An intelligent fiction debut by a capable writer.
Award-winning journalist Emerson (Gaza, 1991, etc.) tries her hand at fiction with a story that draws on her knowledge of the Third World.
Like Graham Greene, a central if off-stage figure here, Emerson has spent significant time in such outposts of upheaval as Vietnam, the Gaza Strip, and, most recently, Algeria. Here, the protagonist, Molly Benson, is a wealthy, well-intentioned eccentric, obsessed with Greene and eager to do good. She met Greene once and corresponded with him for many years until his death in 1991. Molly’s brother, a leftist freelance journalist, was killed under mysterious circumstances in El Salvador. Now she’s preparing for the latest is a series of self-devised humanitarian missions: a trip to Algeria to give money to writers and intellectuals threatened by the Islamic fundamentalists engaged in a guerrilla war against the equally repressive “socialist” regime there. She’s accompanied by an unlikely pair—her lifelong friend, the childish Bertie, and Toby, a portly, loquacious English graduate student. Putting this trio into the volatile conditions in Algeria is a recipe for disaster and, naturally, each of their good deeds leads to torment for some unsuspecting victim of their largesse. If this sounds like one of Greene’s mordant fables of foolish innocents abroad, wreaking unintended havoc with their liberal good intentions, that’s obviously not an accident. Emerson invokes Greene repeatedly here, not only in Molly’s constant musings on his life and work but in her own stylish prose and satisfyingly sound plot construction. There are moments when the novel reads a little too much like a newspaper synopsis of the Algerian situation or a quickie recap of Greene’s major themes, but such lapses are mercifully few. And despite the temptation to reduce Molly to a caricature, Emerson never fails to convey the pain underneath her heroine’s fumbling goodwill.
An intelligent fiction debut by a capable writer.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2000
ISBN: 0-679-46324-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
Expect readers of this unpleasant hate poem to Budapest to cancel any plans they've made to travel there.
Budapest in 1995 is supposedly on the brink of post-communist economic revival, but the American expats who inhabit Keener’s second novel (Night Swim, 2013) can neither adjust to the city’s deep-seated complexity nor escape the problems they hoped to leave back home.
Annie and Will arrive with their adopted baby, Leo, so Will can pursue a startup creating “communication networks.” Unfortunately, Will, as seen through Annie’s eyes, is a research nerd with little aptitude for entrepreneurship. Annie hopes to escape what she considers intrusive involvement by the social worker who arranged Leo’s adoption. A one-time social worker herself (an irony Annie misses), she makes ham-handed attempts to help the locally hated Roma population. After eight months, Will has yet to close a deal when his former boss Bernardo, a glad-hander Annie doesn’t trust, shows up with an enticing offer. Bernardo hires Stephen, another expat, who has moved to Budapest to connect with his parents’ homeland; they fled Hungary for America after the 1956 uprising but never recovered emotionally. The story of his father’s suicide touches a chord in Annie, herself haunted by a tragic accident that destroyed her family’s happiness when she was 4. Meanwhile, 76-year-old Edward is in Budapest to track down his late daughter Deborah’s husband, Van. Edward believes Van murdered Deborah though the official cause of death was related to her multiple sclerosis. The only character besides Annie with a revealed inner life, Edward is embittered by his experience as a Jewish WWII soldier. He disapproved of Deborah’s hippie lifestyle and her attraction to men he considered losers, like Van. Over Will’s objections, and the readers’ disbelief, bleeding-heart Annie agrees to help Edward find Van. A bad idea. As for Budapest itself—polluted, in physical disrepair, plagued by an ugly history, and populated by rude, corrupt, and bigoted locals—the author strongly implies that the misery and mayhem Annie experiences are the city’s fault.
Expect readers of this unpleasant hate poem to Budapest to cancel any plans they've made to travel there.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61620-497-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.
A Christian woman and a Jewish man fall in love in medieval France.
In 1088, a Christian girl of Norman descent falls in love with the son of a rabbi. They run away together, to disastrous effect: Her father sends knights after them, and though they flee to a small southern village where they spend a few happy years, their budding family is soon decimated by a violent wave of First Crusaders on their way to Jerusalem. The girl, whose name becomes Hamoutal when she converts to Judaism, winds up roaming the world. Hertmans’ (War and Turpentine, 2016, etc.) latest novel is based on a true story: The Cairo Genizah, a trove of medieval manuscripts preserved in an Egyptian synagogue, contained an account of Hamoutal’s plight. Hamoutal makes up about half of Hertmans’ novel; the other half is consumed by Hertmans’ own interest in her story. Whenever he can, he follows her journey: from Rouen, where she grew up, to Monieux, where she and David Todros—her Jewish husband—made a brief life for themselves, and all the way to Cairo, and back. “Knowing her life story and its tragic end,” Hertmans writes, “I wish I could warn her of what lies ahead.” The book has a quiet intimacy to it, and in his descriptions of landscape and travel, Hertmans’ prose is frequently lovely. In Narbonne, where David’s family lived, Hertmans describes “the cool of the paving stones in the late morning, the sound of doves’ wings flapping in the immaculate air.” But despite the drama of Hamoutal’s story, there is a static quality to the book, particularly in the sections where Hertmans describes his own travels. It’s an odd contradiction: Hertmans himself moves quickly through the world, but his book doesn’t quite move quickly enough.
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4708-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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