A timely and thoughtful account of a lost American trying to find himself in a lost country.
A tale of love and personal redemption set in war-torn Afghanistan.
Martin served as an Army soldier during the Cold War, then as a political officer for the State Department in Afghanistan as well as in the Department of Homeland Security—experiences that radiate from every page of his debut novel. The story’s protagonist, Hank Garvey, is also a Vietnam vet and political officer in Afghanistan, assigned to Harmez to report, somewhat optimistically, on any signs of progress following the American invasion. What Hank finds, though, is poverty, rampant cynicism, and the brutal rule of the warlord Akbar Khan. Neither a soldier nor a diplomat, Hank is considered an “outlier,” and he struggles to be taken seriously as he discovers a progressive group organizing opposition to Khan’s tyrannical grip on the city. Meanwhile, he develops a deep romantic attachment to a Danish nurse named Illse Lillestrom, who embodies the mysteriousness and disaffectedness of Harmez itself. The plot, which develops slowly in episodic drips, is not the prime mover here. Instead, Hank’s character keeps the reader drawn in: a former soldier and cop, he’s not quite a hero; the inclination to heroism is but one ingredient in the complex brew that is his personality. Also, the setting, painted by the author in cinematographic detail, functions like a second main character, with ambience captured in brooding tones. The writing is always sharp and, when the subject turns to love, even poetic: “Fully invested in the moment now, blind to doubts and consequences, his arms closed around her in a victory of lust over judgment.” Hank’s tenure in Harmez turns out to be an exercise in renewal; still devastated from the loss of his wife to cancer, he gropes in the dark for purpose and happiness. In addition to touching on the treatment of women’s rights, the book as a whole is a kind of cautionary tale about the fragility of freedom as an export. It’s a rewarding read for those interested in an insider’s account of Afghanistan, revealed in all its unvarnished grimness.
A timely and thoughtful account of a lost American trying to find himself in a lost country.Pub Date: April 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9963225-1-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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