Book Review - Burr

Burr: A Novel Burr: A Novel by Gore Vidal



My review


rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a book club selection and an unpopular one as it turned out. Most of my group couldn't get past the first 50 pages. I think part of the problem for them was it's written very much like the style of the early 1800s when it takes place. Also, there are lots and lots of characters to keep track of. Some of whom are quite famous but others not so well known.

I enjoy historical fiction and I liked the book. Written from the perspective of a fictional character, Charlie Schuyler, an aspiring lawyer in the now elderly Aaron Burr's firm, there were a lot of different stories from the Revolution until Burr's death (and a little bit after that).

I always worry when I read historical fiction that I'm going to pick up some tidbit that the author made up to make the story work and think it's fact. So, I looked up a lot on Burr and the events in the book after I finished reading it and was happy to find that Vidal clearly did his homework and most of it jibes with history. Sure, some of it was conjecture but enough of it actually happened to make it all seem believable.

The book was a bit long at nearly 700 pages in the version I got. We could perhaps have done with a little less of Charlie's story but, overall, I thought the book was very well done.


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