If Men Were Angels: A Novel - Hardcover

Karaim, Reed

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393047806 ISBN 13: 9780393047806

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1999

Synopsis

Reporter Cliff O'Connell finds himself caught between personal and political passions when his research into darkhorse presidential candidate Thomas Crane reveals a terrible secret that should have remained buried forever. A first novel. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Reed Karaim worked in the Washington bureau of Knight-Ridder Newspapers for eight years. In 1992, he covered the Democratic presidential campaign from April through the election. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

A bilious fictional examination of the perverse relationship between a presidential candidate too good to be true and a newspaper reporter whose insecurities and uncanny nose for news bring doom and gloom to the campaign trail. Much of this humorless, darkly solemn first novel is evidently based on personal experience: Karaim, a Washington journalist for the Miami-based Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, covered the 1992 Democratic campaign and revels in the cynicism, monotony, lost luggage, and stale odors that envelope a cadre of journalists whose job it is eat, drink, and merrily cling to the candidate's every word and gesture. Illinois Senator Thomas Hart Saint Thomas Crane is as good as they come: an intelligent, sincerely compassionate liberal Democrat who hasn't forgotten the despair of his lower-class, coal-town upbringing. Terminally brooding journalist Cliff O'Connell, suffers from career burnout (at age 33) and the untimely departure of his lover, Robin Winters, now a strategist in the Crane machine. Though the two meet for some passionate tumbles, Karaim avoids the pot-boiling, bed-hopping high jinks of current political romans ... clef and instead contrasts Crane's dogged determination to be the hero the voting public wants with O'Connells relentless attempt to find himself in the subject hes covering. When Crane tells voters that he never lies, the suspicious reporter pokes around the senators Illinois hometown and discovers a secret that could ruin him. Despite a teary plea from Robin, O'Connell prints the truth, then masochistically stays with the campaign as public condemnation of Crane slowly simmers into an angry backlash at the news media for revealing an aspect of his character that may not have been so bad after all. Can the electorate, with its need to idolize, and the media, with its need to slay the celebrities it creates, ever grasp the truth about political leaders? Though he ducks the answer with an inevitableand much too convenienttragic end, Karaim deserves credit for asking. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An absorbing political drama about a golden boy presidential candidate and the sympathetic reporter who brings him down, Karaim's debut is certainly timely, and the issues it raises are provocative. The moral lapseAthe "sin"Aof liberal Illinois congressman Thomas Crane is something that 33-year-old Montana-born reporter Cliff O'Connell discovers reluctantly, though breaking the story will gain him entr?e to the privileged Ivy League world of newspaper journalism. Working in Washington, D.C., for a newspaper syndicate based in San Diego, O'Connell is assigned to cover Crane's campaign; his main worry is that his ex-lover, Robin Winter, is on the staff of the Crane camp. But as the campaign catches fire and O'Connell begins to respect Crane, he uncovers parts of the candidate's past overlooked by other reporters, finally unearthing the potential bombshell. Agonizing over whether to run the story, Cliff makes a personal rather than a professional decision because of something Robin saysAand then he must live with the consequences. Karaim, who covered the 1992 Democratic campaign for Knight-Ridder, invests the novel with the authoritative details of nonfiction: observations about the nature of journalism, an insider's view of a political organization in the throes of a presidential race; the behavior of the American public when faced with scandal and celebrity. Karaim's attention to the development of O'Connell's character as he faces a serious moral dilemma elevates the novel from legal thriller to psychological drama. As O'Connell feels the pressure of "desperate bargains struck with ourselves and others," the sword of Damocles that's been hanging over this novel finally falls. Indeed, the foreshadowing here is heavyAthe narrative conceit is that the reader knows the Thomas Crane story, but not the untold tale of the reporter's struggleAbut the writing itself brings to the novel's melancholy intelligence a kind of worldly, journalistic know-how that rescues the novel from an excess of angst.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Cliff O'Connell gets his first chance at political coverage when his newspaper assigns him to trail the presidential campaign of Thomas Crane, U.S. senator from Illinois, a Democrat whose charisma has taken him a long way from his small-town roots. O'Connell stumbles onto a career-making story when he discovers a secret from Crane's past that could wreck his chances for winning the presidency just as the candidate is pulling ahead in the polls. If O'Connell writes the story, he also risks a fragile second chance with an ex-girlfriend, Robin Winters, who now works for the campaign. Karaim's riveting novel captures the moral struggles of the reporter and, probably, a decent man compelled to cover a youthful error. Karaim, a former political reporter who covered the 1992 presidential election for Knight-Ridder, brings to life the grinding tedium of a campaign, the cynicism of the press, the constant spin tactics of the candidate's staff, and the enduring longing of the American public to believe in the candidates. Vanessa Bush

In the name of truth, journalists pursue every secret, invade every corner, and publish so that the public can know the simple facts and decide the truth for themselves. With this standard firmly in hand, a young reporter follows a distinguished senator who is making a presidential bid. Sharing an interest in Civil War history, the two connect as the campaign unfolds. Soon, though, a niggling inconsistency begins to prey on the reporter's mind. With his feelings complicated by the presence of an ex-lover working as an adviser to the candidate, the reporter teases out a distant fact whose truth is proved by a teenager with a face much like the candidate's own. In his first novel, Karaim delivers a story that is searingly realistic and exquisitely written. A Knight-Ridder journalist who has covered prominent candidates, Karaim reports with laconic veracity about the stress, excitement, and boredom of a campaign. Of the recent crop of Washington novels, this may well be the best. A sure bet for all public libraries.
-ABarbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393047806
• ISBN 13: 9780393047806
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 311