STARRED Book Review: Amerikaland

Reviewed by Eric Mayrhofer

A dynamic thriller set in an all-too-familiar future, Amerikaland uses the world of sports to tell a story of hope persevering against humanity’s darkness.

Across genres, the most classic stories understand that villains aren’t necessarily defeated. They’re overcome, laid low, but bound to return in a different form. Amerikaland adds to that with a villain that isn’t an evil empire or a dark lord. It reminds us that the evil always threatening to return is the tragedy everyday people inflict upon each other. The book’s truth isn’t all bitter, though: Goodman sets his novel in the world of sports, tapping into its inherent hopefulness to remind readers there is always something better to root for—and to work toward.

Set in a not-too-distant future vision of America, the book introduces readers to Sabine and Sandy, two international stars struggling to be at the top of their personal and professional games. When they compete at World Day, a global sporting event meant to promote unity, another tragedy strikes. In the aftermath, Sabine and Sandy look to their pasts, their families, and each other to move toward a better future, even as hate sets the world on fire, threatening to consume them.

From start to finish, Amerikaland is virtually flawless. While it alternates between Sabine and Sandy, the book also pivots to a broader, first-person plural voice (i.e., the royal “we”) to speak as a community, making the leads’ struggles universal and, thanks to some gorgeous writing, almost supernatural. 

In stunningly original passages, the collective sufferers of the World Day terror attack share the horror of the event as a group: “The concrete and earth beneath us give way. We are reduced. And when there is nothing left of our bodies, we become the air on this beautiful day. The very substance of World Day. We are together in this.” For readers obsessed with prose, a true pleasure is seeing Goodman’s metaphor extend, as when this chorus of the dead takes that idea of togetherness and internalizes it: “These things are real and not the fodder of history or fiction. Right now is nothing like we imagined it could be. What happens, happens inside us.” 

Goodman takes both large-scale acts of violence and small acts of discrimination and makes them feel equal. Both are persistent, ever-present, and deeply felt. One is just as personally hurtful, demoralizing, and degrading as the other. That all this happens against the comparatively light backdrops of tennis and baseball is staggering.

That, however, is all thanks to the story’s grounding in its two richly textured leads. From the beginning, Sabine and Sandy are two sides of the same coin. Sabine, a German American tennis phenom, is struggling to return to form as the idol her fans believe in after surviving a shooting. Sandy, on the other hand, is waiting for the day he might recognize in himself, in his success as a beloved shortstop for the Brooklyn Atlantics, the heroic inspiration he wants to be for others. 

They’re both looking for love—the love they want to give themselves but won’t, the love of fans that is rewarding and constricting in equal measure. They want to be found or rediscovered— “Tomorrow she will win them back.” Once the world sees them, though, they defiantly ask, “Why should those people decide what is good for me?”

What makes them perfect avatars for this story is that the dual craving and frustration they share seamlessly weave into the larger truth on Goodman’s mind: that, as human beings, we hold out hope for a world that hurts us. When Sandy wants to see in himself that “there are swings to be taken. There is hope enough yet still,” the collective, global voice mirrors the sentiment: “Even though we can…still look to the sky when we hear the engine boom of a jet overhead, stand by as citizens of this country are deported and others simply denied entry; even though we hear reports of riots in Turkey, car bombings in France, war crimes from Russia, we choose to believe something better begins today.”

The notion that a better world is coming may feel more at home in a rosy, feel-good sports film than in a future not too far from (and uncomfortably similar to) the present day. But by showcasing flawed stars of that arena, Goodman makes the case that hope is not only a realistic approach to living in a harsh world but perhaps the only way to survive it at all. 

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