Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts

Thursday, March 22, 2018

The Italian Party: No One is What They Appear To Be


The Italian Party is a smart, sharp, and satiric take on 1950s American culture and politics.

The newlyweds were picture perfect American ideals in the flesh: Michael, twenty-four, a handsome, well-dressed man who shaved four times a day, and twenty-year-old Scottie, Vassar educated, beautiful, blond haired, and dressed in pearls, heels, gloves, hat-- and girdle and underarm perspiration guards.

Their whirlwind courtship and quick marriage was secretly a marriage of convenience for them both. The bride was pregnant and the husband was told a wife was good for his new job. Neither knew much about the other, and they liked it that way.

They are beginning their lives together in Siena, Italy.

"They seemed to have stepped right out of an advertisement for Betty Crocker, Wonder Bread or capitalism itself."
Post-war Italy was still rebuilding after WWII--both its infrastructure and its political structure. American cultural imperialism was in full swing, hoping to lure Italy away from the Communist Party and Soviet influence. The CIA and the Communists covert operations have converged on Siena's mayoral election.

Michael works for Ford and has been sent to Siena to sell tractors, hoping to lure farmers into modernization, but the locals are not very receptive.

The newlyweds try to live up to the glossy ideals of advertising, being the kind of husband and wife seen in on a magazine cover. But each is living a lie.
Glamor in 1958
Meanwhile, they are surrounded and befriended by people with hidden agendas, secret liaisons, and complicated backgrounds.

All that is hidden eventually is outed, taking the newlyweds into surprising and very non-Norman Rockwell territory.

I enjoyed the satire and the historical background. The story had lots of twists and complications. The ending felt far-fetched to me in terms of how Michael and Scottie resolve their marital challenges. But the characters are quite happy and eager for new adventures.

I received a free e-book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Italian Party
by Christina Lynch
St. Martin's Press
Pub Date 20 Mar 2018
ISBN: 9781250147837
PRICE: $25.99





Thursday, April 20, 2017

Nick and Jake: A Literary-Historical Smash Up


Nick and Jake: An Epistolary Novel by Jonathan Richards and Tad Richards mixes literary figures with historical persons.

In 1953 Nick Carraway, one-hit wonder novelist and Assistant Undersecretary of State for European Affairs, becomes friends with Jake Barnes, expatriate veteran and newsman with a conscience.

America is embroiled in a Cold War and a nuclear arms race, with Vietnam emerging as the central playing field. The CIA is interfering with foreign governments. On the homefront, McCarthy's witch hunt for Reds is peaking and the CIA is spying on Americans.

CIA maverick Robert Cohn's nephew Robert is Senator McCarthy's top aide and is on a book burning tour of American government libraries in Europe.

True Blue Nick is losing his rose-tinted view of the homeland and is finally starting that second novel. Jake's war wound may be reversible thanks to cutting-edge surgery developed when Dr. Hamburger turned George into Christine Jorgensen.

I had great fun identifying the references. Nick (from The Great Gatsby) and Jake (from The Sun Also Rises) are products of the 1920s, watching a younger generation dismantle the world they fought to preserve. Readers meet a host of other characters ranging from schoolyard bully Bill (William) Buckley, CIA director Allen Dulles, neo-conservative pioneer Irving Kristol, collaborator Maurice Chevalier, TV director Jimmie Dodd (host of Mickey Mouse Club), and Ronnie Gilchrist, a young singer mistaken for The Weavers' Ronnie Gilbert.

The novel is a fun jaunt, but also a provocative reminder of America's past sins. It connects the dots between choices made in 1953 that created problems that impact us to this day--like the destabilization of the Middle East. And it is a timely reminder and warning not to repeat the past.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Nick and Jake: An Epistolary Novel
Jonathan Richards and Tad Richards
Open Road Media
ebook
$24.99
ISBN: 9781611458282