November 22, 1963: A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
November 22, 1963 chronicles the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination and explores the intersection of stories and memories and how they represent and mythologize that defining moment in history.
November 22, 1963 chronicles the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination and explores the intersection of stories and memories and how they represent and mythologize that defining moment in history. Jackie's story is interwoven with the stories of real people intimately connected with that day: a man who shares cigarettes with Jackie outside the trauma room; a motorcycle policeman flanking the motorcade; Abe Zapruder, who caught the assassination on film; the White House servants waiting for Jackie to return; and the morticians overseeing President Kennedy’s autopsy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With a captivating mix of fact and fiction, Braver (Mr. Lincoln's Wars) chronicles the events surrounding JFK's assassination to moving effect. The event is no stranger to the literary world, but Braver's recreation, owing to small and often previously off-camera details, remains hauntingly original. Some of these details, like the ones that open the book and dwell on Jackie's fashion preferences, present a factual backdrop against which later scenes e.g., where Jackie refuses to remove her blood-splattered pink suit tragically play out. Others, like the way JFK's eyes keep popping open during the autopsy, underscore the grisly reality of his death. While the accumulation of small moments gives the book its weightiness, the stories of people peripherally associated with the assassination make the book sing; through the experiences of the Texan who sold the government Kennedy's casket, the mechanic in charge of the limousine in which Kennedy was shot and numerous others, Braver reveals the tragedy of a national story that decades later can still be acutely felt.
