The Go-between by L. P. Hartley

From The Week of December 12, 2011

There are no wounds more damaging than those suffered as a child. For the young lack the armor possessed by the old, that particular toughening of skin and spirit that results from an accumulation of life's experiences. Adults can contextualize pain because they have endured it before and know it will pass, allowing peace to return at some future time. Children lack this perspective. To them, a wound may well last forever, or may well be the end of the world. They simply lack the knowledge to believe otherwise. Mr. Hartley has penned a wonderfully nostalgic novel and carried it to a moving conclusion, but it is providing this reminder, that we carry forward our childhood wounds, that his novel is gloriously and grievously potent.

Sparked by the rediscovery of a child's box of trinkets, The Go-between is an old man's ruminations on the most pivotal year of his life, 1900, when he was an innocent boy of 12. Colorless by nature, Leo Colston uses these mementos of his adolescence, chiefly a well-worn diary he once kept, to reflect upon his childhood, revealing in the process that Leo the younger was far different in temperament than Leo the elder. Where the latter is taciturn and grim, the former is spirited, energetic and care free, anticipating the life before him as much as he does the 20th century which holds so much promise. How did it come to pass that the same man could have possessed such different personalities at different stages of his life?

For an answer, Leo plunges us into the heat of the British summer of 1900 where, fresh off a difficult year at boarding school, young Leo accepts an invitation to summer with the Maudsleys, the well-to-do family of his schoolfriend, Marcus. While at Brandham Hall, a grand structure that once was the family home of the local viscount, Leo overcomes the shyness brought about by his relative poverty to capture brief moments of local glory by showcasing his voice at a concert and his glove in a cricket match. But as much as these pleasures sustain him, it is the devastating crush he has on Marian Maudsley, the elder sister of Marcus, that consumes all, turning else into pale remembrances. Leo will agree to do anything the lovely Marian wishes of him; serving as her little messenger boy -- carrying notes back and forth between herself and Ted burgess, a tenant of Brandham hall -- is nothing. But when it becomes clear that these notes are the keys to an inappropriate relationship between Marian and farmer Ted, Leo tries to withdraw. Marian is having none of it, though, and so Leo is forced to continue as the go-between, never imagining the doom his turn as Mercury might bring.

Originally published in 1953, The Go-between builds slowly to a wrenching conclusion. A classic of 20th century British literature, it is best remembered for its opening line: "the past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." And yet, Mr. Hartley's novel is far more memorable as both a poignant and a devastating return to the memories and the wounds of childhood where formative experiences, for good or ill, shape us into the people we become. It is not too much to say that Leo is shattered by what befalls him at Brandham Hall in that fateful summer. He senses disaster's approach and even tries to avoid it. But falling prey to the passions of others, he cannot avoid onrushing events and is swallowed whole by them. His 12-year-old mind cannot grasp the complications of love and sex, of social classes and gender roles. He is an innocent, thoughtlessly taken up and discarded by fate and the Maudsleys, both of which expect him to understand and recover. But he does not and he cannot. For there are some introductions to life so harsh, so painful, that they cannot be overcome.

With its meandering plot, its preoccupation with symbols, its flirtation with the Zodiac and its exultation in nostalgia, The Go-between is slow to seize the reader's attention. But when the heat of the summer of 1900 finally proves too much for Leo and those for whom he has agreed to play postman, Mr. Hartley's piece explodes into an emotional, conflagrational conclusion that rends the heart. The innocence of youth, when lost, cannot be reclaimed. With a kind of gentle brutality, the author brings this lesson home. It will not be forgotten... (4/5 Stars)

Arrows of The Night by Richard Bonin

From The Week of December 12, 2011

What forces shape a nation's policies? Is it the will of its people bound together in common cause and cultural background? Is it the nation's media whose coverage of national issues helps mold the conversation? Perhaps it's the politicians who seek to satisfy all constituencies as a means of holding onto their preeminent power and influence. Most often, it is likely that all three primary forces have their role to play in the shaping of events, each balancing the other in a delicate dance of interlocking orbits the gestalt of which prevents a nation from skewing too far off course. But once in a great while, the dance is ignored, bypassed by a single force strong enough, clever enough, and manipulative enough to overpower the wisdom, the credulity and the common sense of a nation's leaders, all of whom should know better. Napoleon managed it through cunning and popular opinion. Hitler managed it through anger and manufactured outrage. Will the 21st century remember Ahmed Chalabi alongside these men of influence? Arrows of The Night suggests it well might.

