Little America

Rating:
Summary: A book worth reading
Review: "Little America," an intriguing novel by Henry Bromell, is a book worth reading. An eclectic variety of the aspects of society and life are present in the storyline. From family and friendship to politics and government, this book nicely combines all of these elements in an intricately woven plot.
The leading character of the story is a history teacher named Terry Hooper. He lived an interesting life as a child since his father was a CIA station chief in the fictional country of Kurah, supposedly located in the Middle East. Upon reading a report on the assassination of the Kurah King by an American agent, Terry is interested in his father's involvement in this matter.
Hooper starts his investigative work with some questions for his father in regards to the work he performed as a CIA agent in Kurah. Piece by piece, he develops a blurry picture, but before he can fully decipher the story, he runs into a dead end- his father's lips are sealed in accordance with the oath he took as a CIA agent. Thereafter, different workers in the station, each with a unique voice, tell the remaining segments of the story. Despite many twists, turns and the alteration between current time and retrospect (as the characters tell what they know of Kurah), the story is nowhere from misleading. Transitions between speakers, though sometimes lengthy, are smooth and the overall theme and setting of the Middle East is never lost.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of this book is its standpoint on the life and family of a CIA agent. Most movies and novels stereotype CIA agents by making them mysterious, serious, and multi-faceted in terms of personality. Often, the child would report his father sneaking off during the night, not to return for days, with only "business" as a response to inquiries regarding what the odd excursion was for.
This was a book that I enjoyed reading and one that kept me hooked with its suspense. It gave me a new image of the Middle East, one quite different from what is commonly depicted by the media. I would recommend this book to anyone who wouldn't mind a little history.

Rating:
Summary: A book worth reading
Review: "Little America," an intriguing novel by Henry Bromell, is a book worth reading. An eclectic variety of the aspects of society and life are present in the storyline. From family and friendship to politics and government, this book nicely combines all of these elements in an intricately woven plot.
The leading character of the story is a history teacher named Terry Hooper. He lived an interesting life as a child since his father was a CIA station chief in the fictional country of Kurah, supposedly located in the Middle East. Upon reading a report on the assassination of the Kurah King by an American agent, Terry is interested in his father's involvement in this matter.
Hooper starts his investigative work with some questions for his father in regards to the work he performed as a CIA agent in Kurah. Piece by piece, he develops a blurry picture, but before he can fully decipher the story, he runs into a dead end- his father's lips are sealed in accordance with the oath he took as a CIA agent. Thereafter, different workers in the station, each with a unique voice, tell the remaining segments of the story. Despite many twists, turns and the alteration between current time and retrospect (as the characters tell what they know of Kurah), the story is nowhere from misleading. Transitions between speakers, though sometimes lengthy, are smooth and the overall theme and setting of the Middle East is never lost.
One of the distinguishing characteristics of this book is its standpoint on the life and family of a CIA agent. Most movies and novels stereotype CIA agents by making them mysterious, serious, and multi-faceted in terms of personality. Often, the child would report his father sneaking off during the night, not to return for days, with only "business" as a response to inquiries regarding what the odd excursion was for.
This was a book that I enjoyed reading and one that kept me hooked with its suspense. It gave me a new image of the Middle East, one quite different from what is commonly depicted by the media. I would recommend this book to anyone who wouldn't mind a little history.

Rating:
Summary: Great for a book club
Review: 'Little America' has three main story lines, each of which is engrossing and provides a lot of fodder for discussions. In other words, it's a great choice for a book club.

First is the 'Who's your daddy?' line, set in the present, in which Terry Hooper, the adult son of a former CIA operative, tries to find out what kind of person his father was. Was he a good guy or a bad guy? At first glance this appears to be the main story in the book but I think it serves more as a catalyst to keep the story going.

The second story line is the most fascinating and has the potential to generate a good deal of debate. Set in 1958, it revolves around the friendship that develops between the CIA operative and the young king of Kurash, the subject of his mission. Is it real or just part of his assignment? If it's real, which will win out, friendship or 'duty'? What impact will it have on the characters involved?

The third story line in 'Little America' became frighteningly relevant after what occurred when I was about halfway through it (Sept. 11). It looks at American foreign policy through the eyes of Allen and John Foster Dulles. It expresses almost as aptly as 'The Ugly American' how totally clueless we can be when it comes to seeing the world through the eyes of others. Bromell, in a novel based in the 1950s, provides insight into how we might best respond in the current crisis.

