The Manchurian Candidate

This book is one of the best I have ever read. It is fast paced and your attention is never allowed to stray from the story. The two main characters are played off each other throughout the whole story. Ending is abrupt but well done.

This is a very important book and I'm glad I read it. It takes some getting used to...the author writes with some big words and long sentenses. But once you get used to his style of writing it flows well. The story is interesting and as you move to the middle of the book the action picks up. Reading the news today you can see that this book was right on the mark. The author could have used a better editor to shorten some of the sections but overall it does not bother me.

I thought I understood this book from having watched the movie, but oh no. No, no no. I read the book with the same spreading horror that I'd seen the movie as a young kid. There haven't been many books that have thrown me into that deliciously creeped-out mode (where I start peeking at my wife like I used to as a kid worry about the darkness in the closet) where I can't put the book down for hours. We came from this place, you see. We came from this alien place called the Fifites and the Sixties and anyone who reads a book that recalls those times viscerally to us, and doesn't get their skin crawling, that person must have spent the Fifties reading about the Twenties, I suppose. Even those of us who weren't alive then, we see the shadows in the eyes of those we love who were. I'm not trying to say the 50's and the 60's were some horrific cesspool. Hell, to them, we'd be a horrific cesspool. I am saying they had blind spots a mile wide that they don't see, and which we see. (And we have some blind spots they'd see, too. I don't know which of us should be more horrified.) Richard Condon saw the blind spots of his society, and we owe it to the walking wounded who lived through that time to read this book. And in 30 years, I hope we have a book in mind where some brave and unsung author who made his living seeing our blind spots might have a book in the dollar bins of the bookstores for us to read, and remember what it was like to go through the strange time of now. Mostly, it was just a good book. Oh, but wait, there's more. There was an election not long ago, wasn't there? I think I was mostly hiding from it. Well, somehow, that election got transported back in time and into a book and if you're reading this, right now you have the chance to see something very very weird: prophecy that almost came true but didn't, only it did in another way, or maybe it didn't at all, but holy crap, it's going to be an 'interesting' (in the Chinese sense) four years.

In spite of giving this book only a three star rating, I highly recommend reading it. I am a reader, a writer, an editor, and a critic. Rating this book was challenging. The overblown prose had me gagging for the first few chapters, but then I got swept up in the story. I think it's important to look at this story in the context of the time it was written (1959) when writers typed out their manuscripts chapter at a time, without benefit of spellcheck, a delete key, or cut and paste. A rewrite is a much less onerous task today. With the benefit of today's tools, The Manchurian Candidate might have greater literary merit. By the time I was a third of the way into the book, either Condon's style had improved or, I had adapted to it. The last few chapters of the book take place at the national convention of the American party and come strangely close to describing the 2016 Republican convention. Three examples follow. I enclose each example in quotation marks and ellipses, sorry, I can't do italics from my iPad. The comments in brackets are mine. ". . .The petition urged the nomination of John Yerkes Iselin to the Presidency of the United States candidacy under the general indivisive slogan of “The Man Who Saves America.". . ." ". . .Professor Hugh Bone, when writing of party platforms as delivered at conventions said: "If the voter expects to find specific issues and clearly defined party policy in the platform he will be sorely disappointed. As a guide to the program to be carried out by the victorious party the platform is also of little value.”. . ." " . . .British political scholar Lord Bryce observed that the purpose of the American party platform appears to be “neither to define nor to convince, but rather to attract and confuse.”. . ." ". . .Due to the insistence of Senator Iselin [Donald Trump] the platform also demanded “the eradication [deportation] of Communists [muslims] and Communist [Islamic] thought without mercy wherever and whenever Our Flag flies.”. . ." Chapter XXVII The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon Apparently today's tools have also brought to light plagiarism in Condon's work where he has borrowed from "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves (1934). It's an important topic today because of the use of plagiarized material in a speech by Melania Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention. As a writer, I consider plagiarism egregious. Unfortunately, my reading of and reaction to "The Manchurian Candidate" occurred before I was aware of it. So, my review doesn't take it into consideration.

Trama bem desenvolvida com uma certa dose de humor negro. O livro é um pouco datado porque focado na guerra fria e na politica americana do fim dos anos 50. Mas, sem dúvida, vale a leitura.

I had seen and loved the original film years ago, not realizing it had been based on a novel. Well, this book is great and different enough from the film adaptation that it's worth the read. Give it a shot!

Finally caught up with this, after many years. Love the film. The book is good, but I think I prefer how everything plays out in the film. I think it’s tighter and provides a better arc for both Marco and Shaw. Still a good book.

I've seen both films of this book and like them both. I've also read about the controversy surrounding it. Notwithstanding that, it's a very good, high-quality read, well-paced and structured, the kind of book one would be happy to read again.

Bei diesem Buch ist es mir zwischendurch kalt den Rücken herunter gelaufen. Manche Passagen sind fast schon visionär mit Blick auf die Trump-Präsidentschaft. Vom Stil her natürlich so etwas von 1950er Jahre, ist die Geschichte inhaltlich zwar ziemlich weit hergeholt (oder vielleicht doch nicht??), aber auf ihre Art zeitlos-faszinierend. Die Gier nach Macht scheint unstillbar zu sein.