I have read about 150 novels in the past year, and this is the best. Outstanding characters, wonderful imagery and transitions. Well worth the read.

You know this book was strange. I really liked some things about it but some thing just didn't do it for me. First off, I think the Narrator (not the author) is so pompous it makes me sick. lol He spends the whole book trying to convince us that he is just some working class kid who worked hard and got ahead. Ummm... Not really.

The language of this book is beautiful and very eloquent. It has a certain calmness that is very pleasant early on but gets sort of annoying and ends up almost seeming like the story is monotone. I felt like the whole book was leading up to some prolific statement about humankind that never got made, at least not in any amazing way.

I heard Canin on NPR and was so admiring of his personality and take on life that I went out and bought the book. Overall I think I am disappointed and it wasn't what I was expecting. I thought it would be more like the Great Gatsby but it turned out to be more like a John Grisham novel (even though I've never read any) lol.

I do have to say though that the ending of the book was amazing and both the prose and the content were some of the best written work I've ever read. If the whole book had been like that, this would have been a masterpiece. I would recommend the book, especially to any writers who want to sharpen their style.

This novel is a fine piece of writing...Ethan Canin knows how emotions insinuate themselves into leaders and followers and lives in general. I highly recommend this book to followers of the on going drama of life on this planet.

I read this book, America, America based upon several hyping reviews. I certainly will not bother recounting the plot as several of our reviewers have done so.

The story is predictable , with thinly drawn characters, and more time spent on describing a marsh beside a cemetery than the main characters who are one=dimensional. The book might well have been weitten by one of Canin's students at the Iowa Writing Workshop.

I will say that the story might easily find its way into central casting as it reads like an outline for a movie script. Very good publicity, very disappointing book. Based upon some of the reviewers here I am not sure I read the same, slow moving book. if I were the teacher I would give it a C.

There's one word that describes the entire novel from beginning to end: wistful. If that's your thing, then you've got 458 pages of it. I will say it was beautifully written, but the end result is like having your brain under too much novacaine. Did anything actually happen in the book? I guess so, if you don't mind being given the story through wistful remembrance after wistful remembrance. Guess I got wistfulled-out. Ethan must be one sad dude.

Corey Sifter, the son of working-class parents, is hired by the powerful Metarey family as an errand boy on the Metarey's grand estate. Over time, Corey grows closer to the family and their lifestyle and becomes involved in the political intrigue surrounding the presidential bid of a Senator, for whom Mr. Metarey acts as a kind of campaign manager. As a young man on the fringes of the Senator's campaign, Sifter recognizes he's only privy to snatches of the action, and he realizes he's too young to understand much of what he does witness. In this way, America America explores big themes--class, politics, corruption, trust, loyalty, and family--in a somewhat oblique way. Canin is obviously going for a grand effect, and America America is successful as a kind of political epic along the lines of Robert Penn Warren's All The King's Men. My only complaint is that the last quarter of the book is overly ponderous and loses the momentum that Canin carefully maintains during the first part of the book.

From John Howard Prin, author of Secret Keeping: Overcoming Hidden Habits and Addictions

What is all the hype about? I must be living on a different planet than the readers who love and admire this book. Barnes & Noble even calls AMERICA, AMERICA "unputdownable." Sorry, but I slogged through this overwritten tome and put it down many times, only to pick it up again because I kept thinking, "I must be missing something that others see, and appreciate, so clearly."

No such luck. I just finished the last page, having given the book every chance to win me over. As a reader of hundreds of novels (I'm in my 60s and a lifelong lover of fiction), it disappoints on every level but one. That level is Canin's word-for-word, line-by-line phrasing, which has a cadence and sensitivity that kept me involved in the early pages.

Aside from that exception, I regret to say that the storytelling is messy and meandering, jammed with too many subplots and characters. I was also put off by Canin's third-person point-of-view "memory" style of telling what happens rather than showing what happens (putting the reader in the scene), which is Rule #1 for fiction writers.

