Little America has all the elements of a classic espionage story: America spies in the Middle East during the Cold War, informants with murky motives, geopolitical maneuvering, revolts, and assassinations. I especially liked how Bromell captures the Arabs' dilemma of the time:
First, our narrator jumps willy-nilly from the present to the past and from person to person. I'm sure Bromell would argue that it's intended to reflect the fragmentary nature of experience, but the effect didn't work for me. It just concentrated my attention on the aspects of the story that our narrator couldn't possibly have uncovered.
Second, the stakes never seemed sufficiently high to engage me with the story. We know from the beginning that the King of Kurash will be assassinated. We even have a pretty good idea of why he's killed. The only question is whether the narrator's father pulled the trigger. I didn't really care.
We see ourselves from the point of view of the West and find ourselves lacking... With self-hatred comes a terrible nostalgia for the way things were, or at least the way we imagine things were... This nostalgia of defeat is dangerous and breeds tyrants. (p 282)However, the book suffers from two fatal flaws.
First, our narrator jumps willy-nilly from the present to the past and from person to person. I'm sure Bromell would argue that it's intended to reflect the fragmentary nature of experience, but the effect didn't work for me. It just concentrated my attention on the aspects of the story that our narrator couldn't possibly have uncovered.
Second, the stakes never seemed sufficiently high to engage me with the story. We know from the beginning that the King of Kurash will be assassinated. We even have a pretty good idea of why he's killed. The only question is whether the narrator's father pulled the trigger. I didn't really care.
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