By, David Herman
2 min read
ByDavid Herman, David Herman
Ethan Canin
Bloomsbury £7.99
Ethan Canin has hit the jackpot with his sixth novel, a story of political intrigue, conspiracy and social change in modern America.
Corey Sifter is a high-school student in small, north-eastern town. He gets a summer job working for Liam Metarey, the town’s Gatsby: very rich, charismatic, with a dark, elusive centre. Metarey’s family built the town and their story is that of industrial America. Liam is getting involved with politics. He is the man behind Senator Bonwiller’s run for president against Nixon in what was to become the “Watergate” election of 1972. Against the background of Vietnam and a presidential election, Corey becomes increasingly drawn into the Metarey family, with life-changing consequences.
Now, 30 years later, Bonwiller is dead. The novel begins with his funeral. Corey, now a local newspaper editor,
looks back on his life and the moment when he got a glimpse into how America works. After the funeral, he stays and watches and sees an elderly couple at Bonwiller’s grave. They, too, have unfinished business with the senator.
Almost 500 pages long, America America is a hugely readable epic, shifting between Corey’s story and the larger picture of a changing America. It moves effortlessly between the early 1970s when Corey is 16 and first meets the Metareys, and the turn of the century, looking back. This gives the novel both its suspense and its elegiac feel, reflecting on a vanished world.
It is a curious mix of The Great Gatsby and Brideshead Revisited, another nostalgic tale of a young outsider who is sucked into the dramas of a rich, cursed family. “I knew then without doubt that it was all ending,” says Corey towards the end of the novel. He means the Bonwiller campaign, the story of the Metareys and a moment in American history.
Canin also moves between genres, bringing together a big family epic and a conspiracy thriller, with elements of corruption and intrigue. Right at the beginning, Corey notices that the senator’s obituaries barely mention Anodyne Energy and Silverton Orchards — the dark centre that pulls the novel along. It captures the paranoid style of the early 1970s. At one point, a trainee reporter tells Corey: “I don’t think you’re presuming enough conspiracy.” Whatever America America lacks, it’s not conspiracy. However, it’s much more than a political thriller. At its best, it’s a story of how America changed, a loss of innocence. Readers of Philip Roth will find echoes of American Pastoral.
Canin writes in a clear, plain style. The story rattles along, the prose doesn’t get in the way — you won’t find many beautiful sentences — and the novel is packed with dramatic incident and vivid characters.
There is enough mystery and suspense to keep you turning the pages, although the suspense is too contrived and in the end it tells you less about America than you think, but for those yet to take off for the summer holidays, you won’t find a more enjoyable poolside read.
David Herman is the JC’s chief fiction reviewer
