America, America by Ethan Canin - Home - Evening Standard
       

America, America by Ethan Canin

Here's a big, epic American novel about a young guy who gets sucked into an important family — it's a bit like Brideshead Revisited, or The Line of Beauty. The young chap, Corey Sifter, works as a handyman on the estate of a rich power-broker with two gorgeous daughters and a wife who is bonkers and flies planes. It's the 1970s; Nixon is in the White House, Vietnam is throbbing away and young Corey gets involved with a man who looks like he might become the next president. There is crime, sex and spectacular death — but Canin never quite goes over the top.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

It is 1971. Nixon is in the White House, the war in Vietnam shows no sign of ending, and Corey Sifter, the young son of working-class parents, is befriended by the powerful Metarey family, whose patriarch is a kingmaker in the world of New York politics. Before long Corey is an aide to the great Senator Henry Bonwiller as he runs for the Democratic Presidential nomination. But as the campaign gains momentum, a dreadful crime is committed and Corey is forced to reconcile his part in a complex tangle of morality, politics, gratitude, love and loyalty.

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