Rating: 
Summary: Balanced reality with fiction
Review: I agree with the other comments that have mentioned the language this book as being a bit bombastic, over-flowery. Like an English undergrad trying to impress his creative writing instructor. Some of the use of similies and metaphors to describe simple things gets a bit tiresome.
However, don't let that get in the way of a good story, made better by the fact it's written on a foundation of fact. The fictional story is so intertwined in actual events and policies and proceedures, you're never quite sure where the seams are...as it should be.
It's a little frightening in that this book may serve as a harbinger of what the world of intelligence gathering may come to. While this time spanning book stops at contemporary now, (redundant?) you can see trends that mirror what's in the news. I think Littell has done a good job in making a story that's intrigueing as well as makes you think long after putting it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Is it just me?
Review: I love a good spy novel as much as the next guy, but this book is so poorly written I have not been able to get past the first 25 pages. Think I'm exaggerating? Listen to this: "a rack of clouds drifted across the hunter's moon so rapidly it looked as if a motion picture had been speeded up" or "a mutilated Bavarian clock.... sent the seconds ricocheting from wall to wall of the shabby room". These beauties and more come in the first few pages of the book. Littell's dialogue is worse. I know I'm going against the grain here, but this book is a stinker.
Rating:
Summary: Audio not the proper format
Review: This loudly lauded, enthusiastically acclaimed novel has been a disappointment at least in the audio format. It is one of those books where the reader needs to be able to turn back to re-identify characters or re-read certain sections for clarity.The numerous characters often appear out of nowhere with obscure code names, which is confusing. A most offensive/annoying feature is that the reader manages to mispronounce nearly every single foreign phrase, place name and reference. With the obviously lavish budget spent on a publicity campaign for this book, was the compnay unable to find anyone who can pronounce "Calabria" ? Continual reference to the character as the Ca-LAY-bri-an was jarring. I don't know that I would have enjoyed this novel in print, but I would not recommend the audio version under any circumstances.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Spy Novel Ever Written
Review: This is my only review at Amazon and it is only because I enjoyed this book so much. It is far better than anything I have read in this genre, including the works of Ludlum, Follett, Forsyth, and Clancy. Although a work of fiction, The Company is as much a history of the CIA as it is a spy novel. What Jeff and Michael Shaara did for the Civil War, Littell has done for the Cold War; i.e., the story and characters are real, though the dialoge and many of the details are made up in order to tell the story. Of course, Littell has more freedom to fictionalize much of his story given the inherently unknowable nature of the subject matter. Simply an outstanding book.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling history beautifully written!
Review: I'm an avid reader of intrigue/espionage fiction and seem eternally to be searching for new authors. I was viewing those subjects online at my local library a couple of months ago and noted this title written by an author I hadn't encountered before. It took me a while to get a copy of this popular book, but when I did I was enthralled. Here was an author writing in the genre I find most engaging who uses the language beautifully. I've read every book from the more pedestrian authors, Deighton, Forsythe, Follett, John Gardner, Ludlum, et al, as well as the more literary authors, Le Carre, McCarry, Alan Furst, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Helen MacInnes and Gerald Seymour. After finishing the Company, I proceeded to read everything I could get my hands on by Robert Littell and have yet to be disappointed. He not only presents the historical setting impeccably, he portrays believable characters as well as compelling life circumstances through which are woven captivating plot lines. For my taste, which puts a premium on accurate and thorough depiction of the historical setting, his books are perfect!
Rating: 
Summary: Errors Undercut Credibility
Review: Books like police procedurals, mysteries, and spy thrillers depend on detail to create their own world and build the reader's credibility in the "reality" of that world. In a book like The Company this is especially critical. Once a reader's belief (or suspension of disbelief) in the the world the author has created has been cracked, it is almost impossible to have faith in the story that is being told (or in the world that he has worked so hard to create). Unfortunately, Robert Littell has made a couple of enormous howlers in this book that are impossible for anyone with any knowledge of Washington to ignore. Let's check off a few of them:
1. In a section set in the spring and sumer of 1974, he has people using D.C.'s subway system. Unfortunately for Littell, DC's subway system didn't start operations until 1976. In addition, he has the wife of a supposed defector using the Dupont Circle subway station which didn't open until 1977.
Even if the subway had been open, these characters would not (could not) have used it as Littell has them doing. The Soviet resident complex in Washington is built on the site of the old VA hospital just north of Calvert Street on Wisconsin Avenue. There is no subway service anywhere near the compound. The characters would have had to take a bus or a cab to get to Dupont Circle (assuming they would have been allowed to travel as "freely" as Littell depicts).
