Rating: 
Summary: Le Carre he is not...
Review: The trouble with this book is not its subject matter. The supposed history of the CIA is a fascinating one, even more so when presented as if it is real under the cover of calling it a novel. How could I not read it?
I am angry that I did. To even mention John Le Carre in the same breath in terms of writing skills is sacrilegious. Any 50 consecutive pages of Smiley's People are far superior to the whole 900 pages of this book.
There are very interesting passages...even chapters. But if I ever see the words "steaming coffee", a drink in "his paw" or enumerable other words sets that repeat again, again, and again...well, I'll be pulled back into the bad overall reaction to this book. The characters are black and white, the good guys win and the bad guys get killed. Men are strong, women are weak. Ronald Reagan is portrayed as a political cartoon. Much of the dialogue - especially toward the end - is stilted and false. The basic plot has a major hole in it when one realizes that the undercover spy who is the go between the major traitors in the book was actually a close college classmate of two of the CIA hero's...come on. All that trouble to invent a new identity for a guy who lives in Washington where a chance meeting with his old friends at Yale could blow the whole thing open? Further, the Sorcerer drank so much alcohol for so long that his liver would have shut down well before his reputation. Neither would have lasted for 900 pages. When I read the great editorial reviews my mind wonders whether the phantom wall between some of Wall Street's "independent stock brokers" and the investment banking end have wandered uptown into the publishing business. To say that this fellow is in a league with Carre is to say that Enron is in the same league as Warren Buffett. It just ain't so.
Rating: 
Summary: A Cold War Documentary Disguised as a Novel
Review: After reading Robert Littell's "The Company", all I can say is Wow! As a late baby boomer, I grew up in the era of the anti-communism, and as a result, I was fearful of "the Communists" without knowing why. This book brings things full circle for me.
The novel begins with the recruitment of C.I.A. agents in the early 1950's and follows their careers for nearly 50 years. At the same time, the novel adresses key Cold War happennings such as early post-war Germany, the Bay of Pigs, and the attempted Russian revolution in the Gorbachev era. The novel is written around history and speculates (to some degree) what the C.I.A.'s role was in shaping these events.
The nearly 900 pages read quickly as we the reader attempts to decipher the identity of the Soviet mole who has been in the hierarchy of the U.S. government for the balance of the novel.
This book has intrigue, great interpersonal plots and is also educational as to the history and involvement of the C.I.A. in the Cold War.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible
Review: I really really loved this book. I look forward to stealing half an hour to ready it. Intelligent, historically ground fiction.
Rating:
Summary: The Glorious Return of the Spy Thriller
Review: You know, when the Cold War ended, I thought that the spy thriller had likewise come to the end of the line. What would Le Carré and his mates write about now? What could they write about.Le Carré has moved on, but Robert Littell remains, and with The Company he has firmly established himself master of the genre. This is an awesome book, a spy thriller of the old school, with moles and Joes, cutouts and dead-drops, plots and counterplots. There are the usual colourful characters - the Sorcerer in the seedy sleazy alleys of post-war Berlin is worth the price of the book alone - and thrilling if not romantic situations. It goes on for a satisfying length, a good solid read, and there are meaty plots and subplots and subsubplots to give the reader a generous fill as the story follows through the early days of the CIA and the freezing of the Cold War, past Hungary and Cuba, a long episode in Afghanistan and ultimately to the White House of Boris Yeltsin, where generations meet in a blazing conclusion. There are plot twists and red herrings, tension and drama as the key players work against each other to uncover a high-level mole. I won't give the game away, but if you keep your wits about you right from the beginning, you should be able to spot the first seeds that will sprout shoots of doubt and ultimately grow to bear fruit many many years later. The plotting (and I use the word advisedly) in this book is of a high level. It flows naturally, never forced, always thrusting the story along. Little details echo the moods and motivations of the characters, tieing in to one another and weaving a multi-stranded tapestry that gives the book so much of its satisfying flavour. It is hard to say what I enjoyed most, but perhaps the scenes that most impressed me were inside the Ronald Reagan White House, where the various political motivations of Washington institutions were dealt with in rambling code phrases in a sort of real-like movie shot in the mind of the President. Scary, haunting stuff. But I guess I'm rambling too. Make no mistake. This novel is big, but it is no meandering time-filler. It is tightly written for all its size, and it will keep you turning just one more page until you get to the end. It is one of those rare books where you get to the end and want to start at the beginning again to read it again in a new light. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A true account thinly disguised by calling it fiction.