Rating:
Summary: Fails to realize its promise
Review: A big disappointment. The author's idea of recreating a vanished era is to say, over and over and over again, that some characters had a martini and smoked Marlboros. This consistently falls flat and doesn't work. Nor do the periodic song lyrics he sprinkles throughout do anything for the atmosphere.

The typos and sloppy editing don't help either; on page 153 we are treated to Lyford "Keys", "Glouchester" and the CIA's top lawyer being referred to as it "general consul," an error that appears here and elsewhere. More serious errors crop up too; Allen Dulles was never referred to as the Great White Case Officer; that was Ted Shackley. The imagined conversations of real historical figures never quite take wing. There are much more serious flaws too. This book raises some interesting and important political issues but never resolves them. The author needs to learn that coming to a conclusion is what literature is all about -- the failure to do so here is a giant cop-out which leads us exactly nowhere by the end of the book. Anybody can write ambiguous and inconclusive endings; good authors take sides and resolve the conflicts they create. I won't ruin the ending but must say it is disappointing in the extreme. On the other hand, if you enjoy America-bashing and the moral equivalence theory (the US and USSR were equally at fault in the Cold War) you will like this sentimental and overwrought version of it. Good points: The author has a nice way with dialogue and there are some excellent descriptive passages about the mythical country of Kurash. He also handles the alternation between past and present events very well; time jumps back and forth but is skillfully handled so the reader is never confused. I'll buy his next book in the hope that he will improve; the basic skills are there but are not realized in this one.

Rating:
Summary: A suspenseful and moving narrative. Read this book!!!
Review: At the beginning of the summer, I received a letter from my AP English teacher, asking me to choose a book to read from a list of about ten. I spent about two hours at the bookstore, going through each of the various choices, making different piles depending on how much I was intrigued by a particular book. Somehow, "Little America" was the only book that wound up in my "Definitely Read This" pile. Just from reading the description on the book jacket, I was loving it! I started reading the first chapter in the middle of the store, and I couldn't put it down. I always know...if a book hooks me this quickly, I'm sold.

Reading Henry Bromwell's dazzling new suspense novel proved a rare treat indeed. The story was fast paced and exciting, immediately throwing me into an exciting new world of politics, intrigue, and exotic adventures. Perfect summer escapist reading, and I loved every minute of it!

Little America tells the story of Terry Hooper's search for the truth about his father, a man he loved deeply, but who had a secret, dark past, that's been locked away for years by the C.I.A. The book travels between two worlds, contemporary Boston and the Middle East of the past. It is a dense story, but as Terry ferrets out the truth about his father and other Americans who once worked in the Middle East, in the country of Kurash, deep, dark secrets emerge, and the reader is taken back to another time all together, a time when the world was different, and different rules applied. A time when Americans genuinely wanted to save the world, and would go to any lengths to do so.

Written in a wonderful style, Bromwell's a talented enough writer to seamlessly make his narrative flow backwards and forwards in time, so the reader sees how the past and the present are inherently related to one another. The author's writing is so realistic, he's so comfortable in this world, that it's hard not to think Bromwell actually moonlights in the world of espionage and foreign politics. The exciting settings of Little America came alive for me, and Bromwell's television experience is apparent because he is able to paint vivid pictures with his words. I actually felt like I'd traveled to the small country of Kurash, experiencing all the strange details of that land. I was mesmerized by Terry's relenteless search for the truth, even if the truth would ultimately hurt him. Ultimately this multigenerational saga proved touching, informational and enlightening. It made me think about what foreign politics was like just a generation ago.

I don't often find a book that just "clicks", especially in this genre, and Little America did. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. I would recommend it to anybody who enjoys haivng a beautiful picture painted in their mind. Though in order to truly enjoy the book, one must look closer, at the individual brush strokes of the painting, to piece together the moving mystery.

