America America: A Novel | Ethan Canin | America America the beautiful and brilliant

America America: A Novel | Ethan Canin | Ethan Canin's Most Ambitious Work Yet

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America America: A...

	America America: A Novel Ethan Canin Random House, 2008 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

America America the beautiful and brilliant

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.

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Ethan Canin's Most Ambitious Work Yet

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.

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Great American Novel

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.

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Wonderful to Read An Absorbing Novel

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.

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