Mr. Bonin, a producer for 60 Minutes, chronicles here the difficult, dramatic and destructive life of Ahmed Chalabi. The scion of a wealthy Iraqi family forced into exile by Saddam Hussein's rise to power in the 1960s, Ahmed weathered the isolation of boarding school in Britain, received his doctorate in mathematics in America, earned his financial stripes as a banker in Jordan and established himself as a man of intelligence and refined tastes all without a land to call home. Even more remarkable, he ascended to international success without the benefits of wealth his family had once enjoyed when, prior to Hussein's rise, they were allies of Iraq's royal family. Ahmed an exile, a self-made man, a success with a burning passion that no amount of personal achievement could sate. He wanted Saddam Hussein destroyed.

Setting out on a 20-year mission, Ahmed Chalabi rallied dissident Iraqis, seduced Neoconservatives, recruited US congressmen, and positioned himself for CIA assistance all in the singleminded desire to consign Saddam Hussein to history and replace him with a CIA-lead Iraq helmed by Ahmed Chalabi. Though his odyssey would experience numerous, ruinous ups and downs -- there appears to have been no bridge he was not willing to burn in the actualization of his goal, a fact which nearly found him barred from the halls of power --, he was ultimately successful in convincing the government of the United States to go to war in Iraq in 2003 and finish, there, what they failed to do 12 years earlier, to topple a tyrant from his throne and replace him with Ahmed Chalabi and the tenuous hope of democracy in the most unstable part of the world. He didn't sit in on the national security meetings; he didn't give the orders; he didn't have anything to do with the 9/11 attacks without which a war in Iraq would have seemed foolish. Nonetheless, he was there to capitalize on every opportunity, to push every button, to charm every powerbroker and to twist every arm in the realization of a dream 40 years in coming.

Arrows of The Night is a brilliant biography of an exceptional man and the flawed character that ultimately destroyed him. Drawing on interviews with Chalabi, along with conversations with politicians, powerbrokers and intelligence officers who dealt with him, Mr. Bonin paints a masterful and convincing portrait of a man so driven by a singular desire to restore his family's honor and position in Iraqi society that he is consumed by it. Ahmed Chalabi forgot need's most important lesson, that the stronger we want something, the more we are willing to compromise ourselves, our beliefs, our morals, even our friendships, in order to seize it. As humans, We are not strong enough, much less sufficiently self-aware, to indulge our needs without making sacrifices which is why we do not journey alone, why we have friends and allies to travel with us and keep us in line. Ahmed Chalabi was subsumed by his desire and there was no one there to stop him.

But as much as this work is a success as a biography, it is also a useful and potent glimpse into the workings of government and how it too is compromised by its wants. From the Neocons who believed so powerfully in their dogmas that they were willing to squander American lives and treasure to prove their eeeeerighteousness to the politicians who bring about so much destruction for the want to do half-hearted good, the government of the United States, here, is revealed to be a gigantic web of influence pedaling wherein each player does his level best to advance his own agenda by trading favors and capitalizing on alliances. To whatever extent this grim tapestry of government is authentic, it is utterly disturbing in its complete absence of decency and reason. Policy must be shaped by facts, not by factions and their dogmas. Allow oneself to be guided by the latter and he will quickly find himself mired in a calamitous war from which there is no fiscal recovery.

As disturbing as it is riveting. An excellent read. (4/5 Stars)

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

From The Week of December 12, 2011

Though their particulars very, every religion, the acknowledgement of and adherence to the divine, is based on a set of sacred rules that must be honored by its followers. For these rules are not only mechanisms by which a faith's clergy maintain power and influence, they are the means by which the followers of a given faith distinguish themselves from nonbelievers, from the less righteous. Take these rituals away and there's no means for any of the faithful to measure their adherence, to determine their level of godliness. They must be followed, obeyed, or the divine will withdraw his love.

