Pleasantly simple language, stark imagery and a surprisingly hopeful tone play nicely off each other in this promising,...
A man and a woman, each ruined in their own ways by a brutal North African prison camp, find solace in each other and embark on a difficult emotional journey.
Deep in an unnamed North African desert, 40 men suffer a fate arguably worse than death—left to languish indefinitely at the bottom of wells, they have contact with the world only once a day, when a guard changes the buckets they use for tepid water, rancid food and waste. A prisoner, Andrès, discovers one night that the guard has accidentally left a rope dangling in the well. Miraculously, he escapes and is discovered, half-dead, on the outskirts of the camp by Tamia, a beautiful woman who just found out (after seducing a guard) that her lover, Elijah, another prisoner, is dead. Tamia helps Andrès escape and nurses him back to health in the home of a nearby villager, a kind and lonely old woman who sees in the couple her estranged son and daughter. Andrès and Tamia fall tentatively in love, but each is still haunted by memories of those that they left behind—Elijah, for whom Tamia risked everything, and Andrès’ wife, Léa. When Andrès is well, they travel back to the capital to stay with Tamia’s sister and her husband, a cousin of Elijah. There, they must face several truths—Léa, believing that Andrès was dead, has remarried. And Andrès, once a member of a terrorist resistance movement, discovers that he had known Elijah, and that he had been hiding many secrets from Tamia. Not only was Elijah a leader of the resistance movement, which surprised Tamia, but he was also known to be a traitor working as a double agent for the police. This betrayal, as well as the knowledge that he might actually be alive somewhere in Syria, leaves her with many decisions, particularly now that much of her loyalty lies with Andrès.
Pleasantly simple language, stark imagery and a surprisingly hopeful tone play nicely off each other in this promising, though quiet, debut novel.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-84343-256-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Harvill UK/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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