For starters, I stayed with the budding love story in the beginning pages between Corey, the main character, and Christian, one of two sisters, but that was rudely dropped about a third of the way through. Dozens of scenes later I learned that Corey had married one of the sisters (Christian?). That generated a mild level of suspense that I hoped would pay off, but much later still -- after describing his unnamed wife in snippets of third-person narration that held me at a distance -- Corey reveals her name is Clara (the second sister). Huh??? We learn nothing about why such a surprise occurred, nor does Canin let us observe the interactions of the three characters due to the "memory-style" narration that neither dramatizes nor explains.

Then there's the jumble of the main plot about Senator Bonwiller (at least I think it's the main plot, or is the main storyline about patriarch Liam Metarey's imposing influence on young Corey?). The Senator's story thread hangs on the Chappaquiddick-like scandal of young and sexy JoEllen Charney's untimely death while in a car with the drunk Senator. I found all this diffuse and repetitive. Other mushy plotlines centered on Corey's father and mother, and that of a young female journalism intern and her father. None of these tied together well and I struggled throughout to keep my suspension of disbelief alive.

By now you surely get the gist of my disappointment in this wishing-it-weren't-so review. I don't intend to trash Ethan Canin or his work -- really, I don't. Perhaps you'll be one of those 4-star or 5-star readers who live on some other planet, and I'm happy for you if you are. My hope is that everybody who invests the time to read a highly-acclaimed novel of 450 pages with such a lofty title is satisfied.

America, America is a timely novel which takes place in 1972 but could easily have taken place in our own time. There are many similarities to the culture of the 70's to now. The dislike for an unpopular war and the economic difficulties were all a part of the election portrayed in this novel. Canin also really makes you think about broader themes. This book is certainly worth reading for any book discussion group. Might make an interesting movie.

It might seem from my other reviews that I am easily impressed. However, with this novel, I seem to have run out of stars.

One word for this book - "seamless."

Corey Sifter, the main character, talks through time. One paragraph he's in the 1970s when he is working for Liam Meterey, a man of complex but wealthy means in another he's speaking of a time in the present.

Canin has the ability to set up situations and curious mysteries that seemed to be forever designated to the characters' minds, not to be shared with the reader.

Then the problems, solutions, mistakes and otherwise are divulged separately and a little at a time. Canin does not take the reader as stupid and some of the secrets made me jerk my head up and say, "Oh, now I get it."

My favorite part is Canin's ability to seamlessly (there's that word again) transcend time, often in the same paragraph. And he does it clearly and with no question as to when and whom he's writing about. It's not unusual for him to go from first person (Corey) to third person without a bump in the road.

What I thought was going to be one of my longer reads as I thought its complexity would trip me up turned into a two-day obsessive page turner. At one point, of the characters turns from a non-reader into a voracious one. Although I'm a frequent reader, I wouldn't underestimate this book into doing the same in the real world.

America, America is the book for those of us who may not have much time to read this summer, and who need to narrow their choices to one good book.

This vacation time I ended up having two weeks away from my computer (but I'm a slow reader), and I am grateful I chose this book for my free hours. I wanted a book that would sweep me up in a big story, with interesting, believable characters, and that provided themes that I could think about afterwards -- when I had to get back to the real world of work. Finally, I really wanted good writing, writing that would make me turn the page back and re-read a section, simply to enjoy the way the author had put the words together to create a scene, an image or an interaction between or among characters. America, America fit the bill perfectly.

The author has created a world that is both very familiar -- the US in the 60s and 70s, primarily -- and yet remains a creation of his mind, populated with interesting, true-to-life people. The situations they find themselves in force them to confront difficult issues. As readers, we get to do the same thing, while retaining the luxury of being able to put the book down and to thank God we're not actually in those situations ourselves. The book also poses fascinating questions about people and the choices we make, and what value we end up placing on the lives of the other people around us.

