Caleb Crain, _Overthrow_

 I THOUGHT CRAIN'S first novel, Necessary Errors, was the very best in the crowded field of Young American Literary Man Sojourning in the Former Soviet Bloc fiction  (LLL, July 8, 2014). Overthrow is his second novel and strikes me as less likely to appeal to a wide audience, but what do I know about wide audiences? It certainly shows Crain has been sharpening his fiction chops.

At the novel's center is a small group of young activists who become acquainted during the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011 and decide to form a working group dedicated to the "Refinement of the Perception of Feelings," i.e., sharpening their ability to know what other people are thinking. What they have in mind is less ESP than the sort of skills in discerning the minds of others that most Jane Austen heroines painfully acquire, but a mystic aura nonetheless hovers around the group, drawing in new recruits like Julia, a child of the 1% looking for an identity outside of her parents' wealth, and Matthew, a grad student with an unfinished dissertation on Samuel Daniel that dogs him like Philoctetes' wound. 

The mystic aura belongs largely to Leif, the group's poet and visionary. One of Crain's brilliant strokes is to use the points of view of different members of the group for each chapter, while never giving us a chapter from the point of view of Leif. He becomes more complex from chapter to chapter without ever acquiring a definite outline, and that's perfect.

The group and its surprising mission attract the attention of the police, who have their own method of knowing other minds--electronic surveillance. The group is tricked into finding some official folders (on themselves) on the internet. Their violation of state security is immediately detected, and Leif and several of the others are arrested--hence the plot of most of the novel, as Leif and his friends come under legal and media scrutiny, testing their loyalty and strength to the breaking point. 

There may be a turnaround and a qualified victory at the very end. Evidence leaks that the group was illegally surveilled, which means they will probably get off. It's a happy ending, I think--but one made largely possible by good luck, and the novel mainly makes us aware of the long, long odds against any group of young idealists with a vision of a better tomorrow.

The group of students I assigned the novel to liked it, basically, and one in particular said, "I know  these people," and was especially drawn to Leif, "a manic pixie dream boy." But could I sell it to the book club? I'm not sure. I am sure, however, that Crain is a gifted novelist, and I will pick up his next the moment my eye alights on it.