Set in Spain in 1941 during the rule of General Franco and the Falangists, with their connections to the Nazis, and again in 1981, in the run-up to the first real democratic elections, debut author Victor del Arbol creates a whirlwind of mysteries within mysteries that will keep even the most demanding reader entertained. Filling the novel with twists and turns, surprises, and action that doubles back on itself, the story line constantly changes, rewriting the information we think we already know, and creating new complications to ponder as we try to reconstruct what we think is happening. The interrelationships among the main characters and their families continue for the forty years of the time span, becoming ever more complex as motivations, betrayals, lies we have accepted as truth, and characters who are not who we think they are become central to the action.Complex and challenging in its plotting, the novel is also energetic and fast-paced. The characters are memorable, in part because none of them are perfect, and several are trapped into committing terrible acts because they believe they have no choice. The interrelationships between guilt, innocence, chance, and fate keep the reader engrossed, and though the violence is sometimes excessive and melodramatic, the author avoids neat “fictional packaging” in his ending. Fate rules.
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James Sallis’s novel Drive, the story of a man who works as a stunt driver by day and as the driver of getaway cars by night, is full of violence, and the body count in the book and film is extremely high, some of the deaths coming at the hands of Driver as payback for egregious betrayals. At the end of the novel and film, Driver leaves this life behind and drives off, seriously wounded. Driven, its sequel, begins six years later. Driver has been keeping a low profile under the pseudonym of Paul West in Phoenix, and he has been successful in avoiding trouble—and in falling in love with Elsa. Suddenly, without warning, he and Elsa are attacked at 11:00 a.m. on a Saturday. Driver manages to disable one attacker, but the second one fatally stabs Elsa before Driver takes care of him. He has no idea who the attackers are or why. In the course of the next few weeks, several more attacks occur, but, still, Driver has no idea who is behind the attacks or why. Eventually, the trail leads to New Orleans, but his connection remains obscure. As one of Driver’s friends comments, “Do the dots connect? Could be all random. Separate storms. And in the long run what does it matter?” Fans of the book and film of Drive will enjoy seeing how Driver’s life evolves after that novel concludes.
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This dramatic and heart-stopping novel recreates very real events of shocking, unimaginable brutality which take place in Argentina in the fall of 1979, three years after the end of the Peronist democracy, and you will not forget these events. After the military seizes power, the characters, as real as you and I, and with the same goals and dreams, have no alternative but to go about their lives trying to maintain a low profile, and as the atrocities continue, they begin to affect these characters and the people they know and love. The novel becomes a revelation in which one cannot help but wonder, ultimately, how these atrocities were allowed to begin at all, and, even more importantly, how they were able to continue unimpeded within a country which was part of the Organization of American States. Rich with history, the novel is populated by a large and well developed cast of characters. The insights into the US position regarding the human rights abuses in these countries, and the secrecy with which they were treated are illuminating, as is the collusion of the Catholic Church in the abuses. An incredible achievement,
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Revealing the final days of Alice Valentine, a former headmistress who is being attended by her sons and closest friends, Andrew Miller’s thoughtful novel Oxygen remains remarkably hopeful, never descending into the bathos of so many other end-of-life novels. Alice’s dying, though realistically described, becomes, in fact, the fulcrum upon which the novel studies three other characters as they gain new insights into their own lives. All of them have some “unfinished business” with which they have not come to terms, and as these characters focus their attention on Alice, while reminiscing privately about their own pasts, the novel goes far beyond the customary focus on the meaning of life and death to include each character’s secret failures, the guilt accompanying these, the nature of true happiness, what it requires to become a “successful” human being. Ultimately, Miller’s characters ask “Who are we?” Despite its complex, seemingly depressing subject, the novel is actually thrilling to read, in part because of Andrew Miller’s skill as a novelist. One of the clearest, cleanest writers in the world today, Miller chooses exactly the right word to meld perfect images with universal themes in new ways.
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In this complex, challenging, and unconventional novel, Iraqi author Ali Bader takes on the ethnic and political history of the Middle East from 1926 – 2006 for his scope. An unnamed Iraqi writer has been asked by USA Today News to write an article about the murder of Kamal Medhat, an eighty-year-old Iraqi violinist whose body has recently been found. Kamal Medhat is one of three completely different identities and separate cultural backgrounds used by the same man, however, and the writer is hard pressed to follow the violinist’s trail as he moves through Iraq, Iran, Syria, Russia, and even Czechoslovakia. Author Ali Bader has long been fascinated with metaphysics and views of identity, and he uses the violinist’s three personas in direct parallel with the three personas used by Fernando Pessoa in his poetry book The Tobacco Shop, selections of which begin the novel and echo throughout. Carefully organized thematically, the novel is unconventional in style, and some confusion also results from the fact that the journalist “reports about,” instead of bringing a character to life the way one expects of fiction. Ultimately, the author writes a novel of broad import from a unique point of view. Different from the typical novel in style, this is very challenging but very rewarding.
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