America America

The setting for this great novel by Ethan Canin is so idyllic that it feels more like the 50s than it does the early 70s. Corey Sifter is a working class teen who is befriended by the benevolent patriarch of the upstate NY town in which he lives. Bit by bit he becomes drawn into the seemingly enchanted world of the entire Metarey family until the line blurs between Corey's real family and that of his benefactor. Okay, yes, disaster strikes later (it is the 70s, after all), but I just wanted to cozy up with this book and live out my happy little life in Saline.

Normally, I hate a book that starts with the death of the main character and then works backwards. but in this one, the important character is old and you know you won't regret the story. The story is this: As part of the Metarey circle, Corey ends up running errands for a presidential campaign and occasionally driving the somewhat dubious senator who is running against Nixon (aiming for 1974, though we know how that went). Then all things go to hell (as do the 70s, really).

Senator Bonwiller is the "great liberal hope." It's hard to read about this character without immediately thinking of Senator Ted Kennedy. Bonwiller is a large man of many, um, appetites, just like the Teddy of old, and he's a champion of the "working man" and the undertrodden, much as Kennedy is viewed these days. Even the scandal (or one of them) that envelops Corey and the entire Metarey family and eventually begins the implosion of Bonwiller's campaign evokes Chappaquiddick, though it's not as messy.

And here's where the narration becomes interesting. Or maybe annoying. The story is told in flashbacks by a fiftysomething Corey in present day. We get his reminiscence as well as his explanations of the events unfolding around his job for Senator Bonwiller (he's talking about it to his intern--his protege--at the paper he publishes). But we occasionally also get flashbacks that jump back and forth by a few months or years. That's a little weird. Sometimes he's 17 and a few pages later he's in college at Haverford. Pages later it's back to Corey and his intern, than whoops! he's 17 again and in thrall of the Metarey girls.

Corey is also a somewhat unreliable narrator. I mean, he's believable, and certainly likeable enough. He doesn't seem false, but if the reader is hoping for some sort of resolution to the big mystery/accident that begins the end of the Bonwiller campaign as well as the Metarey family, well, the author is stingy. I never did quite figure out if Corey was lying to himself about what he knew when or if he simply, honestly wasn't sure and wanted to keep a reporter's open mind. Most likely, Corey does not want to wreck the pedestal upon which he has set Liam Metarey by digging too deeply into what his benefactor may or may not have done. And who can blame him? Liam Metarey is a perfect, novelistic creation. He's the one you believe should be running for president except that he's too busy being unassumingly perfect.

Author Canin's slipping back and forth in time makes us patient as readers and the payoff is worth it in the details. As I've said, we begin with the death of Senator Bonwiller, but the identity of the one weeping man comes to us slowly, as does the identity of Corey's wife, though I had my suspicions early on that one. He calls her "my wife" too often for us to not figure out that using her name would spoil the slow discovery. These identities, like the purpose of the bathrobe Liam Metarey gives Corey as a parting gift, come casually and slowly, but it's a fun little puzzle to work everything out.

The book does read a bit like a time of innocence dashed by human greed and corruption. People and the cozy town are wrecked--either literally or figuratively-- and then replaced by better (or the same) and life moves on gently.