what the problem was: The Book of Daniel is not a novel to enter into lightly; it's dense and insubstantial, chewy and elusive. You have to make a commitment to the Book of Daniel, and, as with most commitments, dedication pays off.
Daniel is the son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, who were charged with conspiracy to sell nuclear secrets to the Soviets in the 1940s. (It's based loosely on the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and though I gathered that it was related to that historical event, I really didn't care about how faithful or not it was to that story, because this novel itself was so gripping.) The novel swerves around in time - from the present, where Daniel is going to visit his sister in an insane asylum, to the near past - or is it the early future? - where Daniel is sitting in the library at Columbia trying to write his dissertation, to the far past, where his parents first met.
This was the most thoroughly well-written book I've read in years and years, and my feeble summation won't do it justice. If you need a review, there are smart reviews on Goodreads. Or, you can assume that my incredibly well-read friend has great taste in books, and go read it. Worked for me.
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