Took me a while to get into this book, but it was worth the effort because it just got better and better.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

A different book that was both hard to get through but compelling at the same time. I enjoyed some parts but found others a bit hard to follow

I really struggled with this, it’s a big read, and very heavy. There’s nothing wrong with this of course, but I’ve been struggling to understand what I didn’t like about this book but all I can really say is that I didn’t like any of the characters, I just didn’t care about what was going on and felt no empathy for anyone.

I think fans of Kim Stanley Robinson will really lap this one up.

My review is based on an advance copy that I received from the publisher

Anthem by Noah Hawley is set a few years from now and starts off by telling us there is a new pandemic, this one where teenagers are killing themselves. It's a bleak start and it doesn't let up throughout. But it's what the world is like now with lots of familiar sounding characters. I found some characters written better than others and some just left you wondering what they were actually about. I enjoyed this book, it was well written and certainly grim in places, however, there is hope that maybe we can turn things around in the real world, but time will tell if we can do that. A book that leaves you with lots to think about long after you finished.

What an incredible book – everyone should read it.

Whip smart and brilliantly paced, it combines outstanding writing with a thriller’s pace. I loved it.

This was a different approach to a pandemic book, put it that way... Personally it wasn't for me. It felt a bit juvenile in places.

Anthem is a political dystopia set in near-future America. The coronavirus pandemic is over, but now there’s a pandemic of children despairing of life on a dying planet and making an early exit. It’s maybe a little bit too real and therefore too depressing, but it’s a fast-paced cracking read and I think it’s well worth the time taken.

A book that confirms that everything we think is wrong about the world today - actually is. As all good dystopian novels should. For a book with such a depressing message, it was actually a funny and strangely uplfting read. I enjoyed it immensely.

I really couldn't decide if I liked this book or not, probably partly because it took me a long time to engage with the characters.

This book is about America, and essentially everything that's wrong in society - racism, misogyny, the power of the rich, addiction to painkillers... and so much more.

The story is spun around a group of teenagers, all troubled in different ways, creating their own broken society and trying to save themselves.

It's a brutal read at times, and a quite recognisable commentary on modern society.

A dark novel, set in a dystopian future.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.

I'd recommend it to anyone.

It’s a few years after the pandemic and American children have started killing themselves, which is understandably a global issue. Of course, for something to be a global issue, front-page headlines matter, not specific questions relevant to each individual suicide. In Anthem, suicide is an idea capable of transmitting from human to human. The future looks impossible to save so a helpless psyche is bound to push young people towards an absolute end.

This story is surely timely, though apocalyptic, with the portrayal of reactions: like the appointment of which emoji best represented everyone’s emotion around this growing crisis—an open-mouthed scream that resembled parents falling to their knees and being shocked at the end of their children. The prose doesn’t shy away from simply reflecting what is unravelling, reading almost too sensationally at some point, but it’s understandable why the backdrop urges the author to write with an urgency through a complicated prose. It’s gloomy, foreboding, and surely commanding with how America’s problems of gun violence, divisive policies, ideologically bound politics, and worsening climate change are put forward for readers to be disturbed and do something.

Though, the confused writing often doesn’t make a point and the exact depiction of something so real in a near-future world simply depresses. Oh, and being a non-American reader also affects the reading experience for how regionally hyper-focused the novel is even when discussing issues that can impact globally, but I digress. So for the right person at the right time, Anthem might give goosebumps through its tone. But for others, it might be a difficult read—and not just for the unmissable realism.

What a RELIEF to finally finish Anthem. I read to escape and this book is the total opposite. I really didn’t enjoy it. The mass suicide isn’t what made it such a miserable read, it was the depressing facts scattered throughout by the narrator and the ending (which was a non ending). For example, the narrator inserts depressing facts at random points throughout the story, such as:

"The Pew Research Centre places the start of Generation Z as 1997, which means our youngest adult generation has never known a time in which their country was not at war. It is their permanent reality. For them, combat is normal, and – in the same way a bee can see only flowers – a country at war comes to accept war as its natural state of being. So we strap on our guns and fight."

