So far, I'm finding it kind of interesting, structurally. Was she influenced by Citizen Kane? She seems to ape the scenes of Powerful People in Panelled Rooms discussing Industry and Power and Identity. It's very schematised. But the writing is poor. character and descriptions are a clumsy combination of detailed and broad.
Chapter 2
First I can see why arch-narcissist Angelina Jolie loves this book. She's basically Hank Reardon. A special snowflake. Self-motivated. Lives life by his terms and fuck everyone else's POV. Actually, at this point, it's not so much "fuck them" but his view of his comically foil of a family seems to be a mixture of contempt and pity and sentiment. Loathes go-with-the-flow, unfocused and lazy people and particularly, it seems, relationships and emotion formed out of habit.
And that family! They all straw-men, and laughably contrary to him. His mother is one-note horrible. When will he kick the old bitch outta home and hearth? (And why isn't she portrayed by Judy Parfitt?) His wife is slightly more interesting - affected and fake and faceless with empty glamour straight out of Dynasty.
Every chapter seems to have punchy scene backlash to charity, to socialism, to welfare. The charity as a form of personal promotion, a social activity and as self-promotion (something my bleeding-heart, pro-worker, pinko self actually despises) is ripped mercilessly. Which is, conversely, another Angelina Jolie special, but that perhaps the sharing of and basking in one's own good fortune the flipside to the special snowflake syndrome, and just as selfish.
And the request of his brother with regards to his earnest need to distribute the money his brother earned is so laughably written that Rand's argument collapses - it's not plausible that anyone, anyone would speak like that and succeed, and even less likely that a man such as Reardon would consider for a second. (Angelina would have given him the Voigt treatment.)
I should reiterate that I am listening to this on audiobook and the guy is performing the hell out of it. He gives the industrialists a sort of grandness and acts the loser characters with as pure soap.
The Hunger Games novels are an obvious reverse on the Atlas Shrugged world, with the Good and Bad sides swapped and the Katniss using her linking her personal power to empower herself FOR the greater good.