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AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Name: AN EYE FOR AN EYE
Author: Bandula Chandraratna
ISBN: 0-75381-356-4

by Bandula Chandraratna ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 15, 2003

A good follow-up, written with the same clarity, simplicity, and purity of feeling that marks its predecessor.

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Chandraratna continues the story begun in Mirage (see below) of a decent but naïve Saudi hospital porter whose life is ruined by his country’s religious zealots.

The earlier novel describes the hard and bitter life of Sayeed, a peasant from a small village in Saudi Arabia who left his father’s farm to find work in the capital. Like many other impoverished farmers, he settled in a shantytown on the outskirts of the city and eventually found menial work in a hospital. On a subsequent visit to his native village, Sayeed agreed to marry a young widow named Latifa, and after the marriage they moved back to the shantytown with Latifa’s daughter Leila. Chaotic, overpopulated, and neglected by the authorities, the shantytown is largely ruled by the mutawah, a religious figure who keeps order through an elaborate system of spies and informers. When Latifa is caught in the act of adultery, the mutawah sentences her and her lover to death, despite Sayeed’s pleas for clemency. After the execution he wanders into the desert in a daze and nearly dies. He is nursed back to health by Abdul Mubarek, a lab technician at his hospital who takes Leila into his home and raises her as his own. After his recovery Sayeed returns to work and tries to resume a normal life, but he is consumed with grief and blames himself for Latifa’s death, since he brought her to the city in the first place. During a visit home, he meets a childhood friend, now a terrorist, who tells him it’s his duty to avenge Latifa’s death and even gives him a dagger to carry out the deed. Back in the city Sayeed becomes more and more obsessed with vengeance and begins to stalk the mutawah through the back alleys of the shantytown. Can he redeem Latifa’s blood? Or must he appeal to a higher authority?

A good follow-up, written with the same clarity, simplicity, and purity of feeling that marks its predecessor.

Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2003

ISBN: 0-75381-356-4

Page Count: 182

Publisher: Phoenix/Trafalgar

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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CONCLAVE

by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...

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Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.

Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: He’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”

An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016

Categories:

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE

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THE SECRET HISTORY

by Donna Tartt ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 1992

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The Brat Pack meets The Bacchae in this precious, way-too-long, and utterly unsuspenseful town-and-gown murder tale. A bunch of ever-so-mandarin college kids in a small Vermont school are the eager epigones of an aloof classics professor, and in their exclusivity and snobbishness and eagerness to please their teacher, they are moved to try to enact Dionysian frenzies in the woods. During the only one that actually comes off, a local farmer happens upon them—and they kill him. But the death isn't ruled a murder—and might never have been if one of the gang—a cadging sybarite named Bunny Corcoran—hadn't shown signs of cracking under the secret's weight. And so he too is dispatched. The narrator, a blank-slate Californian named Richard Pepen chronicles the coverup. But if you're thinking remorse-drama, conscience masque, or even semi-trashy who'll-break-first? page-turner, forget it: This is a straight gee-whiz, first-to-have-ever-noticed college novel—"Hampden College, as a body, was always strangely prone to hysteria. Whether from isolation, malice, or simple boredom, people there were far more credulous and excitable than educated people are generally thought to be, and this hermetic, overheated atmosphere made it a thriving black petri dish of melodrama and distortion." First-novelist Tartt goes muzzy when she has to describe human confrontations (the murder, or sex, or even the ping-ponging of fear), and is much more comfortable in transcribing aimless dorm-room paranoia or the TV shows that the malefactors anesthetize themselves with as fate ticks down. By telegraphing the murders, Tartt wants us to be continually horrified at these kids—while inviting us to semi-enjoy their manneristic fetishes and refined tastes. This ersatz-Fitzgerald mix of moralizing and mirror-looking (Jay McInerney shook and poured the shaker first) is very 80's—and in Tartt's strenuous version already seems dated, formulaic. Les Nerds du Mal—and about as deep (if not nearly as involving) as a TV movie.