Book Review: Finished

After 3 1/2 weeks I'm finally finished. I completely neglected my kids and house but I have no regrets. It's one of the best books I've ever read. All the while I was reading I was saying to myself, "She's almost as good as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky [my favorite authors]." Then, when googling her, I was not entirely surprised to find that she was Russian by birth and American by choice. She's not quite as good as her fellow Russians at character development and a certain literary quaility that I define to myself as mundane clarity, at which Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are masters. But she is definitely better than most and her philosophy is amazingly persuasive. I feel like I used to feel in college when I learned something new from someone great. How I used to feel when I learned something from Newton or Mendell--admiration for their ability to discover and pride in my ability to understand.

The book was originally described to me as political but I found it to be much more philosophical. Ostensibly, it follows the descent of America into Socialism and its destruction by its twisted moral code sped along by the voluntary removal of men of ability from society. Underneath, the novel is a vehicle for the declaration of her personal moral philosophy which is what gave the characters a bit of an allegorical feel. She's a brilliant essayist but almost as brilliant at fiction as she made a very powerful love story out of logical thinking scientists and industrialists.

I said before that it seemed she was saying that the only honest and true thing was industrialism but by the end she goes way beyond that to proclaim that the highest values are human achievement and human self-esteem.

She changed several of my opinions that I'd believed I solidly held, she also strengthened others by naming and clarifying the reasons behind them. One of her surprising feats is that she strengthened and clarified the principles of my religion even though she was vehemently opposed to organized religion. Not so surprising, though, if you go by the tenet that truth supports truth. A tenet I think she would agree with as one of her philosophical absolutes is that A=A, or exsistence exists. Another surprise is that although she demolished, for the most part, my Socialist leanings, her philosophy of government supports my endorsement of a government health care system and explains why it has worked in other free countries. I don't know if she would agree with that. :)

In conclusion, if you want to be wowed by a piece of literature and can afford to vacate yourself from life for about a month then read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.

Disclaimer: Several of my co-book clubbers thoroughly disliked the book and didn't continue to read it after the first third. One was already passionately a lazy fair capitalist (I know I spelled that wrong, I just like to) and felt the book was overkill on opinions she already held. However, I think she gave up too early as the book goes far beyond pro-capitalism/anti-Socialism into a complete philosophy on the morality of life. Plus the plot just gets more interestingly action thrillerish as the book goes on. Another, couldn't go past some early disturbing references to sex. Again, I think she gave up too early as these early disturbing references were made not to endorse their smuckiness but to later pinpoint their disturbingness. Although, I will say that I, also, am not a fan of sex in literature and that while I can see the necessity of the references to her point, those references could have been more vague to the same effect.