A complex, heartfelt political thriller.
Fuller (Turkey and the Arab Spring, 2014, etc.) examines the precarious morality of interventionist American foreign policy in this political thriller.
A prologue at the start of this novel asks, “Treason....What does it actually mean? Is it a thought? A state of mind? An act?” What follows is a morality play that examines just those concerns. Alex Anders was raised in Lahore, Pakistan, where his missionary parents operated an eye clinic to cater to the poor and spread the Christian Gospel by setting a compassionate example for their Muslim neighbors. When Alex returns from college in America, he notices the tension that’s resulted from Pakistan’s increasing Islamization. The turmoil results in his parents’ clinic being burned down by a Muslim mob and his father being beaten to within an inch of his life in front of the blaze. The experience marks a shift in Alex’s worldview. When he returns to the U.S., his Russian studies at school lead to his recruitment into the CIA, and he becomes part of the “black loam of a netherworld out there where secret armies meet secret armies to perpetuate the struggle.” His work leads him to Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and eventually back to Pakistan, where the war on terror has supplanted the Cold War in America’s global chess game. Yet, as the years wear on and Alex witnesses tragedy after tragedy—some public, some personal—his views begin to shift, and he’s forced to justify the tactics of his government when they place him at odds with the well-being of his family and friends. Fuller has written a very atypical thriller: its pace is deliberate, its immersion in its settings is complete, and it takes an intense interest in the emotional havoc of events. Alex is not simply an agent on assignment; he’s a man working to fix a world of which he is very much a part. (At least, he hopes his work is helping to fix it.) “Treason” is the first word of this book, and readers should not be surprised by its conclusion, but the emotional depth that Fuller employs to reach the outcome makes it an achievement.
A complex, heartfelt political thriller.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0993751417
Page Count: 484
Publisher: Bozorg Press
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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