BY ANN LEVIN
Vinson Cunningham, theater critic for the New Yorker, makes a cheeky move with his debut novel, “Great Expectations.” He borrows the title of Charles Dickens’ masterpiece to tell a different sort of coming-of-age story. His is about a young Black man, David, who goes to work for the first presidential campaign of an unnamed U.S. senator trying to become the nation’s first African American chief executive.
Loosely based on his own life — Cunningham worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign and later, as a staff assistant in the White House — the novel lacks the twisty plot and unforgettable characters of its namesake. However, Cunningham-as-David is an astute observer of the role that money plays in U.S. politics and the seductive allure of access to powerful and charismatic political leaders like Obama.
In this novel he explores the racial and religious dimensions of both the candidate and
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