While the book is propelled by the characters and the demanding, compelling situations in which they find themselves, it is the beauty of the language that flows from page to page that connects every situation. Canin is that rarity among writers, someone who appears effortlessly to be able to render a story using language that makes you pause, and go back to read the page again just to enjoy the sensory effect of what has been written.

So, time for one book -- choose this one.

This book has earned its stars, with a nostalgic nod to the America we once were - not so much the kingmakers, but the Industrial achievements and the nod to men who made things work, made things with their hands, made a good life, made America. It has enough surprises to be satisfying, and the jumps in time are like a ride - just hang on. Favorite characters? Breighton, Churchill, Aberdeen Red (!), Liam, Eugene. Most reviews mention it's emotionally satisfying. What more could an author, or a reader, want?

Corey Sifter is the editor of a small newspaper in upstate New York and the story opens with the funeral of a former US Senator. The story alternates between the present and the period around 1971 when Nixon was in office and the country was torn apart by the Vietnam War.

At sixteen, Corey is hired to work on the grounds of the elegant Metarey estate. Liam Metarey is the son of a Scottish immigrant, who came to America and made his fortune in mining, steel and logging. The town of Saline, New York was built by the Metarey empire and practically every working class family, including Corey's respects and looks up to Liam Metarey. Liam Metarey, his wife, two daughters and his son like Corey and invite him to family activities. He begins to spend most of his time with the Metareys. Liam Metarey becomes a benefactor to Corey and pays for him to attend an expensive preparatory school. Later, Metarey funds most of Corey's college tuition.

As Corey becomes more educated and worldly, he grows away from his working class parents. They want the best for him, so they support his choices, despite their unspoken pain at losing him. Not long after starting preparatory school, Corey begins working for Liam Metarey every weekend. Metarey has taken on the role of campaign manager for Senator Henry Bonwiller's bid for the Presidency in the 1972 election. Bonwiller is a liberal Democrat that the local townspeople consider to be "the best friend a working man's ever had."

Corey is exposed to, but isn't quite savvy enough to understand the machinations of old school politics and back room deal making. Metarey involves Corey peripherally in the cover up of a scandal, although Corey isn't able to piece the entire story together until many years later.

The primaries get interesting after Senator Edmund Muskie weeps on national television, and it looks as if Senator Bonwiller has a good chance to secure the nomination and the Presidency. The descriptions of power struggle between all of the Democratic candidates in this story and the hints at pre-Watergate subterfuge from the Nixon campaign were excellent.

"The forgotten of this country have a consistent history of turning on their champions, and I suppose the way working men and women have forsaken the very politicians who could help them most speaks of the primacy of emotion in politics. Perhaps the great decline of FDR's party, which was beginning in Henry Bonwiller's time, didn't come about because Democrats favored a logical argument over a moral one, but simply because they clung to the idea that either one mattered at all."

The story climaxes when several tragedies converge and in the present day, Corey is able to see the truth of what happened through his own journalistic lens and gain clarity and perspective on his relationships with his children and his parents.

"It doesn't take many years of fatherhood to think you finally understand your own parents, and I've long since arrived at that point with mine. And like most everyone else, I've grown more grateful for the things they gave me and more respectful of what must have been admirable courage as they watched me go - in my case, to a life utterly different from their own. And as I've watched our own girls move away now, too - first to sleepovers, then to summer camps, then to college and boyfriends, then to jobs and husbands - as I've watched them one by one walk their own ways, I can only hope that they too arrive at this same juncture, that they too come to see us for what we've always tried to do for them, even if it's not always what we've succeeded at. Maybe this is nothing but vanity. But I wonder how we've fared with them. I wonder which of our idle words have wounded them and which, years later and a thousand miles away, have buoyed them; which of our hopes have lifted them over the daunting obstacles in their lives and which have pressed back against their own ideas of themselves. I think I know my children, know all three of them, yet I'm certain from my own childhood that of course I don't."