But of course, some of these rules reveal themselves, in the fullness of time, to be rather silly. After all, most of our world's faiths laid down their laws in the dark and chaotic times prior to the rise of science and the rule of law which both invest the individual with secular logic and secular rights, neither of which play well with the amorphous whims of the insubstantial divine. So which laws should be obeyed and which ignored? Which did the divine intend to be unbreakable and which did he intend to be flexible? In this modern world, so shaped by scientific thought, these are the quandaries believers are left with. And fortunately, they have Mr. Jacobs, a fabulous eccentric, to turn to.

A liberal-minded New Yorker and writer for Esquire, Mr. Jacobs, Jewish by family history, sets out in The Year of Living Biblically to do precisely that, live for 365 days in full compliance with the laws of the Bible. Though this task soon proves to be impossible -- the good book is far too packed with arcane and conflicting laws to be obeyed 100 percent of the time --, the author, undaunted, endeavors to adhere to the many, many commandments as best he can. He stops shaving his face, blows a trumpet on the first day of every month, refuses to touch his unclean wife for seven days after her period, gives away ten percent of his income, and endows himself with the generosity of spirit and disposition his faith asks of him.

But though he is mostly successful in his efforts to follow the most obvious laws, there are many he doesn't know how to interpret. Was an eye for an eye literal or figurative? Was adultery actually adultery, or something else? Was thou shalt not kill actually intended as a constriction on killing? These and many other questions of context and metaphor, of interpretation and translation complicate Mr. Jacobs' journey, but never do they sway him from achieving his ultimate goal, understanding the book, its lessons and the impact it has on shaping the hearts and minds of its countless believers.

The Year of Living Biblically can be read in two ways, as a thoughtful and fruitful exploration of the bible and the lessons it has to offer, or as a devastating expose of the dogmas of the past which, to this day, are followed despite having been revealed as baseless. Though Mr. Jacobs himself clearly meant his investigation to take the path of the former -- he is ceaselessly earnest in his desire to explore the Bible with an honest heart and an open mind --, the doctrinal nonsense he unearths certainly encourages the reader into the arms of the latter view. So many of these rules have been banished, like embarrassing uncles at the family reunion, to the proverbial shed not because God has stopped caring about them but because they are either too arcane to be interpreted properly, or their requirements are too humiliating for their adherents to fulfil.

Not only must rules always be obeyed, all rules must always be obeyed. Otherwise, they should not be rules. There's plenty of evidence from secular society to convince us of the chaos of what results when rules are only enforced by some people some of the time. If we don't enforce all the rules all the time, only fools will follow them. In society, this begets lawlessness. In religion, this kills faith. For the whole enterprise hinges on the willingness of the divine to enforce his commandments. That Mr. Jacobs is able to run this experiment at all, and that it is so impossible to execute tells us all we need to know about the impotence of the divine.

This is a wonderful read, as entertaining for believers and secularists alike. For Mr. Jacobs has imbued his project with the twin spirits of humor and self-discovery which have rarely steered a writer wrong. Witty, fascinating, engaging and disturbing all... And certainly provides plenty of biblical trivia for dinner parties. (4/5 Stars)

Happy Accidents by Jane Lynch

From The Week of December 05, 2011

Though we christen it with a name and imbue it with godlike powers to manipulate events, Fate is nothing more than a human construct to explain the improbable and to soften up, for us, a deeper, more difficult truth. Life can turn on the smallest moments. The flight we didn't catch, the meeting we couldn't make, the promises we failed to keep... All of life's hiccups have the potential power to deprive us of vital opportunities while, perhaps, throwing up others in their place. After all, as much as we may disappoint some people with our failings, our mistakes may cause us to encounter lifelong loves who have the power to make us grateful for our foibles. Though one senses that Ms. Lynch is being far too modest when she credits this particular chaos for the good that has come to her, downplaying the depth of her own talent and determination, she has assembled some startling examples of just how much a life can change when one is least expecting it.

