THE BOOK OF TROUBLE

Another memoir, an account of her “love affair with the Third World,” from the author of How to Stop Time (1999).

Marlowe, a product of the American middle class, is sensitive to the inequities of this relationship. As she shares scenes from two trips to Afghanistan made in 2002, she proves herself to be a passionate correspondent. Like her first book, this one is written in short, incisive, elegantly composed paragraphs. Her descriptions of Afghanistan are informative and often poetic. While in the Middle East, she’s thinking about love—manifest in family, romance and erotic experience—and she looks for it everywhere she goes. She finds some version of it in an Afghan named Amir, with whom she has an affair. This young man is Marlowe’s true subject, and her capacity to think and write about anything else is eventually overcome by her feelings for him. Even when she’s talking to controversial Iraqi official Ahmed Chalabi, she’s thinking about Amir, and neither she nor her narrative are the better for it. Considered solely on the base of his behavior, Amir is a jerk. Marlowe’s fascination is inexplicable and frustrating. She musters a lot of anthropology to explain cross-cultural, intergenerational (he’s significantly younger than her) love. She uses their sexual ardor as an occasion to philosophize about the demise of physical passion in the West, and she contrasts her own feverish devotion with the calculation she sees in New York’s dating scene, but Marlowe never quite manages to explicate the specific allure of Amir. While her skills as a reporter are significant, the author is much less impressive as a philosopher.

A critique of contemporary love that expands little on the views expressed in women’s magazines and self-help bestsellers.