Review: I can't remember a book I enjoyed as much. To me,the characters came alive. I thought the depection Pres.Reagen was SO on the mark. It calls to attention the great mistake - the arming of the Islamic radicals; the Soviets were doing us a fsvor when they attacked the extremists.
Rating:
Summary: An Insider's Guide
Review: Sure, there are some problems here, mostly the editor's, not Littell's. What we have, however, is a helluva fine piece of fiction that combines historical personages by name with thinly-disguised made-ups that are easily recognizable to persons familiar with the personnel of the Agency's post-war history. The portrait of James Angleton alone is frighteningly accurate. Who is the Mole in this story? If you doubt, go back (if you can find it) to John Erlichmann's similarly titled book, a roman-a-clef published 20 years ago, which disappeared from the market with remarkable suddenness. In short, Littell has written a delightful work of historical fiction, full of truth under the mask of make-up, a true page-turner of the CIA and our world since 1945.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book.
Review: I wonder how many of the professional reviewers here and elsewhere actually read all of 'The Company'. I mean anyone can look at it, hold it, see the blurbs and say something safe like ' Littell has written the quintessential cold war novel', or 'Littell has redefined the spy novel genre'. Well, I read it and though I'm no critic I'm here to say it is a terrific book. It is literary without being highbrow. It is action packed without being comic bookish. The narration is incredibly descriptive but still manages somehow to be sparse and concise. Strong characters are established without resorting to any undue sentimentality. In short, it has everything you want, and nothing you don't. Sure, I found a couple of very minor flaws ( e.g. an answering machine is in an average person's apartment in 1974) and once or twice the dialogue is really there for the reader's benefit and not representative of the information people in their respective postions would need to convey in regular conversation (e.g, one senior CIA veteran tells another that then President George Bush was once head of The Company), but who cares? The bottom line for this reader was I enjoyed every one of the 900 gripping pages more than I have enjoyed any novel in a long time and show up in this forum to recommend it very highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Page Turner
Review: I spend a lot of time on planes, and always buy a book before flying. However, rarely do I find a book that motivates me to keep reading rather than watching a movie or sleeping. The author presents an interesting faction mixing known history together with fiction and his own slant on what may have happened. As the story unfolds it becomes a ripping yarn that you just want to continue and continue. I have read a several books about the CIA recently. The Bob Baer book, based on his personal experience as an agent in the field was a great book to have read prior to embarking on this one. I would heartily recommend this book. There are very few books these days that grab your attention from the outset and then keep on accelerating the pace. Also some interesting ideas on the Kennedy's and what "really" happened....
Rating:
Summary: Captivating, a fascinating trip through the years...
Review: As somone who reads a great deal, I find that as time has passed I have little patience for some books. In other words, if a book doesn't grab me, I have no qualms about putting it down and going on. I found The Company to be enthralling, fascinating, captivating... in short, one of the best books I have read in a long time. The characters are fleshed out, and the mixture of real and fictional types works very well. I have to fault A reader from Winthrop, MA who posted a review that reveals several key surprises from the story. Skip his review unless you want to know things that are better found out by plowing through this massive work. This is my first Littell novel, but you can bet it won't be my last. He's won another fan!
Rating:
Summary: Much Ado About Too Much
Review: First, Littell is no le Carré, and I find it ludicrous that anyone could suggest that he is. At his best (the so-called Karla trilogy), le Carré writes genuine literature; The Company isn't much more than a pot-boiler. I was particularly offended by the shamefully bad spelling ('capitol' instead of 'capital'; 'here' instead of 'hear'; 'raison' instead of 'raisin' and the constantly recurring 'breath' instead of 'breathe'). If the author can't spell, maybe he should hire an editor who can. The characters are either one-dimensional or over the top. The 'Sorcerer' is a morbid alcoholic, and I can't imagine the CIA or his friends not intervening to help him. The 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' is in the final stages of testosterone poisoning. And Leo Kritzky's final redemption on the barricades in Moscow was just cringe-inducing. Having said all that, The Company did have its moments and was an adequate time-waster while I recovered from knee surgery. What it wasn't was good.
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