Rating: 
Summary: This book is amazing!
Review: Although I have read several other Condon books, this is by far his best work. I had the rare pleasure of reading this book aloud with a friend. It is so beautifully written that I would stop and re-read a paragraph just because of the way the words rolled off my tongue. The story is engrossing, and the characters are very well developed. It is very easy to visualize every word. This is one of the few books I have read that actually translated well for the movie, (I still recommend reading the book first).If you like devious political thrillers with a sly comic edge, this is the book for you!
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Summary: Wickedly Funny & Probably Closer To Home Than We'd Like
Review: As Louis Menand points out in his astute introduction, most people today are familiar with THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE through the John Frankenheimer film--which was a critical and box office failure when first released in 1962 and which only came into its own with a 1980s reevaluation. The Condon novel, however, was both a critical and commercial success from the first instant of its 1959 publication, and although it has been in and out of print over the years it has never been less than critically well-regarded and tremendously influential.
Readers who come to the novel in the wake of the 1962 film or the later remake are in for a mighty shock. The story is essentially the same--a study in cold war paranoia concerning a Korean War hero who has been secretly programmed by Communists to precipitate an American political coup. But both the characters and the tone of the novel are utterly unlike anything either the original or the more recent film version suggests.
The characters are sick, twisted, perverted beyond imagination, often sadistic, occasionally drug addicted, and in one very notable instance given to fits of incest; the tone is that of a 1950s pulp thriller filtered through the blackest sense of humor to hit the page since Nathaniel West penned the utterly poisonous MISS LONELYHEARTS and DAY OF THE LOCUST in the 1930s. Whatever virtue exists is comparative at best, and innocence does not exist at all.
Condon is not a great writer--his style is too derivative for that--but he is a remarkably clever one, juggling idioms and shifting tones as he moves from the faintly improbable to the ludicrously impossible, sweeping away whatever objections you may have to create a portrait of a society where the strong consume the weak as a matter of course and indeed, without significant personal malice. It one very big, very bitter pill, and when all is said and done you'll roll your eyes, shake your head... and then, with an unwilling laugh... admit that if the full truth was ever made known about American politics, this would probably be pretty close to it.
Strong stuff for readers with imagination, but even the most hardened should brace themselves for the ride. Recommended!
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Rating:
Summary: The mother from Hell and the great political thriller
Review: At this point it is no secret that Richard Condon's "The Manchurian Candidate" features mind control and a mother from hell. But what may be very surprising is how this novel is still up-to-date more than forty years after its first printing. The main reason to this evidence is that Condon's book captures with accuracy the portray of a time --however this might make a bad book dated, this characteristic makes a good book timeless.
In years to come, people will read "The Manchurian Candidate" to see how the Cold War and Communism paranoia affected people's lives in the 50's. The tone in the novel favors the sarcasm and black humor rather than reverential attitude. Some scenes are too funny to be takes seriously and that is why the book is addictive.
However much stereotypical the characters may sound, they are very human in their attitudes, in their longing for power and security. Eleanor Iselin --usually called Raymond's mother, in the book-- is the character that defines `mother from hell'. If you look up in the dictionary this entry, you should find Mrs. Iselin's name there. And if one looks up for great political thriller should find "The Manchurian Candidate".
Some of the best passages of the book are those featuring her writing down her husband's personal black list accusing almost everyone of communism. This gives the dimension of what people may have faced in the 50s. These moments can be more disturbing than all the brainwashing part.
And despite the satirical nature of the story, this is one to be taken seriously. There may not be more communists or even Cold War in the World, but there will always be people crazy to have more and more power. And these are the ones to be feared, those who have nothing to lose and wouldn't hesitate in sacrifice themselves and other people for getting what they want.
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Summary: To Manchuria with Love
Review: Condon has written a fascinating thriller on brain washing bordering on science fiction.The programmed individual is thoroughly under the handler's control who can kill his own mother, wife or anybody they chose at random like a heartless robot. The point was not as much to prove its plausibility but to show its absurdity if it can be mastered. We are also given a high dosage of McCarthyism and pure demagoguery of American politics. Raymond Shaw, an ordinary soldier is captured along with his comrades during the Korean war and were brain washed by a Chinese doctor for three grueling days and returned to the US. He is the one chosen, to be used as an assassin through his American handler. What a handler it turned out to be! His platoon officer, Major Ben Marco, suspects Raymond and the race against time begins. Ben has to decipher the code which transforms Raymond into a ruthless killer and stop him. He has to reconstruct his nightmares of those ghastly three days of mental torture and sort out the truth through mist and fog of illusion and delusion.He knows his friend is a mere tool and yet he lets him play one last deadly act and hopes he has the trump card to outsmart Raymond's handler. Does he succeed? A tour de force indeed.
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Summary: McCarthyism, Cold War evils, and a mother from hell...
Review: For a person who does not like your Cold War spy novels I must admit that The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon is one of those rare books I consider to be simply brilliant. It is concise, very well-written, and has a story which is absolutely incredible (well okay, by today's standards it might be considered a bit over-the-top). In The Manchurian Candidate we have a US platoon in Korea (during the war) captured by Chinese/Russian scientists who brainwash them. One sargeant in particular is targetted to be their assassin on demand after the war. This fellow happens to have a power-hungry mother (..to be kind; she is truly vile) and her bozo husband who is modelled after the commie-hating Senator McCarthy. From here the story gets more complex and interwoven, with a truly shocking and brilliant ending. Bottom line: upon finishing this book you'll say "boy, that was GOOD". Compulsory reading. (compared with the film adaptation of The Manchurian Candidate, the novel is superior ... as is often the case. However the film does capture the essence of the book albeit in a somewhat diluted fashion.)
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Summary: Should definitely be in print.