Rating:
Summary: Lukewarm intrigue in the Middle East
Review: How ironic that Henry Bromell chooses to call his fictional nation Kurash, which is actually a form of martial wrestling. Bromell seems to wrestle throughout his novel with what he wants to say and where he wants to go with it.
Bromell's main character is Terry Hooper, a boy who grows up the son of a cold-war CIA agent in the aforementioned fictional country. Terry, now an adult historian, tries to find the truth about his father's secret activities and simultaneously gain an understanding of who he is himself. That is where the author's wrestling begins.
There is a healthy amount of intrigue in the top-secret circumstances under which his father operated. The plot is sharp with a pleasant array of surprise twists and turns. But, the author chooses to clutter this plotline with the struggles of Terry to become comfortable with his own identity and the ethical questions surrounding his search for U.S. government secrets. At times, it is difficult to ascertain whether the novel is supposed to be a novel of intrigue and suspense or whether it is supposed to be a story of family relationships and the human dilemma.
Bromell's apparent wrestling with direction is compounded by his frequent shifting of point of view. Terry's first person narrative jumps to his second person observations, to third person, and to other characters' second person views without warning. Setting, time frame and storyline change just as frequently. This creates confusion and frustration for the reader.
When Bromell follows a plotline and moves his story in one direction, however, it is intricate, clever and well-written. It is his hopefully unintentional lack of focus that weighs down what should be a great read.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely well researched
Review: In this day and age, it's fairly easy to find books that, instead of actually researching the subject at hand, make do with an extremely superficial view of the proceedings. The image of Arabs especially is frequently subject to gross generalizations if not downright lies, rooted in research that a first-grader would be ashamed of. Little America, I'm pleased to say, is not one of those books.
As a Palestinian who grew up in Jordan, hearing, seeing, reading about the Jordan in the 50's, this book seemed to recreate the feelings that such information evoked in me: A sense of faux-nostalgia for a time I had never actually lived. Why? Because the story of Kurash and its king is essentially a retelling of the stories of King Hussein as well as King Feisal, and the histories of Jordan and Iraq under the Hashemite families and the conflicts they faced. The book perfectly captures the many challenges that faced the monarchy back in the 50's when it had to deal with the influx of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 "nakbah", not to mention the Ba'ath movements, the Islamic Brotherhood, and of course Jamal Abd Al-Nasser, the strongest force in the Arab world at the time.
The fact that this book was written by an American is, for me, still hard to believe, as even the names of the Arabic characters actually make a distinction between different ARabic nationalities, as opposed to just using the word "Abu".
Aside from that, the story is expertly told in a non-conventional and extremely interesting fashion. This is no thriller, as one other reviewer said, but it still is one of the most fascinating, interesting, and, to sound cliched, important books of our generation. Bravo Mr. Bromell.

Rating:
Summary: Superb!
Review: LITTLE AMERICA is a first-rate psycho-moral drama in the tradition of Conrad, Graham Greene and John Le Carre. High praise, yes...but for me this book is up there with the best of them. Fine writing, great characterizations, terrific sense of place, along with an ingenious structure and a strong narrative engine. Bromell promises much and delivers even more. This is "a thinking man's" spy story. What more could a thinking reader want?

Rating:
Summary: A vanished world made luminous
Review: The mysteries at the heart of Little America will keep readers turning pages, but the melancholy soul of its narrator is what endures. By researching the fall and disappearance of a desert kingdom, Terry hopes to penetrate the iron curtain that separated him from the father he saw but never knew. In the process, he tries to claim some integrity for himself in a world of failed gestures, conflicted loyalties, and ambiguous circumstances. Henry Bromell has a wonderful feeling for the self-hatred that accompanies "the nostalgia of defeat." Arabs and Americans alike are portrayed with complexity and sympathy; nobody escapes scot-free. The plot is beautifully constructed but even more impressive is the grace with which Henry shifts from past to present narratives. There are several outstanding moments when the narrator's acuity of perception and depth of feeling mesh perfectly, as when Terry describes a girl playing tennis or when he is overwhelmed by forgiveness and love. The politics of the book are particularly timely - the shadows of Palestine and Iraq never entirely fade from the shifting sands of his narrative. The particularly heinous behavior of the Dulles brothers remind us forcefully of the arrogance that has so often accompanied American power. In the end, Terry's father relies more on patience, trust, and even love than he does on poisoned handkerchiefs and coded messages. Would that there were more like him! This is that rare book that satisfies on many fronts - political, literary, and emotional. Read it.

Rating:
Summary: Little America
Review: This book was an interesting reading for me. It was one of the best school readings I have been assigned. It was a up front look at a man looking to uncover his fathers past. His style of writing was upfront and direct. We did not feel compelled to censor his minds work of placing swear words in the text where needed, or being vague about intimate love sessions that had taken place. I most enjoyed the idea of the go-cart club. The inventiveness of having this club to lure in the king is one of the most original ideas that I have read in a long while. The book also has a sense of being a bit personal. I do not know Henry Bromell, only that he is good friends with ny english teacher, but from reading this book I have a sense that I know a little about him. That is why I believe people write books, is to allow the readers to have a brief glimpse inside the authors mind and life. He has, in my opinion, succeeded in doing so with Little America.