I didn’t see the purpose of these sections, other than to make readers feel helpless and despair at the state of the world.

Some of the characters were well written, such as Simon, Louise and Judge Nadir (whose story ultimately went nowhere). These sections were well written with excellent descriptions of depression and anxiety, which felt really accurate.

The whole plot seemed to drift. It starts off about a suicide pandemic, then changes to a story about a Prophet, then finally a rescue during the end of the world. The ending was bad, and I didn’t like the author referencing his daughter asking “how is the book going to end?” as a way to avoid writing an ending. Lots of elements were not really explained, just disappeared without being mentioned again (like the Witch, for example).

Someone else has compared it to a poor Stephen King novel and I’d agree with that. It was overall just not an enjoyable experience to read, it felt half finished and just plain depressing. I recently read An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green which I felt had a similar message but it was a lot more uplifting and enjoyable.

Although the subject matter is very bleak, I still managed to enjoy this book.

I think it’s because I relate so much to it and although it is close to the bone, it was actually comforting to read that someone else feels the same.

The book matched my feelings of despair with people and the planet.

Where to begin with this book? Well, first off, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and was lost in the story whilst I read - it’s very ‘all-consuming’. The main reason for that is that it’s completely out there! It’s unpredictable. I tried to think of another couple of words to go with that, but I can’t get any better than ‘unpredictable’ to be honest.

The pandemic of teenage suicides is disturbing, and reflects their despair at the state of the world left for them by previous generations. Parents with money think that they can prevent their childs’ suicide and cure their anxiety throwing money and anti-depressants at the ‘problem’, and sending them to an Anxiety Abatement Centre - and that’s how Simon meets the Prophet and Louise. And that’s where the quest begins.

It turns out that adults are responsible for more than Climate Change. You can add child abuse and big Pharma into the mix as well. And then there’s the political state of the country, where no party is any better than the other, and what’s more, they’re interchangeable. There was a lot of head nodding going on as I read.

And Noah Hawley breaks the 4th wall as he talks directly to the reader, talking about his thought process in writing the novel.

This book is a huge exaggeration of the state of the world, at the same time as it’s not. I hope it doesn’t come to the things that happen in Anthem, but we’ve seen snapshots of it on the news already.

It’s just the right level of crazy, believable, unbelievable, mind-blowing fiction that keeps me well-entertained. I know Noah Hawley is a screen writer, and I can see this as a film - hey, I’d watch it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I really did not know what to expect when reading this, but I was pleasantly surprised by how readable it was considering the content and style of writing. I was completely drawn in by the plot and fascinated by how Hawley has managed to synthesize many of the events of the past few years in such a cohesive and understandable way, with a plot that feels like it could actually happen. I'm not sure you can really summarise the story of this book, but it's definitely worth reading!

An epic dystopian tale set in a lawless United States. Truth, reality, and facts o longer have any meaning due to fake news being widely spread on social media. There is a Pandemic of Ternage suicide, no-one knows why...is it because we made our children anxious filling them with fear about the world? Did we fill them with false confidence leading them to believe that they can achieve anything? Is it a result of being locked down in the Covid-19 Pandemic? Is it because the planet is dying, and they feel that they have no future? America is on fire, who can save it, and save the planet...
A book filled with vivid , vibrant characters. A story of our time.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. It’s definitely not my normal style of book and the subject matter was quite grim and challenging. But it was very well written, different in style to other dystopian style books and worth a look, when you are in the right frame of mind!

I really couldn't connect with this story. It sounded interesting but not for me. I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy it. Poor choice by me.

This book was undoubtedly well-written but for some reason I struggled with it and just couldn't get to grips with the storyline. Sadly, despite persevering I didn't manage to finish the book.

I picked up this book as I heard it being described on a podcast I listen to. The host said that the book was trying to be divisive on purpose. Now I’ve read the book. I have to agree. Every opinion a person could hold on a controversial topic is mentioned in this book. I’m not sure what the author was trying to achieve.

Having said that it was page turning as I tried to figure out what could possibly happen next.