Truly Like Lightning by David DuchovnyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I had planned to read Truly Like Lightning by David Duchovny anyway, so when Farrar, Straus, and Giroux sent me an advance copy via NetGalley I was thrilled.
I'll be the first to admit that I am not a big reader of westerns, so a book about a cowboy is not something that usually makes my list. But a polygamist, Mormon cowboy? You've got my attention. Plus, I enjoyed Holy Cow and was looking forward to what this might turn out to be.
There's a lot more than just a cowboy and his family going on in this book. So much at times that it felt like you could have more than one book to follow all the tangential storylines. Duchovny hits all the big themes: religion, politics, race, sex...I'm not sure how he managed to do it in under 500 pages. I'm also not sure how he managed not to send me into a pit of despair about the world around us. The writing is surprisingly light (but not frivolous) given all the heavy topics and that helped propel me forward rather than getting mired down.
In the end, I felt the real lesson was to beware the perils of dogmatic thinking. When we get so bound up in our own narrative that we don't allow for any counterpoints, we are headed down a dangerous path.
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