The Company You Keep

Rating:
Summary: Utterly revolting
Review: An amoral and immoral book, with worse pseudo-historical nonsense than all of Oliver Stone's movies put together. The "Weathermen" were spoiled, dangerous brats, who fortunately never got more than miniscule attention and support. When others didn't adopt their agenda upon its announcement, they went violent and started bombing without regard to the consequences. The author uses lots of cheap tricks to try to make them suitable protagonists. One is to announce, repeatedly, that anyone who got violent was automatically expelled from the Weatherman the second he or she did so -- never mind that they instigated it all. Then there's the guilty revolutionary who sends money anonymmously to her victim's family (never happened), and another who is sugar-coated as the world's best parent to try to gin up some faux sympathy. Every 20 pages or so the author shoves a political tract in your face by having the journalist character make a political speech about how the Weathermen were really just premature ecologists (which they never cared about) and the violence was excusable...
This is a trendy left political pamphlet disguised (thinly) as fiction. (The author likes to weave back and forth between real characters and his fictional ones). It is a revolting attempt to rewrite history and is not good fiction either. A repellent, immoral, and trivial book about people cut from the same cloth.

Rating:
Summary: Utterly revolting
Review: An amoral and immoral book, with worse pseudo-historical nonsense than all of Oliver Stone's movies put together. The "Weathermen" were spoiled, dangerous brats, who fortunately never got more than miniscule attention and support. When others didn't adopt their agenda upon its announcement, they went violent and started bombing without regard to the consequences. The author uses lots of cheap tricks to try to make them suitable protagonists. One is to announce, repeatedly, that anyone who got violent was automatically expelled from the Weatherman the second he or she did so -- never mind that they instigated it all. Then there's the guilty revolutionary who sends money anonymmously to her victim's family (never happened), and another who is sugar-coated as the world's best parent to try to gin up some faux sympathy. Every 20 pages or so the author shoves a political tract in your face by having the journalist character make a political speech about how the Weathermen were really just premature ecologists (which they never cared about) and the violence was excusable...
This is a trendy left political pamphlet disguised (thinly) as fiction. (The author likes to weave back and forth between real characters and his fictional ones). It is a revolting attempt to rewrite history and is not good fiction either. A repellent, immoral, and trivial book about people cut from the same cloth.

Rating:
Summary: Breathtaking and Heartbreaking
Review: As an MA Student in creative writing, I am accustomed to reading fiction very carefully in order to savor the author's use of language and to study the various elements of craft (point of view, voice, etc.) employed in a novel. This book, however, I could not stop reading (I'll pick up on the technical elements during a reread -- it's that good). The novel is well plotted, intricately detailed and utterly intimate. The sole negative review on this page is written by a self-professed "political conservative" who should probably stick to reading garbage by Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter.

Rating:
Summary: When is the Past Past?
Review: Fact and fiction so subtly intertwined that we no longer care which is which and believe one as the other. This is the story of the legendary Weather Underground, yet with quite a fresh twist. Set not in the "glory days" of the 1970s but in 2006, it looks back at more than just the excesses of Weather, its scope is the many changes in the US that this band of unlikely middle-class outlaws foretold. Excellent social observation, strong and completely believable characters, and plenty of narrative drive. What more could readers want?

Rating:
Summary: A splendid novel
Review: I very much enjoyed this book, partially because I went to college in the 1960s but also because I see many of the social and political conditions of the 60s being replayed right now in 2004. This story of a group of former Weather Underground members is set at various times in the 1960s, in 1996 and in 2006. It traces the life of Jim Grant and his daughter, along with several people who are close to them, in Jim's past and in his present, and in our future.

I don't want to give away the story and I recommend that those who have not read the book avoid reading reviews that reveal too much. This book reads very well as a novel of suspense, so allow yourself to savor the details of the story as they unwind while you read. It also works as a morality tale of a sort, as well as a meditation on the nature of one's political convictions and how they stack up in importance versus the welfare of one's family and friends.