Ethan Canin is a masterful narrative stylist. Once I started reading, I tore through the book, unable to put it down. Since I finished, I find myself still thinking about it. Themes of loyalty and love, power and morality, and fathers and children all contribute to a satisfying, well written story.

This is a story to be savored...like a rich cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream on a cold, late fall day. Canin's descriptions are sensual and satisfying and his writing evokes a house of mirrors at the county fair where reality, reflections, and shadows merge to create insight and perspectives not seen in the mirror on the bathroom medicine cabinet. For those reviewers who did not quite get it the first time around, I would sugget reading it a second time...slower. Subtleties long for companionship and Canin is a master of the subtle.

I read a great deal but rarely have had the time to absorb a novel that was not a mystery. It was a pleasure to sit and read this wonderful book. It does not tie all the pieces together. The tone changes. We meet people, especially to me the woman who were hard to understand. It was like life.

The basic story is not that unusual. The story of the 1972 election puts some reality into the story. I could go on for a long time but all I think is that I have read many reviews to try to understand the book and each review opens more questions rather than tie the story up. All in all I just totally enjoyed reading a great novel. I may be inspired to read other great novels.

Ethan Canin has hit a home run with his latest offering. My crazy work schedule makes it tough for me to sit down for any appreciable period of time. However, for about 2 weeks straight, every spare moment I had was devoted to reading AMERICA AMERICA.
The character development in this book is outstanding. While the scenes move from present-to-past, then back again, the characters are incredibly easy to follow, given the fact they are so well-developed. The story itself is a page-turner and the off-handed commentary provided by the narrator and main character is worth noting.
Mr. Canin had better make some room on his fireplace mantle for the Pulitzer Prize, which will certainly be coming his way thanks to this novel.

It's hard to write about Ethan Canin's new novel America America without staring into space and sighing dreamily. I'm going to put it out there. If this doesn't turn out to be my favorite novel of 2008 I am going to shocked. Shocked and amazed. This book is so good that I have trouble finding the words to tell you about how good it is.

This is the kind of book that you get lost in. It takes you to another place and time so wholly that you will grow to resent all those things (eating, bathing, sleeping) that take you away from the book.

America America opens with the 2006 funeral of Senator Henry Bonwiller, a presidential contender in the 1972 race against Richard Nixon. Bonwiller's campaign was derailed by a Ted Kennedy Chappaquiddickesque accident that resulted in the death of a campaign aid. The funeral causes our narrator Corey Shifter to reflect on his time working with Bonwiller, and more importantly the man behind Bonwiller, Liam Metarey. It's a big, beautiful novel about journalism, politics, class, family, and, ultimately, America. It's brilliant.

This book is so good that when I finished it, I didn't want to start any other book because I know it's not going to be as good as America America. It's so good that sometimes I just walk past the book, run my fingers over the cover, and sigh happily and fondly remember all the good times we had together. And there are so many good times in this book.

This is a small-town epic tale, with the pace of the best of John Irving and a good deal of the sedimented detail. Canin is good on the compromises American politicians must make with money (compromises Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would well understand). Bonwiller's presidential bid had been supported by the local grandees, the Metarey family, third-generation Scots immigrants, timber and mining moguls, who run everything in Saline and beyond. It was Liam Metarey who had conscripted Corey Sifter as a young man to work in their mansion, Aberdeen West. The Metareys, for Sifter, then stood for a version of the American dream; it is with great reluctance that he comes to see that they represent all the murkiness that attends American capital.
Sifter's wife observes that they had made 'nasty sport' with his life, and his father believes him to have been 'always half criminal', but those are judgments that he only reluctantly comes to agree with. Adopted first as a yard boy then as a protégé by the family, Sifter has spent a lifetime discovering he has sold his soul. His unwitting Faustian agreement, Canin would have us believe, is the true American reality. As such, the book is a process of recovered memory on an epic scale.
Though this fable of American corruption can occasionally seem slightly pre-programmed, Canin never forgets his primary, local realism. He is pitch perfect in recreating the adolescence of Sifter, plucked from a determinedly working class family to find himself suddenly adrift on the Metareys' fortune, funded through boarding school and college. He captures exactly, too, the ways the quietly Norman Rockwell world of Saline is flogged off in the name of development.
Complicit in all of this, of course, is the newspaperman himself. As the story unfolds, Sifter observes of his profession that 'silt-panning for truth serves the citizenry only slightly better than a crooked disregard for it'. In this, Canin definitively parts company from his narrator. If it was a Hollywood pitch, America America might come with a subtitle from Jack Nicholson: 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth...'

