Secret Father

by James Carroll

Book Overview

"A beautifully textured exploration of relationships between husbands and wives, parents and sons, friends and lovers. Love, in its harsh and dreadful facets, is portrayed as a powerful force, capable... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618152849
• ISBN13: 9780618152841
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Spying for thinkers

I think I have read every "spy novel" on the planet, from old Ambler to the current day. This is a special one. First of all, Carroll is not a spy novelist, but rather a novelist who wrote here about spies. His development of character, use of language, and pacing all are quite distant from the likes of Robert Ludlum. Not that Ludlum isn't fine - I read him also - but Ludlum is about action and noise and not about characters or feelings. Think rather of John LeCarre but without LeCarre's depression, or Alan Furst but with more evolved characters. Carroll uses a tried-and-true technique, with chapters moving back and forth between the viewpoint of the two primary characters. This is momentarily jarring the first time it happens but then slides nicely into place, no longer intrusive. The book flows well. This is a first class effort, comparable to Furst's Dark Star and Ambler's A Coffin for Demetrios and the best of LeCarre. But it will make you think.

Gripping!

James Carroll tells gripping stories that invariably invite us beneath the compelling events unfolding before us into the heart of his characters, encouraging us to join with them as they grapple with what it means to be a human being in a world filled with conflict and emotional complexity. The setting is Berlin before the Iron Curtain was constructed with a focus on events unfolding within the world of espionage. Yet it is the relationships between the characters of this ensemble that lie at the center of this story. Where does one's sense of responsibility for the people we love begin and end? What motivates us to expressions of concern? When do we step back and allow our loved ones to grapple for themselves with what life brings them? We have fathers and sons, mothers and sons, friends and lovers doing their best to make their lives together work. Sometimes they simply don't.The circumstances confronting these characters, both in the present and within their pasts, are worth considering. Mr. Carroll does a fine job of drawing the reader into both the intriguing story and the characters, to the point that what happens to each of them really matters. There are no cookie cutters being applied here folks, just damn good writing, which is precisely what I've come to expect from this fine author.

A Modern Masterpiece

James Carroll's Secret Father is set in Germany at the height of Cold War tensions. The Berlin Wall is about to go up, but three teenagers, all students at the American high school in Weisbaden, West Germany, take off for the May Day parade in East Berlin. This is no ordinary class cut-the trip is more rebellion than adventure and it's `way more dangerous than they imagine. All three have complicated issues with their parents. Ulrich is the adopted son of Major General Healy, head of US intelligence in West Germany. His natural mother, Charlotte, is of the German nobility. She survived the postwar nightmare clearing rubble in Berlin, fighting for scraps to feed her young son until she met Healy. Ulrich, harboring a primeval attraction to his native Germany and drawn to neo-Marxist philosophy, is at war with his stepfather-a cold customer with a hot job. Michael, the son of Frankfurt-based Chase Manhattan banker Paul Montgomery, has reason to be at war with his father, too. A victim of polio who wears leg braces and uses a cane, Michael's mother was killed in a car crash for which Michael blames his father. Existing on the fringes of high school life, Ulrich is his only friend and Michael idolizes him. The third outcast is Katherine (Kit) Carson, Ulrich's girlfriend. Kit's father, based a long way away in Turkey, is a beast to both his wife and daughter, but he is scarcely in the picture. The storyline is driven by Paul Montgomery's and Charlotte Healy's efforts to rescue their children from East German detention. This is complicated by General Healy's position and Charlotte's mysterious past in wartime Germany that makes her trip to Berlin an act of monumental courage. This is an exceptionally well-crafted story, the risk to Ulrich, Michael and Kit only the most visible of the tensions suffusing the air that Berliners breathe. The complicated conflicts between all the characters is handled insightfully by telling the story in first person from Paul's point of view and from Michael's. Indeed, while this story will be memorable to readers long after they put down the book, Carroll's exquisite writing, its high standard maintained page by page from the first line to the last, is what will endure for me.

SECRET FATHER

I absolutely loved this book. It has a slow pace in the beginning but builds both the characters and the plot in a richly detailed and satisfying manner. Since my husband was an American Army Brat high school student in Berlin during the timeframe of this book, it was especially informative and interesting. I learned some things about the history of that time period which even my husband didnt realize living in the city of Berlin as an oblivious teenager. This is a book I still find myself thinking about a month after I read it. It would make a spellbinding movie as it has everything - romance, suspense, poignancy, surprises, and an insightful, rich exploration of family and interpersonal dynamics.

Riveting cold war story

I loved this book, read it over a weekend. I've never read James Carroll's fiction before, but I did enjoy American Requiem and Constantine's Sword. The same moral voice that he employs in those books is evident here. His characters, although flawed, are lovely and I thought about them for a long time after I'd finished the book. Parts of this book are hair raising, and anyone who likes John Le Carre or Graham Greene will like this fine novel. I will give this to many family members this Christmas- it is a good read for men and for women.