Customer Reviews

Loving Little Egypt

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Loving Little Egypt is a fascinating tale of Little Egypt, a blind young man who finds adventure wandering the phone network with his friends, an early "phone phreak" or a forerunner hacker. A rich emotional tapestry, set off with vivid cameo appearances by Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. The novel resonates for years to come, so I'm puzzled that this book and other McMahon novels have gone out of print. If you can find it, read it.

Loving Little Egypt tells a rollicking good story that makes a seemingly unlikely series of events seem very plausible. The situation of a bunch of blind and nearly blind kids taking on some of the industrial giants of the 1920's is handled well with very plausible depictions of Alexaznder Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, William Randolph Hearst and host of addtional "cameo appearances" by other well-known figures of the time. The book contains enough historical accuracy to make it all seem possible. The book reminded me a bit of Thunderstruck by Erik Larson. It was a very enjoyable read!

The underlying premise of "Loving Little Egypt" is a little far-fetched but intriguing: a sight impaired young man in the early part of the 20th Century finds friendship (with Alexander Graham Bell, among others), a sense of purpose and self confidence through his ability to manipulate the telephone system of the day to his own means and ends. I read (and re-read) this marvelous novel a long time ago, so I do not recall all its details. But now, so many years later, I am still left with the distinct feeling that I had partaken of something very, very special. "Loving Little Egypt" is not an easy book to come across, so if you find it in some second-hand book shop, be sure to buy it and read it. I guarantee that you will love it, and its characters, as much as I did.

Delightful, quirky, funny, brilliant. It's wonderful that this book is back in print. McMahon deserves to be better-known.

If you want to understand the power of telecommunity, and the fact that it wasn't invented yesterday, this is the book for you. A beautiful blend of story, science, adventure and history. I loved it so much that I deliberately had to read the last half slowly, to keep it from being over.

This is a minimally engaging book -- just interesting enough to keep you going, but never so interesting that it counts as engrossing. The premise is weak -- the main character is a kind of telephone surfer -- and the characters are superficial and silly. And though the author warns you at the beginning that none of the facts are to be taken as true, that they're connected to historical figures like Edison and Bell means that years from now much of what I think I know about these people will actually have been fabricated.