2. He has 2 FBI agents pose as phone company workers to gain access to a suspect's apartment house to plant a phone tap. Littell has them wearing Con Edison badges! Excuse me, but isn't Con Edison New York's utility company!? They have never been in DC. (Does ConEd also do phones in NY?). In DC at that time, it would have been the Chesapeake and Potomac phone company (C&P). If he wanted utility workers for this scene(why?)it would have been Pepco or Washingto Gas.
3. Finally, he has 2 characters meet for a drink at a lounge located at the intersection of Wyoming and Connecticut avenues, north of Dupont Circle. When they come out of the bar, they are met by cold winds from the Tidal Basin, which would have been a hell of a trick, considering that the Tidal Basin is a couple of miles away, is pretty small, and has never been confused with Lake Michigan for creating city winds.
All of these mistakes could have been avoided with the simplest fact checking. How could they have been missed? I can only assume that no one who read the book in galley proofs ever lived in DC or that Littel himself never came to DC to do even rudimentary research. Unfortunately for him, they utterly destroy the credibility that one assumes he was working so hard to create. If he got these examples so incredibly wrong, how can anyone believe his other depictions, of Berlin, Moscow, CIA/KGB fieldwork, internal operations, etc., etc. The whole thing simply falls apart.
Rating:
Summary: Good Read - Very Interesting, BUT......
Review: I love novels about the Cold War with excellent detail about major events from different points of view. Well this book covers all of the major cold war events from The late 40's to the 90's. There is mystery - suspense - action - excellent descriptions of historical figures and events such as the Bay of Pigs - Berlin - CIA Moles. It moves along very fast. I liked the book and I haven't really liked too many lately. The author annoyed me with his description of Reagan and completely ignores his accomplishments in bringing down the Russians and ending the Cold War. He is equally hard on the Kennedy's - which I did like. Alas.. the author does have the right to his point of view. If you want to read the work of the CIA in a fun - interesting style - this is a good book. You may not admire them but you will appreciate them.
Rating:
Summary: What's wrong with this book? At 894 pages it's too short!
Review: I am not a big fan of spy novels, in the same way that I don't tend to favour genre fiction. However, having read a shining review for this book in "The Economist", which is not a normally frivolous publication, I picked it up and read it from cover to cover in a few days. The book is a compulsive page-turner. The story is nothing less than that of the CIA from its inception in 1950 to the end of the Cold War in 1992, seen through the lives of several CIA and KGB operatives. The story is rigorously researched and the period details seem to be perfectly portrayed (I am a big fan of contemporary history, and did not find any significant flaws in the book). They follow our boys (mostly boys in this book, no big surprise there) from Berlin in 1950 to Budapest in 1956, to Havana in 1960, to Washington and Moscow in 1974, to Afghanistan in 1983, to Moscow in 1991, with a brief coda somewhere in Virginia in 1995. The main fictional characters are three CIA agents who join at the beginning and then rise through the ranks. They are two-fisted action man Jack McAuliffe, honourable attorney (sic) Winstrom Ebbitt III and efficient organiser Leo Kritzky. An additional character who plays an important role is drunken and deadly Harvey Torriti, the Sorcerer, head of Berlin base at the beginning of the Cold War. Their counterparts are a KGB operative named Yevgeny Tsipin and spymaster Starik (the Old Man). Each of the episodes follows all these characters as the CIA spooks try to outsmart the KGB spies, and vice versa. Many historical figures drop by, some of them in a clearly ficionalised take on their lives. Thus, Martin Bormann is introduced to Yevgeny as a Communist hero who fed Hitler's paranoia and led him to eventually lose the war, Pope John Paul I is shown to have been murdered by a KGB operative for stepping too close to the truth of the dreaded Kholstomer, a far-ranging operation to bring the West to its knees, and statesmen such as Harold Wilson and Henry Kissinger are shown to have been nothing more than KGB agents. Some of the best parts of the book concern the author's obvious delight in spy craft. Many familiar devices such as cypher books, dead box drops, barium meals and all types of bugs turn up, and we learn a few new ones, such as walking back the cat (don't ask). Littell's spies are thoroughly professional and their work is hard, dangerous and unappreciated. Old spies such as The Sorcerer, the historic James Jesus Angleton or Starik die alone, forgotten by all, or almost all. The set pieces (the Soviet invasion of Budapest in 1956, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1960 or the attempted coup in Moscow in 1991) are very well put together and hugely exciting. Political leaders, both American and Soviet (Eisenhower, Bobby Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, Mijail Gorbachev) come out particularly poorly as they misunderstand the very valuable intelligence information they receive and abandon their agents and allies whenever expedient. A recurrent motif, in fact, is