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THE CRY OF THE DOVE

Name: THE CRY OF THE DOVE
Author: Fadia Faqir
ISBN: 978-0-8021-7040-8

by Fadia Faqir ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2007

The wretched subjugation of Muslim women overshadows the immigrant adventure story.

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Pregnant, unmarried and sentenced to death by her family, a young Arab woman eventually escapes from the Middle East and starts over in England. It’s not easy.

The woman’s name is Salma in her native land (probably Jordan). In England she’s Sally. The Jordanian-British Faqir narrates her third novel in short takes, alternating past and present. Then and now, in Jordan and England, Salma and Sally wink at us like a hologram. Faqir’s purpose is to show just how tenuous Salma’s life in England is, and as details of her past trickle out, we understand why. She lived a simple life with her Bedouin Muslim family, herding goats. In her early teens she and her boyfriend Hamdan became lovers. On learning of her pregnancy, he disowned her. Salma turned to her teacher, who had her put in prison so her tribe would not kill her. She gave birth on the prison floor to a girl she named Layla. The baby was taken from her instantly; Salma had no opportunity to suckle her. (In England, she tries to get her nipples excised.) Six years later, a Lebanese nun removed her to a convent; from there, an English nun escorted her by sea to England. Now she works as a seamstress in Exeter, in the West Country; her landlady is a volatile alcoholic. Salma is still crippled by shame and self-loathing. She imagines her brother Mahmoud stalking her, set to kill, but transcending those fears is her yearning for Layla, who she hears calling her. Tellingly, she can handle anger and rejection in her new life; it is kindness that is unbearable. Much of this is moving and poignant, if needlessly repetitious, but toward the end Faqir (Pillars of Salt, 1997, etc.) loses her way. Salma’s marriage to a gentle English educator and the birth of their son is skimmed over. It seems Faqir has the same difficulty with good news that Salma has with kindness.

The wretched subjugation of Muslim women overshadows the immigrant adventure story.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007

ISBN: 978-0-8021-7040-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Black Cat/Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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WITHOUT FAIL

From the Jack Reacher series , Vol. 6

by Lee Child ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2001

Relentlessly suspenseful and unexpectedly timely: just the thing for Dick Cheney’s bedside reading wherever he’s keeping...

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When the newly elected Vice President’s life is threatened, the Secret Service runs to nomadic soldier-of-fortune Jack Reacher (Echo Burning, 2001, etc.) in this razor-sharp update of The Day of the Jackal and In the Line of Fire that’s begging to be filmed.

Why Reacher? Because M.E. Froelich, head of the VP’s protection team, was once a colleague and lover of his late brother Joe, who’d impressed her with tales of Jack’s derring-do as an Army MP. Now Froelich and her Brooks Brothers–tailored boss Stuyvesant have been receiving a series of anonymous messages threatening the life of North Dakota Senator/Vice President–elect Brook Armstrong. Since the threats may be coming from within the Secret Service’s own ranks—if they aren’t, it’s hard to see how they’ve been getting delivered—they can’t afford an internal investigation. Hence the call to Reacher, who wastes no time in hooking up with his old friend Frances Neagley, another Army vet turned private eye, first to see whether he can figure out a way to assassinate Armstrong, then to head off whoever else is trying. It’s Reacher’s matter-of-fact gift to think of everything, from the most likely position a sniper would assume at Armstrong’s Thanksgiving visit to a homeless shelter to the telltale punctuation of one of the threats, and to pluck helpers from the tiny cast who can fill the remaining gaps because they aren’t idiots or stooges. And it’s Child’s gift to keep tightening the screws, even when nothing’s happening except the arrival of a series of unsigned letters, and to convey a sense of the blank impossibility of guarding any public figure from danger day after highly exposed day, and the dedication and heroism of the agents who take on this daunting job.

Relentlessly suspenseful and unexpectedly timely: just the thing for Dick Cheney’s bedside reading wherever he’s keeping himself these days.

Pub Date: May 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-399-14861-2

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2002

Categories:

LITERARY FICTION

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by Lee Child & Andrew Child

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by Lee Child & Andrew Child

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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.