The Great American

by Alex Abella

Overview

From Simon & Schuster, The Great American is Alex Abella's romantic novel about a young revolutionary.

Involved in a romance with Laura, a young revolutionary, Ohio Marine William Morgan, stationed in pre-Castro Havana, becomes caught up in the turbulent struggle against Batista, only to be faced with disillusionment, loss, and betrayal in the aftermath of Castro's triumph.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743205481
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	03/01/2000
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.11(d)

About the Author

Alex Abella is an author and journalist. He is known for his books Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008) and Shadow Enemies: Hitler’s Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States (2003). Abella graduated from Colombia University.

Editorial Reviews

In his second novel, Abella (The Killing of the Saints) displays a fascinating, often unintentionally amusing lack of control over such primary elements as character development, plot structure and style. His protagonist, an AWOL American marine named William Morgan, becomes an unlikely hero of the Cuban Revolution, though he sees more action in the bedroom than on the battlefield. His chief credentials as the legendary Yanqui Commandante are a failed attempt to assassinate Batista and months spent wandering aimlessly through the mountains with a ragged band of soldiers, the tedium broken by occasional firefights and polemical meetings with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. Ironically, Morgan is a better soldier than lover. He initially falls for Laura, a beautiful revolutionary who is shot and presumably killed in Havana. While in the mountains, he discovers Irma, a missionary who becomes his wife. He eventually betrays her, telling himself that anyone who wants him so badly can't be worth having. Both women exist primarily to express inordinate devotion to their hero. Negotiating the jungle of hyperbole, endless metaphors and adjective traffic jams-not to mention the author's attempt to show Morgan's elementary Spanish by having him speak only in the infinitive ("You want to want to mean")-will distract most readers from any petty concerns about plot, structure and character. Morgan is a jumble of self-pity and simpleminded notions about romance, politics, psychology and religion. So is the novel. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Cuban-born Abella's (The Killing of the Saints, LJ 9/1/91) second novel is set amid the drama of the overthrow of Cuban dictator Batista and the rise of Castro. William Morgan, an AWOL marine, comes looking for fun with a Cuban pal but is quickly caught up in the fight to topple Batista. Love also plays a central role, as the idealistic Morgan is driven by his often conflicting loves for Laura and Irma. The novel makes several direct references to Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, but this novel is not of the same caliber. Abella excels when he incorporates witchcraft scenes, Morgan's awkward use of Spanish, and the complexity of the Castro revolution, especially as these relate to U.S. interests. But while an action novel with a conscience is to be appreciated, Morgan's political-religious soul searching often intrudes. Look for this romantic novel possibly to resurface as a film.-Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights

Library Journal

A labored second thriller by Abella (The Killing of the Saints, 1991), this set in revolutionary Cuba and featuring double agents and corruption, ambushes and betrayals, lurid sex, and an innocent American protagonist seemingly fated to be disillusioned by all the causes that he's embraced.

It's 1957, and William Morgan, an AWOL marine, has arrived in Havana just days after a failed attack on the life of the corrupt President Batista. William is inadvertently sucked into the pervasive political chaos when he kills one of a gang of men beating up a prostitute. The dead man turns out to be a police sergeant, and William, on the run, accepts the help of the mysterious Max Weinberg, who may or may not be working for the CIA. He also falls madly in love with a young revolutionary named Laura, who convinces him that he must kill Batista. And so, at a black-tie affair at the Havana Yacht Club, he aims at the president, but, of all the rotten luck, young Senator Kennedy's head gets in the way "as though prefiguring the fate that will befall him." Laura is killed in the aftermath, but William escapes, casting his lot with the rebels. Believing that he has to atone for his failure and for Laura's death, he leads small bands of rebels in guerrilla warfare, rubs shoulders with Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, and meets Irma, a young Christian missionary from California. William, who distrusts Castro, rationalizes that he is fighting against Batista, rather than for Castro, but his personal beliefs are soon overwhelmed by Castro and his supporters, who transform William into a symbol of the revolution. Then he discovers that Castro and Laura have had a fling, that Laura may not be dead, and that he is caught between warring conspiracies.

A contrived hero and a myopic view of an otherwise interesting historical moment add up to an unconvincing thriller.

Kirkus Reviews