If Men Were Angels (Bookcassette(r) Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, important, and poetic
Review: By the bottom of the first page, I was clearly on for the ride of "If Men Were Angels." I believe Karaim has achieved something truly important: a near-thriller, highly plausible, which makes us readers question our own ethical hierarchies. I also admire this writer's capacity for both indelible images and that "sense of a room" which I recognized repeatedly but could not have put into words myself.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, important, and poetic
Review: By the bottom of the first page, I was clearly on for the ride of "If Men Were Angels." I believe Karaim has achieved something truly important: a near-thriller, highly plausible, which makes us readers question our own ethical hierarchies. I also admire this writer's capacity for both indelible images and that "sense of a room" which I recognized repeatedly but could not have put into words myself.

Rating:
Summary: A terrific story about truth and deceit in a campaign.
Review: Did George W. Bush do cocaine? Whether you care or not, a presidential campaign once again is becoming a frenzy of speculation and possible scandal over something that may have happened decades earlier in a candidate's personal life. Decisions are made about how much to tell, how much to reveal, how much to hold back. By the candidates, by the reporters who cover them. Their lives can be changed by what they choose, and the nation's life can be affected as well. Want to know what it feels like inside? Read Reed Karaim's book. A compelling and often suspenseful tale, it takes you inside a fictional campaign to watch how these characters of politics and the press dance with one another and around one another and how their histories and values guide their decisions about truth and deceit. One revelation of my own: I am a friend of Karaim's. I am also a political writer, and I know a terrific book when I see one.

Rating:
Summary: A great first book
Review: I highly recommend Reed Karaim's suspenseful, complex first novel. While on the most basic level it presents itself as a political thriller, it also offers the careful reader a myriad of subtle riches. Karaim has a poet's ear for language (the audio cassette must be a delight), and a keen eye for pop culture in today's America. His experience in the 1992 presidential campaign helps render the all-too-believable clash between a reporter's implacable search for facts and an ambitious Senator's spin machine. With his easy command of small, yet startling insights that suggest Updike, Karaim has fashioned a densely populated story set on the grand stage that is America. Like a Montana landscape in winter, it gives us the terrible beauty of truth -- and its consequences. It's a winner.

Rating:
Summary: A look inside a presidential campaign tour
Review: It isn't the greatest political novel ever written, that award has to go to "Primary Colors", however for a debut it isn't bad. Being someone who works in politics and reads a great deal of politically related books, I think the book has moments of great campaign text, but gets a little weak in the sappy, sometimes drawn out paragraphs about O'Connell's former girlfriend. At times I found myself skipping whole pages to get back to the story, which is much more entertaining and certianly more exciting. Overall a good book, that had the potential for greatness. Would recommend to friends after it comes out in paperback.

Rating:
Summary: A political thriller, where the thrills are in the writing
Review: This is an especially instructive book as we head into another major election. Reed Karaim, who has done his time as a journalist on the presidential campaign trail, takes a step back from the action here and offers a literate, important novel that is far greater than the sum of the daily, discordant parts that go into a campaign. This is the world of sound bites, wire dispatches, canned stump speeches and cynical journalists, elevated to the emotional and intellectual level of Greek tragedy. Cliff O'Connell, the reporter-narrator, pursues a potentially career making story, but one that could destroy a worthy candidate and a worthy man. It's a fascinating exploration of ambition, truth, and ethics in the maelstrom, but the real appeal is in Karaim's deft prose. When the idiocies of the daily campaign and its coverage start to get you down, pick up this volume to remember why the process is a noble one, after all.