Born to affectionate parents of modest means, Jane Lynch spent much of her formative years firmly ensconced in the white-bred traditionalism of the American midwest which, for a child of the 70s, endowed with a theatrical spirit, was a poor match. She was a dreamer, fixed on fame and fortune, living in a world that insisted its youth foreswear the risks of Hollywood stardom for the safety of a quiet, unremarkable life. Slaving away in a department store simply was not going to cut it. Her exclusion from this community was only enhanced when, as a teenager, she realized she was gay, a secret she'd feel forced to conceal for years to come until stints performing in New York, Chicago and L.A. imbued her with the confidence to be herself.

Finding herself less than a match for society's standards of beauty, success was fleeting for Ms. Lynch early on. Her earliest victories were limited to appearances in commercials and on the small-time comedy stage. But when one such commercial hurled her into the orbit of Christopher Guest, an award-winning director of feature films, her fortunes dramatically shifted. Suddenly, she was in a movie, a serious actor who would go onto feature in numerous big-screen comedies before finding ultimate and lasting success on Glee, a hit launched in 2009 with Ms. Lynch as the show's sharp-tongued villain. Along her journey, she acquires friends, allies, pets and a wife, all while seemingly leaving little by way of acrimony in her wake. This is a worthy achievement for anyone, let alone one who has reached for and grasped the stars.

Though Ms. Lynch keeps her readers at arms length, Happy Accidents is a fun romp through the world of a struggling performer, the soul cursed with many things to say and with no one to listen. She communicates with clarity the ups and downs of her profession, thrilling in its victories without ignoring the powerful loneliness of its failures. She leaves the reader cheering her on when she finally earns lasting success. But despite Ms. Lynch's winning charm, we are never truly allowed inside her world, or her head. The author is frank about her struggles with alcohol sparked by hiding herself in the Closet; she is open about her personal foibles which have lead her to push people away; she even includes a few anecdotes that must have been difficult for her to reveal to perfect strangers and perhaps she considers this enough sharing. But there is always a reserve, a protective veneer, a smile forced to hide what lies beneath, that is tangible throughout and prevents the reader from fully embracing the subject.

It must be painfully difficult for an intensely private person to confess her life's secrets, but these are why autobiographies are written, so that their writers can work through their own history and so that their readers can feel as though they understand what lies behind the public masks of people they will probably never meet. To the extent that Ms. Lynch conveys her warmth, her charm and her lovable flaws, she is, here, eminently successful. But to the extent that she allows us to know her, to understand her,she leaves something to be desired. On balance, a worthwhile read that left me wanting good to come to a kind-hearted person who worked hard for her achievements. (3/5 Stars)

A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr

From The Week of December 05, 2011

Every human who has lived since evolution bestowed self-awareness upon his species has, from time-to-time, considered the many whys of his existence. Why am I alive? Why am I me? Why do I do what I do? Though answers to these questions have proven to be too individualized to be generally applied to the human race, this has not dissuaded countless generations from building narratives, stories, even mythologies, in an attempt to bring clarity to life's most eternal quandaries. For if we cannot understand our motivations or our aims, then how can we possibly live a coherent, healthy life?

While many of us have considered these questions, only a relative few have devoted their lives to solving them. Their explanations may be confusing, their methods may be scattered, and their motivations may be grandiose, but there can be no doubt that, in attempting to grapple with the foundations of what it means to be alive, they have advanced our knowledge and brought us closer to understanding ourselves. A Most Dangerous Method is a biography of three such figures. Neither their names, nor their contributions, will soon be forgotten.

Mr. Kerr, a clinical psychologist and historian, here, reconstructs the lives and the theories that elevated Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung from clinical obscurity into the pantheon of cultural immortality. Examiners of the human mind, this famous pair, Austrian and Swiss, Jewish and Christian, came together in the early years of the 20th century to create and codify Psychoanalysis, a semi-systematic attempt to treat mental illness by sifting through the human subconscious for clues to the inner conflicts plaguing the afflicted. A patient being subjected to Psychoanalysis would be told to confess their dreams, fears and fantasies which would be used to build a profile of the person's mental state. Unresolved issues could then be teased out by the clinician, allowing the patient to resolve his issues by confronting the underlying cause of his condition.

