Go On Pretending Review: Jewish Book Council

Adams has an acute under­stand­ing of the way pol­i­tics influ­ences cul­ture in Rus­sia and in Amer­i­ca. She pin­points America’s piv­ot from a nation­al fear of Com­mu­nism to Islam­o­pho­bia in the wake of 9/11. After the fall of the Sovi­et Union, Den­nis and Emma make new, right-wing friends. Emma finds that ​“now, instead of being lec­tured on how pub­lic schools brain­washed rev­o­lu­tion­ary chil­dren with bour­geois mid­dle-class val­ues of indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, she was treat­ed to arias regard­ing how they were hotbeds of Com­mu­nist indoc­tri­na­tion designed to ignite class war­fare. Either way, the solu­tion was to remove their own off­spring from gov­ern­ment influ­ence via pri­vate instruc­tion” — a per­cep­tive, acer­bic state­ment about mid­dle-class Amer­i­ca at the time.

More at: https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/book/go-on-pretending