A thoughtful novel about a man in an impossible position.
A 20-something Afghani CIA translator is caught in a dilemma when he’s groomed for radicalization in Pejman’s (Age of Intolerance, 2011) novel.
When he’s a boy in the late 1980s, Hassan’s family relocates from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Peshawar, Pakistan, along with other Afghani refugees fleeing violence. His family is well-off, educated, and liberal, and when he becomes interested in Islamic fundamentalism, his parents decide to send him to an uncle in Washington, D.C. Hassan, now in his early 20s, soon faces several difficulties: his uncle cuts him loose to make it on his own, and although Hassan speaks good English, he scrambles at first, working two jobs just to make ends meet. His circumstances improve when he gets a job as translator for a government contractor. Still, he feels like a man without a country. His employer asks him to return to Kabul—ostensibly to translate but really to gather information from his radical friends. But Hassan becomes convinced by his friends’ arguments and agrees to become a double agent. His perspective is challenged again, though, after he’s arrested by the CIA: “You can be disappointed in America all you want, but let’s be honest,” says his interrogator. “These people aren’t the solution either.” In the end, Hassan must come to terms with being a pawn. Pejman, a longtime journalist who’s covered the Middle East for several news organizations, including the Washington Post and the Associated Press, gives his novel a solid grounding in history, politics, and culture. Hassan’s point of view is given thorough consideration, showing readers just how radicalization works for some people—not as a fiery epiphany but as something that proceeds by fits and starts, with hesitations and second thoughts. Although the novel does note some faults of the West, Pejman eases back on censure; for example, the narration asserts that soldiers at Bagram Airfield were criticized for abusing prisoners, he writes, “Fairly or not,” although in fact, the use of torture at that site isn’t in doubt. Despite its strengths, the novel feels somewhat slanted as a result.
A thoughtful novel about a man in an impossible position.Pub Date: April 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5328-5579-5
Page Count: 398
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 20, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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