I bought this book after reading the recommendation in O Magazine. All I can say is this author must have a great agent getting him a lot of P.R. I found the book stretched on and on in what could have easily been condensed down to a 250 page book. The story dragged on and bored me. Trying not to spoil the plot, I also found it strange how a particular relationship (between Corey and Metarey sisters) flipped over to something different, but was never fully explained how that developed in the end exactly or how others felt about it. Didn't anyone who read this think that was strange? This is a big SKIP IT and spend your money elsewhere.

Perhaps the whole point of this book is that no-one can know the truth at the bottom of a scandal except the people involved, but I think that Canin makes this point in an unnecessarily confusing way. The time frame shifts from the present (more or less) to various points in Corey Sifter's association with the Metarey's, the wealthy family in town, who become his patron, sending him to private school and then helping to pay his college tuition. He is telling the story to his would-be protegee, an intern at his newspaper who reminds him in many ways of himself at that age.

The story revolves around the presidential campaign of the local liberal senator, Henry Bonwiller. Although the story is set in the 1972 election and in upstate New York rather than Massachusetts, the story is superficially that of Edward Kennedy. There is an affair, a car accident, a dead mistress. Then there is a cover-up, or a misdirection of some kind. But the truth of what actually happened is shrouded from the reader.

This story is told mainly by Sifter, who, although an insider in both the Metarey family and the Bonwiller campaign, is largely kept ignorant of the backroom politicking. The bulk of the story is told in his first-person narrative, and we know only what he knows. Occasionally the narrative shifts to the perspective of the dead mistress, but she is equally ignorant, and what actually happens doesn't become any clearer when told from her point of view. This is an effective, but frustrating technique. I wanted to know what happened!

For all that, though, this is a good book. It's well-written, and the story itself is compelling. It tells of a way of life that changes from one generation to the next and of the influence that one family can have on a whole town.

This book has depth and is thought-provoking as the author slowly reveals pieces of a larger mystery, several, actually. It makes you think, wonder and inquire rather than connecting all the dots for you. Without leaving a gaping hole at the end, the book still makes the reader wonder about the circumstances, events, and personalities of all the characters. Canin also weaves nature's beauty to the forefront and really makes you feel connected with the setting of the book. I'm really not very good at writing reviews, but I haven't read a book this well-written, surprising, and stimulating in a long time. I was really drawn in by the characters, the way the "story" unfolded, with snapshot pictures in time that told the story. Pieces of the puzzle slowly come together throughout the book and the author seemingly effortlessly brings it all together. America America didn't enthral me because of its political premise; rather, its characters, the nostalgic time period, small town depiction, the timeless struggle and desire to do better in life, and the course of time and its effects on people really puts you in another place. This book truly transported me to another place and time, and isn't that what reading is all about?

It is no accident that the author of this novel is a faculty member of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. America America is interesting in structure and style.

There are three elliptical story lines. All are narrated by Corey Sifter, a native of a small town in Western New York. One ellipse deals with Corey's working class youth in the early 1970s and his gradual absorption as family retainer to the Metareys, the local gentry. The second ellipse concerns Corey's adolescence and young adulthood as he breaks away from his small town roots. The third, set in 2006, involves Corey's adult life as a newspaper publisher resettled in his old hometown, reflecting on events of the past. The points at which these three ellipses intersect form the center of the story: the rise and the mystery surrounding the fall of a hometown politician who aspires to - and nearly does -- capture the 1972 Democratic Party nomination for President.