Though their insights undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of the human mind, and though their efforts unquestionably helped the many suffering souls they treated, their science was, argues Mr. Kerr, shaky at best. When not enveloped by their own psycho-dramas, Freud and Jung acted more like prophets of a sacred faith than spearheads of a new, scientific endeavor. The tactics they deployed against those who disagreed with them were machiavellian and vengeful, revealing a predisposition for self-importance that no amount of dream journals could cure. More over, though they were successful in helping their patients come to grips with a wide range of abuse and neglect, their efforts to rationalize and explicate the traps of the human subconscious fell back on mythology more than method, making their conclusions vulnerable to errors of logic and supposition.

Into this revolution steps the third and here-to-for unremarkable figure of Sabina Spielrein. Youthful and intelligent, the Russian immigrant to western Europe and western thought first surfaces when she is treated by Carl Jung for histrionics. As a byproduct of her treatment, a profound, and sometimes sexual, attachment is formed between doctor and patient that would, in some form or another, last for the remainder of their lives. Jung not only attracted Spielrein's love, he seems to have encouraged her study of psychology. Though Spielrein would go on to earn a doctorate, becoming an eager pupil of masters Freud and Jung, and though she had insights that might have received noteworthy praise at any other time, Spielrein, like other adherents of the faith of Psychoanalysis, was caught up in the intellectual feud between Freud and Jung that, having once erupted, never healed. For as much as they could claim to reveal the infirmities of others, they could not detect or treat their own.

Though Mr. Kerr's biography of the triad who gave birth to Psychoanalysis succeeds in shining worthwhile light on the complex personalities of Freud and Jung, and though it does posthumous justice to the wronged Sabina Spielrein, a woman history unfairly forgot, A Most Dangerous Method is, otherwise, an overly meticulous reconstruction of the early history of Psychoanalysis. Perhaps for those already learned in the concepts championed by Freud and Jung, Mr. Kerr's deconstructions of the interplay between our three protagonists, along with his analysis of their insights, reads as an intelligent and incisive critique. Not so for this layman who found himself repeatedly plunged into the deep end of Psychoanalysis and its many preconceptions. Rather than educate the reader on the nature of these ideas, Mr. Kerr presumes a level of proficiency that most of his audience lacks, leading to an unnecessarily opaque and technical 600-page adventure through what is clearly an important topic.

For all this, Mr. Kerr is a talented biographer. Wherever he might have erred in the theories of the piece, he steps right when portraying the three flawed geniuses who occupy the heart of this story. Spielrein's preoccupation with an inner demon tormenting her life, Jung's obsession with mythology and Freud's insistence on being the high priest of his own science are vividly explained and backed up by correspondence exchanged between all three principals. Their triumphs and their failures are understood through the lens of their own biases which they, in spite of being armed with keen minds and cutting-edge theories, could never outrun.

As a biography, wonderful and gripping work. As an explicator of Psychoanalysis and its place in modern psychology, it leaves much to be desired. All in all, a powerful if flawed read. (3/5 Stars)

Sea Of Poppies: The Ibis Trilogy 01 by Amitav Ghosh

From The Week of November 28, 2011

Though life is far from fair, with some among us blessed at birth with advantages of privilege and talent others are not, there can be no doubt that the average human has far more access to the halls of power than he did at any other time in the history of our species. Yes, many formidable barriers remain, barriers that must eventually be destroyed, but these impediments are, for the most part, surmountable and certainly bear few similarities to the soul-crushing nature of the rigid hierarchies that characterized societies only a century ago. Where we largely have access to the ladder of social mobility which allows us to dream of climbing to a better tomorrow, for ourselves and our children, our predecessors were often locked, by dint of birth and race, into roles they could not escape until death. They could not rise to lead their nations, or even to hold some sway over them. That was not within their cast. It is into this world of fixed outcomes and ceaseless toil that Mr. Ghosh plunges us. It is a world he has drawn exquisitely well.

