Though many other writers have written novels about various coups in South America, this story is unusual in that its focus is squarely on the foreign service and the role of its representatives. Not a single scene here reflects the tortures, the murders, or the disappearances which are so traumatizing, and none of the major military leaders responsible for these actions are featured here. This approach works well for people in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile (and eventually Argentina), who are well familiar with the events which have often dramatically affected their own lives, though much of the action in this book will be new to many American readers. The movement back and forth in time over the eventual course of over forty years and several countries is sometimes challenging, and the mysterious Max, a lone wolf, is not someone with whom the reader will identify. Ultimately, the author raises philosophical questions: “In the space of a generation, thousands of people…had been imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the name of priorities long since forgotten. Who would answer…[who] would face a camera to publicly lament what had happened, as Robert McNamara had with respect to the horrors caused by the Vietnam War? What had occurred four decades earlier…remained suspended in time…on a planet deprived of memory.” The author hopes to correct that.
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Greek author Fotini Tsalikoglou, in her first novel to be translated into English, introduces a man we come to know as Jonathan, along with the first of his family’s many mysteries. Jonathan has just boarded a plane from New York City to Athens, and while sitting next to an empty seat in the plane, he speaks to it as if it were “Amalia.” He is remembering an unnamed woman who dragged him, as a small child, to museums all over New York to see Greek statues and pediments, but who never had any interest in going to Greece herself. He is puzzled because, despite this behavior toward Greek art, she was clearly “revolted by her country.” Her name was Lale Andersen, a name she chose when she changed it from the original, and she was Jonathan’s “mutant mother.” What follows is a complex conversation in which two people, Jonathan and Amalia, through changing times and places, discuss with each other their shared childhoods and differing memories. The novel jumps around without warning, as he comments to himself about the plane trip and his decision to travel to Greece, interspersing observations in the present with memories from his past, including the sometimes bizarre events which have made a lasting impression upon him from his childhood, including one in which he believes he has met his father, a vagrant. Psychological and intense.
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Throughout much of this intense character study by Colm Toibin, which takes place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nora Webster observes the niceties – common, traditional actions which give her a way to deal with reality without thinking too much. Here, the author controls our perceptions of Nora, confident that the reader will be able to understand Nora simply by observing her in her life. Through vibrant, often touching, scenes in which the characters speak and interact, seemingly on their own, Toibin draws in the reader so subtly that one never feels manipulated, the quiet development resembling the character of Nora herself – reserved, unassertive, and uncertain about the future. She is feeling strong and confident by the time Bloody Sunday occurs in Derry, where twenty-six unarmed Catholic civilians are killed during a demonstration. The burning of the British Embassy in Dublin in 1972 takes place a few days later, in retaliation. Generational differences are highlighted by the activities of Nora’s daughter Aine, who is deeply involved in these political causes and seemingly has no fear. A brilliant character study of a woman trying to become whole.
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It’s hard to remember when a story as absorbing as this has come along in recent years – and I choose the world “story” deliberately, because it is more personal and involving than words like “novel” or “narrative.” Here, author Anthony Doerr has recreated a whole world, a world of war and love and honor and betrayal, and has told about it in detail, the writing of which took the author himself ten years to complete. It is a lush and glorious story on every level, one that sidles up to you in the first few pages, puts its arm around you a hundred or so pages later, and then ends up holding your heart in its hand. (And if this description seems a bit over-the-top, it’s undoubtedly because I am still totally enraptured by the author’s achievement here.) A grand, old-fashioned saga filled with emotion, intense description, life-changing events, and characters one really cares about, the novel straddles that fine line between the romantic and the sentimental in its approach, incorporating the magic of secret locked rooms, a magnificent jewel, and a blind child who loves The Three Musketeers and Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, then contrasts them with the horrors of Hitler, his use of children for his own ends, and the institutionalized bullying which marked the rise of the Hitler Youth. A great book for a book club, despite its length.
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Gillian, a TV commentator and drama school graduate, has just begun to regain consciousness in the hospital following an accident which has killed her husband Matthias, the editor of a magazine, and as her memory of blue water and empty space comes and goes, she alternates between awareness of her surroundings and complete befuddlement. The impact of the crash has destroyed her face, and it will be many surgeries and many months before it can be rebuilt. She and her husband, both intoxicated, had been quarreling because he had found a long-forgotten roll of film hidden in her desk, had had it developed, and had discovered that the film contained nude pictures for which she herself had posed. Already jealous about her career, her friendships, and her easy conversations with those she interviewed, Matthias was outraged – “no one took him seriously” – and went on to embarrass her at a party, later refusing to let her drive home, though he was even more intoxicated than she. Now he is dead, and she will not have a real face for six months, at least. What follows in this novel of relationships by Swiss author/dramatist Peter Stamm is a vibrant story of love with its many complications, as damaged people, including Gillian, try to rebuild their lives and find some sort of peace. Time is fluid here, as memories intrude for Gillian, and as Stamm, dramatist that he is, recreates much of her life in vivid scenes of natural and revelatory dialogue. The novel speeds along, helped by some humor, which highlights the absurdities in the characters’ lives.
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