This structural device gives Corey the freedom to move backward and forward in time and to speak with mixed voices: naïve and trusting teen, battle-scarred political veteran, mentoring journalist. We see his world as it was and as it has become, capturing the many nuances of the transition from twentieth century to the 21st. The triple narrative device, and the resultant shift from one perspective to another, also gives the author the opportunity to color in his portrait of the times one bit at a time, filling in his outlines and illuminating his narrative with unexpected strokes until the whole picture emerges on the page.

So what's the story about? It's about the presidential campaign, passingly. It's about work and ambition. It's about loyalty, to place and to person. It's about the freedom that wealth enables, and the responsibilities and tragedies that it imposes. It's about parents and their children, and the subtle inheritances that pass through generations. It's about character and integrity: their surprising appearances and their equally surprising absences.

This is not a beach book. For me it was a front porch rocking chair book. It also would make a good window seat during a summer thunderstorm book. Not all the questions raised are answered, and not all the characters are well understood. It's nice to have something to think about on warm summer nights.

America America is the rarest of books, a serious novel about public as well as private life. In contrast to most literary novelists, who have ceded politics and class to the pulp writers, Canin confronts these issues head on. The result is a book that is not only deeply moving but also highly illuminating, much more so than any work of non-fiction could be. It is all the better that this book arrives in this season of politics. America America is the best work of this author's fine career.

Am I the only one who was reminded of Dominick Dunne's novel: A Season In Purgatory??? Granted, this is a solid well written book but it felt like I had read it before.

This lovely novel was the first I have read by Ethan Canin. As the story progressed I found myself more and more satisfied with the feeling, the sense of the novel and the time and place it evoked.

Corey Sifter is the blue-collar son of a plumber and handyman, living in a one-company town in New York during the Nixon years. This is Cory's coming of age story seen in the flashbacks of his middle-age as he looks back on his youth. Towards the end of high school Corey is employed on the estate of Liam Metary, a wealthy and influential powerbroker and the owner of almost everything in Saline, New York. Corey is not only taken in by the Metary family and exposed to the lifestyle of his wealthy neighbors, but is witness behind the scenes to the rise of Senator Henry Bonwiller as he becomes a contender for the Democratic nomination in 1974. Cory's love and respect for Liam Metary is tested as he sees first-hand what happens to keep Senator Bonwiller's reputation clean and his candidacy protected. Corey's relationship with other members of the Metary family are also shaped by these powerful events.

The narration is first person, as Cory Sifter, happily married and the father of three grown daughters looks back on those remarkable years. Canin describes a time and a presidential nomination campaign that has many parallels to the campaign we have just gone through. "One of the hallmarks of our politics now is that we tend to elect those who can campaign over those who can lead." Senator Bonwiller's campaign parallels that of Ted Kennedy and the tragic way in which his presidential aspirations came to an end.

Much of my enjoyment of the book had to do with the middle-aged Sifter's reflections on life. As the father of three grown sons I appreciated the wry wisdom and generous view of his past that only comes with the accumulation of years. "Not only are our parents buried cryptically inside each of us, but ... we are buried just as cryptically inside each of them and ... we may look in either direction to see the secrets of our children and of ourselves."

The story is fascinating and timely, the writing is evocative and heart-breakingly beautiful at times. It is indeed a story of America, of immigrants and how they shaped the lives of their great-grandchildren, of the landscape that was taken from the first Americans and the dynamics of the political system that sees power affirmed or transferred peacefully every four years. All of these themes and many more are twined skillfully into a thoroughly enjoyable novel. I am looking forward now to reading Canin's other works and discovering more about a new favorite author.

