A redeeming novel about the difficulties that nations and individuals face when making a future out of difficult pasts.
A novel of political intrigue focused on a fictitious African island nation.
Richard Furman, a middle-aged Peace Corps educator, awaits his turn at testimony during an inquest regarding the death of his girlfriend Caroline, a native of the exotically fictitious–yet very believable–Islamic Democratic Republic of Moanjouan-Sembeke. The mild-mannered Richard stands to answer any and all questions posed by the three intimidating judges that also act as jury in the Sembeke justice system. This starts as a narrative device, with the judges as surrogates for the reader, but is abruptly abandoned for other methods. In a three-page blitz of exposition, readers learn that after Richard’s wife and daughter died in a car accident, Richard left his administrative position for the state of New York, deciding he could finally be a teacher. The subtext for many of his other actions is conspicuously missing–even for a genre thriller–but these are the psychological jungles that the novel prefers not tread. Richard joins the Peace Corps, and through the machinations of diplomacy is assigned to Sembeke, a country with a French colonial past and a complex Islamic future. Sharing some similarities both geographical and agricultural with Madagascar, Sembeke is just exotic enough to not make its sensuous trappings too distracting from the political facets. These are the novel’s reigning strengths, and the author is palpably most comfortable when juxtaposing two ideologies, as in a memorable scene in which Richard and the Imam discuss what literature is appropriate for the nation’s children. The dialogue between the radically juxtaposed ethics of American conservatism and Sembeke’s Islamic conservative reads authentically and objectively. But the jumpy narrative skims over the basic romantic developments that the affair and intrigue demand–with Caroline’s telegraphed death taking much of the mortal suspense out of the novel. There is real value, though, in Fisher’s (Crippled at the Starting Gate, 2010, etc.) deft translations of the immense cultural and geopolitical forces into the realistic consequences affecting a late-blooming educator and a school nurse with a sealed fate–just the stuff fans of political thrillers yearn for but so rarely receive.
A redeeming novel about the difficulties that nations and individuals face when making a future out of difficult pasts.Pub Date: July 16, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4389-8192-5
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal...
A gumbo seasoned with ghosts, love, and murder on the bayou.
When 30-something Declan Fitzgerald of Boston, a successful lawyer and a member of a large and loving family, breaks off his engagement to very suitable Jessica, he knows he needs to change his life. Lawyering is not fun anymore, so, recalling Manet Hall, an old deserted plantation house he once visited with law school classmate and New Orleans native Remy, he buys the property and moves down south. Declan is also a gifted craftsman, a born decorator, and very, very rich. Soon, he meets beautiful Lena, who’s visiting her grandmother Odette, Declan’s friendly Cajun neighbor. Declan is as certain that Lena is destined to be his wife as he was that Manet Hall would become his home. But, surprise, Lena has a troubled past (like the house) and is determined to resist Declan’s courtship. While he suits Lena and works on the place, Declan experiences troubling dreams. It seems he’s actually reliving the novel’s parallel story, which took place in 1899. In that year, the maid, Abbey Manet (from whom Lena, coincidentally, is descended, and who married wealthy Lucian Manet), was raped and murdered by her brother-in-law Julian as she nursed her baby daughter. Her body was dumped into the bayou by her mother-in-law, who despised her. And grief-stricken husband Lucian, away at the time, being told that Abbey had run off, committed suicide. Now, in an unconvincing twist of gender and reincarnation, it’s Declan who hears a baby crying , experiences childbirth and rape as the reincarnation of Abbey, while Lena is Lucian. The two accept all this with equanimity, and, Manet Hall’s secrets revealed, it becomes the setting for predictable and much foreshadowed resolutions.
Agreeably credible lovers and a neat piece of home-restoration compensate some for the hokey hauntings on the bayou. Loyal fans will enjoy.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14824-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2001
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