Review: Had to read this book for a college class. ... This is an awesome book. It's a military psychological thriller in which some POW US soldiers are brainwashed and sent home; all programmed to do damage to the government when they get there. Given that the men are war heroes, it isn't hard for them to get a foot in the door where they can really wreak havoc. The plot twists around in ways too creepy to be believed, yet too familiar to be completely discounted...heh heh heh. It's definitely readable as a thriller, but does good double duty as a quasi sci-fi conspiracy novel, not to mention the informed and responsible portrayal of US military intelligence. I wanted to call it Kurt Vonnegut meets Tom Clancy, but that's not doing it justice. Maybe it's out-of-print because it couldn't find a niche. Or maybe THEY don't want you to read it.
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Summary: Read Louis Menard's new introduction after the story itself
Review: Hopefully, many new readers will seek out this re-release of Richard Condon's original 1959 effort now that a re-tooled movie version of "The Manchurian Candidate" has hit the screen. It's incredible writing from a master storyteller who knows just what - and what not - to reveal at the just the right moment. When I first dived into it, my thinking was "gee, the writing's a little stilted and dated." However, I found it took a couple of pages to set your mind to what it must have been like reading this when it came out in 1959 during the height of Cold War paranoia, "The Red Menace," just coming out of McCarthyism, etc. In that context, "Candidate" is breathtaking.
The real triumph of the re-release is the very insightful introduction by Louis Menard. It does a fabulous job of placing the book and the 1962 movie into historical context, as well as giving you some background on Condon himself. Menard calls Condon an earlier day Michael Crichton, in the sense that the two possess enough movie-making savvy that their books "practically provide camera angles."
Here's my one piece of advice though: read closely enough, Menard's introduction delves into one or two key plot points. True, most readers will know the plot going in, but I think the intelligent reader will be better served diving straight into Condon's story and saving the intro for a post-book treat. I read it before and after, and I was struck by how much more meaningful Menard's various contextual points were after the book's contents were lodged firmly in my memory banks.
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Summary: Great book (2004 movie is much different)
Review: I bought this book after seeing the newly remade movie. The characters are essentially the same, with one important difference, but the story and tone are quite different, and the relationships among the characters are different. Most notably, Raymond's mother's second husband, Senator John Iselin, is a key character in the book but does not exist in the movie; Raymond and Ben are close friends; Eugenie is not an undercover fed. The differences go on, but this is not a review comparing the movie to the book.
It's interesting that this book is usually characterized as being a thriller. It is a fascinating story but the first three-quarters of the book strike me more as a wry black comedy rather than a thriller. It paints some absurdly twisted scenes that are so over the top that it can only be considered comedic. For example, Iselin in serving in the military in 1944 near an Eskimo village solicited sex from the indigenous tribe and was set up with a woman for sex in an igloo in view of the group. Suddenly one Eskimo shed his outer clothes, turned out to be a German officer who apparently objected, perhaps this was his woman. Iselin decided it was a good time to leave but the woman, who by now had taken a liking to him, grabbed him firmly by the privates to retard his retreat. He finally shook her off by shoving her in the face with his foot but not before she bit him fiercely; he ended up with a purple heart.
Another scene sends the brainwashed Raymond through a series of odd coincidences so that he falls into a state where he becomes receptive to hypnotic suggestion. He hears someone say to "go jump in the lake," upon which Raymond takes it literally, gets a boat, rows to the middle of a lake, and jumps in.
When Marco first meets Eugenie, she fires off clever repartee right out of a 1940's detective story, to such an extent that it seems intended to be satire.
This reminds me of some of the dark absurdities in Catch-22, or Infinite Jest (wherein a character commits suicide by putting his head in the oven--a microwave oven).
The book is very elegantly written, and sent me to the dictionary a couple of times to look up definitions of words that were perfect fits for their use but that one does not see every day. The references to Communism are probably best appreciated with a foundation of knowledge about the political issues of the day.
The story is engaging though not utterly unpredictable. You'll love to hate Raymond's mother and Iselin, develop sympathy for poor Raymond, and admire Ben Marco.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent dark comedy/thriller
Review: I finally read the book after having seen the great 1962 movie (starring Frank Sinatra) many times, and also seeing the only fair 2004 remake (starring Denzel Washington). I found that the '62 film version is quite faithful to this original novel. In the book, as you'd generally expect, the plot is more fully fleshed out -- especially in its look at Cold War America's politics (which in many ways feels surprisingly relevant to War-on-Terror America's politics) -- and the characters are much better developed. One thing I didn't quite expect is that the book is very heavy on sex, in both the '60s Ian Fleming mode and a somewhat darker, kinkier Freudian way. The 2004 movie is better viewed as loosely based on the screenplay of the '62 film rather than the book. A huge element in the novel (and in the '62 movie) is a biting, dark humor that unfortunately is almost entirely missing in the 2004 movie. The book is well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Marvelous!
Review: I first saw the equally good movie due to the AFI's 100 Greatest Movies rating. It looked like it might be interesting and I was amazed. The movie (made in 1961) directly assaulted McCarthyism and the red scare in a rather apocalyptic satire. This prompted me to seek out the book that the movie was based upon thinking that it could only be better, as books commonly are. Little did I know that the book could have been a companion to the movie and vice-versa. This was undoubtedly due to the fact that Richard Condon, the author, collaborated with the makers of the movie. The book provides insight that the movie couldn't possibly have put in including a heroine-addicted incest-loving rapist. All around the political and social commentary in the story (I'm using story since I suggest that in order to get a good all around view of the author's vision one should both read the book and watch the movie, in either order.) carry the book beyond the author's masterful narrative. If you have any interest in suspense, intrigue, literature, or history this story is a winner.
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