The Wrinkled Rebels, a review by Susan

There were things I really enjoyed about this novel. When I first started reading it, I was on the subway on my way to work at a public high school right across the street from City College, where the six characters in the book met and spent their youth protesting. This was ironic, given recent protests at the school.

The novel felt very authentic; I have no doubt that the author did a great deal of research into what happened during this time period and accurately represented what CCNY was like during this time period and how the campus looks (I was a student there in 1980-1984). The characters felt very realistic as well

I loved the premise, especially since I am getting older and the undercurrent of what getting older feels like internally and externally is prominent.
However, this feels more like a collective memoir than a novel. This is fine, but it is not exactly what I expected. It makes me wonder if the author has more than one book in her because this feels like something that comes from her life (I could be wrong).

There was not really a plot per se, unless the reader considers the question of whether these six friends who went on to have different lives after college could find common ground when they come together as older folk to be a plot. I am not going to give away the ending but the conclusion, had one really been fleshed out, could have provided a plot but it wasn’t. Perhaps the author was afraid that tying up the ends would have felt a bit too neat, and it might have but I think it would have been more satisfying. As it was, it made the thin plot more amorphous. I think I also would have preferred that more of the book occur in the present than in the past.

Thanks to NetGalley and Vine Leaves Press for this advance reading copy in exchange for my honest review.