how US governments have usually abandoned local allies to the wolves whenever things got nasty (the Hungarians in 1956, the anti-Castrista Cubans in 1960, the Czechs in 1968, the Taiwanese in 1972, friendly Vietnamese in 1975 and friendly Cambodians in that same year). The book is definitely a must read for any fan of conspiracy theories, as it sets out quite a few that are literally mindboggling. And the leitmotiv (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass) is apposite and never distracting. Does the book have any weaknesses? Contrary to what may initially appear it's too damn short! Operation Kholstomer, which is built up very nicely as the standard issue mortal threat to global democracy unravels too quickly. Surely there could have been an additional chapter describing how it would have worked and specifying how it was defeated? Starik's perverted liking for pre-pubescent girls is probably unnecessary and contrived to make him the obvious baddy (although it is a nice touch since it shows a sort of malignant reflection on the historic Lewis Carroll). And the discovery of über KGB mole Sasha is too easy because Littell does not really create memorable characters and so his hints of the mole's real identity are somewhat transparent. But these are minor quibbles. Markus Wolf once said that the only really competent intelligence services were East Germany's Stasi, Israel's Mossad and Cuba's SIC. They all turn up in this book, plus the big guys we love to see (KGB and CIA). How can you lose with this lineup?
Rating:
Summary: Awesome in it's scope
Review: There are some plot lines which are open to debate throughout this novelization, and they will be discussed below. But these small points aside, this is one whopping good tale of the behind-the-scenes goings-on of the governments of the United States and USSR/Russia over the last fifty years. It shows that in the world of spying, there are really no good guys or bad guys, but merely winners and losers. The explanation is simple. While we in the U.S. would like to consider ourselves the good guys, and we probably are, we are far from being angels. We have committed genocide against a race (i.e., Native Americans). We enslaved another race for approximately 100 years. We have propped up countless governments with terrible human rights records. And when it comes to fighting dirty, our spies can do it as well as anybody's can. The story covers this issue of "ends justifying the means" throughout, and leaves the reader pretty much knowing that "good guys" is a relative term. But that aside, the events covered show how fragile and volatile the governments of the world are. It starts off roughly after World War II, where the Russians, who were our Allies, quickly become enemies even before the war is over. We see that Joseph Stalin was a murderer of his own people before the war, and picked up where he left off right after it. His invasions of neighboring countries killed millions, and the book estimates he murdered sixty million (!!!) of his own people. This is pretty heavy stuff. From the early antics of the Soviets, we move onto the Bay of Pigs fiasco under President Kennedy. The book also makes the point of saying that Vietnam was partially an attempt by the good guys to show how tough we were following this failure. The fact that we engaged the services of organized crime for covert operations in Cuba once again darkens that "good guy" role. While it is easier in hindsight, the book also does a great job in showing that the first conflict in Afghanistan was much more than Russia invading that country. We see the anxiety caused by trying to help turn that country into Russia's Vietnam, but realizing that the citizens of that invaded country had hate not only for the invaders, but those Western powers trying to "help" them. That animosity is the root of many of our problems today. We finally see the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how there was never any guarantee that this turn to capitalism would last. All this is shown throught the eyes of several CIA agents who lived through all, or at least most of it. The book makes a case that anyone who makes spying one's career is probably doomed to a life of misery and heartache. The decisions one makes are seldom pretty, and offers not even the joy of a job "well done" at the end. Some of the points the book makes are subject to debate. It depends on whose viewpoint you read. This book makes the claim that Chicago mobster Sam Giancanna met his end as revenge from Castro for attempting to knock him off, while I've always thought it was his own people that did him in. It makes the case that the Bay of Pigs was an ego trip for the Kennedy brothers, who chickened out with finishing the job once it got too hot. And it portrays Ronald Reagan as a doddering old fool who never quite recovered from his assasination attempt. There may be degrees of truth to this, but I salute the author for at least taking a stand. He's woven a great historical novel that I plan on picking up again in the near future.
Rating:
Summary: A thrilling spy novel
Review: Welcome back to the Cold War! Littell has written a master-piece combing history with a sophisticated CIA-KGB plot spanning from Berlin to Budapest, the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and the mountainous areas of Afghanistan. A thrilling spy novel, I really found it difficult to put it down for an occasional meal!
|
