Libra (Contemporary American Fiction)

A book that asks more questions than it answers, leaving a trail of possibilities. A brilliant study of one of the most iconic and troubling events of the 20th century. DeLillo creates a world of curious and unforgettable characters. Highly recommended!

As pointed out in some of the other reviews included here, Delillo's way of dealing with the events around the assasination of JFK mixes historical facts with fictional story-telling. He produces some very ellaborate and strong characters, among which -as the main protagonist- Lee Harvey Oswald stands out: Oswald is shown as a real person with his own life (instead of simply reducing him to the empty stereotype of the assasin of JFK). This leads to what I find most stunning about LIBRA: you'll end up finding yourself on the side of Oswald, who turns out to be a naive but endearing object of manipulation. You'll read the book, mourn for Oswald, and understand that JFK was only one of two victims of the assasination.

Reading Don DeLillo's Libra was definitely worth the while. I have found that the style of the author's writing to be confusing but think about it, it was the intensity of the book that kept me so anxious about turning the page. To this day, the exact details to the murder are still not clear, but one thing is for sure: DeLillo has brilliantly depicted his belief of what went on during the time period of the assassination. Don DeLillo did a great job of mixing facts and fictions, making them all seem so real to the reader. Even though some of DeLillo's implications seem unrealistic, the thought of "what if" what Don DeLillo wrote was true is definitely worth some thinking.

Don DeLillo's use of figuritive language and his use of varying sentence patterns made the reading very interesting. This one was deffinately a page turner. DeLillo takes one of the most popular assasinations of world history and tells it from a different point of view. The reader gets to look at the whole incident from the perspective of Oswald. While at some parts I still did not know what was going on in the book and found it very confusing, i loved it, just for that. It was not some easy reading, predictable book. It made you think and thats what I loved about it most. I would recommend it to anybody!

I really like Don DeLillo after reading Libra and look forward to trying his other books.

He does a great job of making all the characters relate-able and switching between vantage points. I was able to sympathize with multiple characters who were "enemies." [I'm bad at words]

Great read. However, I get the feeling that there are a few (many?) nuances that I didn't catch. Definite "re-read" material. Read a review putting G. Gordon Liddy as Mackey?? Guess I should also "re-read" Woodward and Bernstein.

A fun read, vintage Delillo, loaded with what we've come to expect from an American literary master.
A must read for any Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist.
Behind (in order) Underworld, Mao II, and White Noise, Libra is Delillo's fourth best novel.

A brilliant imagining of what may have happened behind the scenes of the 1963 Kennedy assassination. There are no diabolical masterminds here, just confused, pathetic men for whom the weaving of secrets is both a means of control and a natural expression of their own frustrations. There is no intricate conspiracy, rather an accumulation of events that ultimately explodes into a national tragedy. The book makes the point that cause and effect are very slippery concepts when it comes to history.

This book put a fascinating spin on the JFK assassination. Seeing the life of Lee H. Oswald from his own point of view really gives you a different sense on who the victims were and who the victimizers were. I just about sympathized with everyone BUT Kennedy! Interesting book.

In LibraDon DeLilo takes a factual event (the Kenndey assasination) and adds a fictional twist. He develops many fictional characters which add to the overall conspiracy based plot. In Libra DeLillo not only trys to change "history" by giving plausable insights into what happened before the assaination, he also attempts to depict a man's life prior to the assaination. This 456 page book is attention grabing from the first to the last page.

This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon.com. Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.

This novel is one that stopped me from wanting to read it from the very beginning. Nothing about it suckered me in. I know I should have been more excited about it, given that De Lillo is quite a celebrated American author, but I just wasn't.

The intersecting plot lines are confusing, and often seem superflous. Just as De Lillo surely intended, I hardly cared about the plot to kill JFK, instead I wanted to know more of Oswald and what his hopes were. Oswald is such an enigma it is frustrating at times, but the insight that De Lillo makes into the character is interesting.

As I've alluded to, this novel is a fictionalised post-modernist account of the JF Kennedy assassination, the 'seven seconds' that broke the back of America, or some such thing. It's quite interesting to me, because before reading this novel I knew very little about the assassination.

I needed to read this novel in time for an exam, and I hate to admit that I didn't get all the way through it. I started reading it early, but I simply couldn't stomach the stretches in language. The language is the thing that is supposed to hold this book together, and in a way it does, but it also makes it very difficult for the average reader to get into.

I don't have this exact cover, but I have one very similar It doesn't draw me into the book any more than the actual story line does sadly. I want to say I wanted to like this book, and I did, but I simply couldn't. Sorry De Lillo, you're going to have to try and get me to read you again in some other manner.

Libra elucidates one of America's darkest moments: the
assassination of J.F.K. DeLillo does an amazing job combining
fact and fiction, weaving them together, where the many
reporters and journalist had failed. But many critics have found
many faults with Libra. The conspiracy theories, the true show
behind the scene, they find those ideas unrealistic and
uncensured. WHY?

Don Delillo weaves an intricate plot, which is set around the assassination of JFK. The characters are crisp and have a human feel, even to Lee Harvey Oswald. I'm not so big on history, but this novel goes above and beyond in respect to a great example of "The Novel"

I found this book to be acceptably put together with vivid descriptions of settings and emotions. Delillo made a great interpertation of a killers mind. Overall the book has a stirring plot, but I found it slow. The ending was especially slow; I kept on waiting for it to get to the point. I would recommend this book to others if they have knowledge of the political and governmental issues of JFK's time.

OK, after many years of reading reviews touting DeLillo as one of the greats of modern American literature, I decided to read "Libra." If this qualifies as great literature, America's literary future is in serious peril. His characters are cardboard cutouts. His dialog is stilted and unrealistic. His descriptive passages are underdone with little evidence of imagination or enthusiasm.
Overall, this was a boring book that I would not recommend to anyone. Desperate to understand DeLillo's appeal, I forced myself to read all the way to the end...then wondered why.
I've been an avid reader for almost 50 years, reading books and short stories from every genre. I'm always willing to give an author the benefit of the doubt.
Maybe I'm just older than most of DeLillo's followers. Maybe it's just that I was old enough in 1963 to understand what was going on. Maybe I'm just expecting too much from DeLillo.
This was my first DeLillo novel. It will also be my last.

For me, the great novel explaining a political event in the 1960's remains DeLillo's "Libra", which gets inside of Lee Harvey Oswald, plausibly explaining how Oswald thought while also serving as a biography of his life. Libra joins the novel seamlessly to history.

Are the average ratings are so high is because so many JFK assassination conspiracy fanatics got a feast for their fantasies?

Nothing new. Invented persons and dialogs make that historic episode play like a novel or a movie.

It's disgusting that Oswald should get so much attention.

Libra (Contemporary American Fiction)by Don DeLillo

The book was recommended by a writer friend of mine who liked "Libra" very much. I usually do not read this genre, but wanted to give it a try. I didn't enjoy the read that much. Found the characters not engaging enough, the novel a bit disjointed.

To say this book is about the assasination of JFK is to miss the point of the book. JFK's death is merely a pallette for an absolutely brillant work. DeLillo prose is both haunting and fitting. This is possibly my favorite book.