Great Expectations
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man’s life in this “coming of age story that captures the soul of America” (The Washington Post), the debut novel from The New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize finalist Vinson Cunningham.
FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD/JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK
“One of the smartest and most involving political novels I’ve read in ages.”—The Wall Street Journal
ONE OF SLATE’S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Town & Country, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Lit, Current, WBEZ
I’d seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.
When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator’s idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he’ll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States’ first Black president.
Great Expectations is about David’s eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions—questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood—that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.
Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Vinson Cunningham draws on his time as a White House staffer in this historical fiction novel set amid Barack Obama’s landmark 2008 presidential campaign. David Hammond is a part-time tutor in his early twenties when he gets an incredible opportunity to work on the campaign of a junior senator from Illinois (referred to simply as “the Senator”) who’s about to become America’s first Black president. David brings us with him into the fascinating and lavish world of political fundraising, where no one bats an eye at names like Cornel West and André Leon Talley. (There are even references to incredibly famous recording artists getting involved with the campaign, whose identities are intriguingly never revealed.) David’s journey is brimming with clever commentary on wealth, religion, politics, and Blackness, all delivered through Cunningham’s sophisticated prose. Great Expectations is a compelling coming-of-age novel about an unrepeatable moment in American political history.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker staff writer Cunningham debuts with a sophisticated bildungsroman that draws on his work for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. His narrator, David, is a Black man in his early 20s, adrift in Chicago and searching for role models, having neglected his early academic promise after unexpectedly becoming a father and subsequently flunking out of college. Beverly, a leading Black businesswoman whose middle-schooler son David tutors in English and math, connects him with the campaign of an Obama-like politician known only as "the Senator." David keenly longs for something to believe in, but despite his brushes on the campaign trail with Cornel West and other leading Black figures, his work mainly consists of selling tickets to fund-raising dinners and arranging staged meetings between the Senator and voters. The political plot is secondary—readers know the campaign will, like Obama's, follow a victorious arc—freeing Cunningham to shine in David's recollections of his upbringing in a Pentecostal church run by a charismatic pastor who bears some resemblance to the Senator. More than a chronicle of idealism and disillusionment, this is an extended exploration of the power and limits of believing in something bigger than oneself. Cunningham's remarkable first novel matches the scale of its namesake.