Right now in 2004, as we move through a deeply conflicted presidential election process, it's clear to me that we are not actually refighting the Viet Nam war, as some have said, but are rather re-arguing the two main moral positions associated with that war. I am convinced that for those of us who experienced that war, whether at long or close emotional and physical range, it will always be at the bottom of our conscious choices. It's not that we can't get past it; it's that the two basic oppositional points of view that were prevalent at the time have never been integrated into a consensual view of how to direct American foreign policy.

Just as the politics of our parents, the so-called "greatest generation," were always informed by their participation in WW II, so ours will always be informed by Viet Nam. The difference is that our parents tended to share a single point of view of their wartime experience. The vast majority believed that they had fought the good fight and that they had done it while on the side of morality and justice. Those of us shaped by Viet Nam have no such assurance.

All of this is to say that The Company You Keep brilliantly relfects the continuing political divisions among "boomers" (for lack of a better label). It presents both points of view -- from those who supported the war and those who did not -- in what seems to me a sensitive way, and also poses some provocative questions about the sort of sacrifices one should be willing to make for one's moral values and one's family.

This is one of the best novels I've read in a while and I highly recommend it to everyone, but most especially to those who took Viet Nam personally and sometimes feel its ghosts even today.



Rating:
Summary: One of My New Top Favorites!
Review: This book helped me understand the choices my parents made before and after they had me. I was mystified by the 60's student culture they participated in, especially seeing it from the quite conservative 90's culture I was surrounded by. While my parents weren't members of the Weather Underground, this book nonetheless gave me an historical perspective unlike any other I have read. Suddenly, I am able to make a bit more sense of what my parents might have been like at my age, and how their decisions were so influenced by the time period they lived through. I even gave my copy to my parents to read, and have had some discussions with them that we never would have had otherwise.
Plus, the book is well-written and well-structured (hard to find these days). I especially enjoyed the sense of how people come to have strong viewpoints based on purely random coincidences of birthplace & family life.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent and Relevant Novel!
Review: This book is hard to put down! It describes an important era in the recent history of our nation--the counterculture movement of the 1960s--in a series of letters written by several different narrators as part of a semi-fictional character's experiences both during and after the 1960s. Sound boring? Its not--its extremely well-written and draws some important parallels between the Vietnam Era and issues of today. Not only has this helped me understand the experience of my parents' generation, but it has also given me some historical perspective with which to view current affairs.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Contemporary Novel
Review: This book should be read by anyone interested in recent American progressive politics and history. The book is wonderful summer read utilizing many great hooks that keeps the book fascinating until the last page. It is obvious that the author engaged in extensive research to recapture a time of a few decades ago. The novel captures a time when America's young political activists were willing to take serious personal risks in response to an endless and destructive war. This novel provides important insights into the motivations, fears and consequences of those activists who went underground beginning in the late 1960's.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Contemporary Novel
Review: This is the kind of book that appears far too seldom: it's smart, it's funny, it's emotionally authentic, and once you get started it's almost impossible to put down. Told by five or so equally engaging narrators, it manages to put the mystery of good parenting AND the moral complexity of America's involvement in the Viet Nam war under the same magnifying lens.

At the heart of the book is the story of Jason Sinai, a man forced to relinquish the underground identity that gave him refuge from prosecution for actions as a member of Weatherman (the SDS faction that sought to "bring the war home" by bombing various U.S. locations). His story is told as a series of emails to his daughter Isabel, who he abandoned (had to abandon?) when she was about six. The emails narrate the events of her father's escape and pursuit, as well as key events during his Weather phase.

Because the various narrators range in age and (to some extent) ideological vantage, the major themes don't lumber in and loom--the way you might anticipate from this short description--but glimmer through in changing guises. "All parents are bad parents," Sinai tells his daughter and though this at first seems like a glib rationale from a probably unreconstructed baby revolutionary, the book ultimately allows us to understand the pain of bad parenting from the parent's point of view as well as the child's. What more do you want from a novel? There are a couple of good twists that you may see coming but which are nevertheless satisfying, and there is great material about the legacy of the sixties at the family level as well as at the level of country, culture, nation, etc.

Obviously, a few paralells with current events also emerge, and make the story more complex and interesting--especially for anyone who grew up in the shadow of hippiedom.