In a 2005 Washington Monthly essay entitled "Why Americans Can't Write Political Fiction," Christopher Lehmann laments the dearth of enduring works of literature that have as their subject democratic politics --- what he calls "the country's national epic." Robert Penn Warren's classic ALL THE KING'S MEN is likely the first that comes to mind, and for some the short stories and novels (THE CONGRESSMAN WHO LOVED FLAUBERT and ECHO HOUSE among the most noteworthy) of the grossly underappreciated Ward Just may follow close behind, and yet it's hardly a long list. In his latest novel, Ethan Canin takes a grab for this elusive brass ring. And while he doesn't quite attain it, he nonetheless has produced an admirable and appealing work.

Set in the small western New York town of Saline, AMERICA AMERICA weaves together two main threads: the story of Henry Bonwiller, a liberal senator from New York, who pursues the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, only to be undone by his own arrogance and moral blindness, and the coming of age of Corey Sifter, a local teenager whose circumstance brings him into the orbit of Bonwiller's bright political sun.

Corey, the novel's narrator, is now the middle-aged publisher of the local newspaper viewing the story's principal events from a distance of 35 years, shortly after Bonwiller has died, his political career a distant memory. Corey is the only child of a plumber and homemaker, and in 1971, at age 16, he is hired to work part-time at Aberdeen West, the estate of the Metarey family, whose wealth helped to build the town's economy and whose benevolence now sustains it. Corey's arrival at the estate coincides with Bonwiller's decision to run for president, and the young man becomes a bystander as the campaign unfolds. As his role subtly shifts from that of a handyman for the Metareys to low-level campaign assistant, Corey slowly is exposed to political life in all its undeniable, adrenaline-filled appeal.

Liam Metarey, son of a ruthless, union-busting coal and lumber baron who emigrated from Scotland and established the family fortune, serves as Bonwiller's principal campaign adviser, as well as mentor and surrogate father to Corey. Metarey is the novel's moral center, tutoring Corey on the ways of the world and teaching him, if only indirectly, about the compromises that too often must be made in politics and in life. He's a man, as Corey describes him, "with unparalleled access to the world but who still somehow retained a sense of justice, and whose life was in large part measured by his gifts to the community."

Where Canin's novel ultimately disappoints is in its portrayal of Henry Bonwiller. We learn that he is an ardently anti-war, pro-union politician who is beloved by working class people like Corey's parents. Despite the compassion he displays in his political life, at his core is an ethical black hole that allows him to embark on an affair with JoEllen Charney, a small town beauty pageant winner and legal secretary some 25 years his junior. What's missing from the story is the perspective of a narrator with an ability to fully grasp Bonwiller's complexity; his power to inspire unswerving devotion in his followers while his life lurches toward self-destruction. Realistically, Corey is not privy to the backroom meetings between Metarey, Bonwiller and the campaign's advisers, and so his observations of Bonwiller's campaign are mostly filtered through the perceptions of Metarey, shared in frequent conversations with his protégé. At best, the mature Corey is left to muse over his surprise that "mass politics is an emotional struggle above all, a primal battle that is more charismatic and animalistic than either ethical or reasoned," or how at times in politics "the ritual of deference precedes the auction of influence, and eventually the orgy of slaughter."

Everything about Canin's elegiac novel is ambitious, from the echoing words of its title to his willingness to embrace large themes --- class differences, politics and morality, ambition and failure --- to its generational sweep across a turbulent period of recent American history. Perhaps one of the problems such a talented writer encounters in crafting a political novel worthy of its subject matter lies in the intimacy anyone who watches CNN or MSNBC already feels to the process and those enmeshed in it. If Canin's effort falls just short, it's not for want of trying. AMERICA AMERICA is a serious, engaging story that may cause us in this election year to reflect more thoughtfully on the heavy price political life sometimes exacts from its practitioners.

--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg

In America America, a young man, Corey Sifter is swept up into the lives of a small town's most wealthy and powerful family. Corey comes from a working class home and accepts a job on the Metarey Family's estate in the late 1960's. Before he knows it, the family patriarch takes him under his wing offering him advice about succeeding in life and the chance to further himself by attending a prestigious private boarding school. The story is told through alternating chapters in at least three different time periods (all at once!); Corey in high school, Corey in college, and Corey as a middle-age adult. The tale is told mostly through Corey's eyes, but every now and then strays to one of the lesser characters' point of view.

The book centers on a political campaign (of Senator Bonwiller) run during Nixon's second presidential campaign and focuses on the Metarey family's and therefore Corey's involvement with the campaign.

There are many facets to this book. It is modern historical fiction and contains a portrait of the proverbial American Dream. A Scottish man (Eoghan Metarey) coming to America and rising from nothing to become wealthy and powerful through hard work (and perhaps some questionable decisions). And then the legacy he leaves behind for his family. The book centers a great deal on what one generation can learn from the next and how each generation affects another. It also portrays the political world of the late 1960's, early 70's before the world of the computer age when newspapers and reporters were an integral part of the campaign. Also, the lengths politicians will go during a campaign (not that any of this has changed much, just the medium through which the information is disseminated has). The American Dream is also shown through Corey's family where he has the opportunity to learn more and have more of an education than his father did. There is an interesting storyline about the relationship with Corey and his father toward the end of the book.

It's hard for me to decide if I liked this book or not. I think it is very well written and I think many of the characters are developed well. I like the way Canin creates the relationships in the book between Corey and his father, Corey and Liam Metarey, and Corey and the Metarey daughters. A good section of the book deals with the political campaign and I found some of these parts to be very boring and I wondered if I would actually be able to get to the end of the book. Through much of the book, Corey refers to his spouse as "my wife" and not by name, so we're not entirely sure which character he has chosen to marry until quite close to the end of the book. There is also an "incident" that is talked about in much of the book that really has too much of a build up. I wasn't that into the Senator's character or his affair with a young woman and the ensuing incident.

The timing of the book is good with this being an election year and with as close as the primaries are, its sort of fun to read a bit about politics. I think overall this book is probably 4 out of 5 if I'm impartial about it. But for my personal tastes, I think it was a bit long and not quite as gripping as I might like (I'm also usually not very engrossed by politics) so it could be a 3.5. If you like the author, Richard Russo, I would recommend this one. It's themes reminded me a great deal of Bridge of Sighs and Empire Falls.

A novel about politics, small towns, family, and the inner-workings of all those things.

I am reminded of a blend between "All the King's Men" and "Brideshead Revisited". I am also reminded of the present.

The time is the early 1970s. There is a presidential election. People are tired of the U.S.'s presence in Vietnam. On the scene is Henry Bonwiller, a charismatic liberal who becomes a frontman for the democratic nomination. In Bonwiller, we see a political stooge, a mouthpiece of the smarter and purer-of-heart liberal capitalist Liam Metarey, who is Bonwiller's campaign manager. Bonwiller doesn't get the nomination: there is a tragedy, some gross errors of judgment. There are suggestions of the all too common missteps of high profile politicians over the last couple generations. The question is asked: what really happened. Who played what part in the events? Who was changed by events and how?

The message of hope and change during a time of profound societal disenchantment rings eerily familiar during our present election-time. The inner-workings of the political machine; the "right" person at the right time, the ebb and flow of support and media coverage: all of it fickle and haphazard and almost accidental. But inside that complex machinery are good, if imperfect, well-meaning people.

Narrated in first-person by Corey Sifter, now a newspaper publisher, but during Bonwillers presidential run, he was a young man of modest means, employed by the Metarey family, and an unwitting witness to an unfolding of a uniquely American drama.

I enjoyed the characters, the action, the story's momentum. Though it forced me to pay attention, I even liked the chronological shifts, the slow unfolding of the backstory, the stories of the lives of the people, another kind of complex machinery.