The year is 1838 and India is firmly under the sway of the British Empire. English merchants and the sea-captains in their hire, command, in the name of their monarch, the fidelity of half the world. Like the ancient Romans from whom they are in part descended, their noteworthy citizens have the power to elevate or dash the fortunes of their colonial subjects enchained to them by imperial bands that will not be broken for at least a century. But though the British hold more sway over the world than any other single, contemporary power, their empire is not without problems. For while they can force vast nations like India and China to heel, they cannot always compel them to trade.

Though this is less of a problem with the thoroughly suborned India, whose leading citizens have been mostly co-opted by British coin, China remains a persistent thorn in the side of the English. Dismissed as inferior upstarts by the self-sufficient Chinese, mercantile Britain finds itself at a loss. For while they desire all the tea and silk China has to offer, they have nothing to offer China in turn, a sobering and humiliating reality which compels an increasingly desperate Britania to force upon the Chinese people large quantities of Indian opium in hopes of addicting them. If they are successful in transforming China into a nation of addicts, they will have created for themselves a market for a good that they have in abundance, a good that can complete the circuit of trade that threatened to deprive them of their cherished oriental delights.

Into this despicable business sails the Ibis, a schooner of American construction which comes to India for a refit at the lowest ebb of the opium trade. Its British owner, Mr. Burnham, has decided to recommission the ship for use as a ferry for indentured workers, the first shipment of which he soon dispatches to the nearby island of Mauritius. As the ship braves the seas, on route to its destination, its crew and its passengers are confronted with all manner of plights, both internal and external, which have the power to snatch away their meager lives. This is the Ibis. This is the Sea of Poppies.

It is difficult to imagine a novel being imbued with greater elegance of language and epicness of plot than Mr. Ghosh's sprawling and majisterial Sea of Poppies. Constructed around four well-drawn, primary characters, an American sailor, an indentured Indian woman, a disgraced rajah and a runaway house girl, the author manages to both flesh out a dozen secondary characters and inject each of them with grace and menace. More over, he accomplishes this while firmly establishing the novel's greatest virtue, the immersive world of 19th century India which, here, is rendered in shockingly glorious detail. The research necessary to properly enliven such a rich and exotic environment boggles the mind. This is, for a literary epicure, a rare delicacy.

For all its vividness, however, Sea of Poppies is nearly stillborn. Mr. Ghosh risks losing the patience of his readers by asking them to bear with him as he devotes more than half of his 550 pages to establishing his leading lights, both their pains and their personalities. And while this meandering meticulousness is wonderfully paid off at the novel's conclusion, arriving there is somewhat arduous.

Nonetheless, Mr. Ghosh's novel is a delight to the senses such as comes along once in a great while. It, like the opium that saturates it, must be savored when smoked. For who knows when next such a quality product will come. (4/5 Stars)

Moxyland by Lauren Beukes

From The Week of November 28, 2011

Freedom is, for humans, a slippery slope. We needn't look beyond the history of government to furnish ourselves with proof of this truth. What began as a means (democracy) of cohering individuals into a society that shared power among its constituents (a republic), instead of concentrating it in the hands of a despot (a monarchy), has morphed, over the centuries, into an institution whose elected leaders, in the name of ensuring the safety of their citizens, roll back individual freedoms until the state occupies every aspect of civilian life. Neither government, nor its agents, are evil; there are many honorable men and women who are attracted by public service. No, statism arises out of good intentions because we have not incentivized government to shed unnecessary power. We have allowed it, instead, to follow the inevitable path of all unchecked institutions, to take upon itself all the influence it can muster. Ms. Beukes has, here, slid down to the bottom of this slippery slope in an attempt to imagine the endgame of this dangerous accretion. What her imagination finds down there has the power to disturb.

The year is 2018 and South Africa, after enjoying a brief spell as a post-Apartheid, racially integrated democracy, has lapsed into a kind of corporate-infused security state in which the safety of the people has taken on paramount importance. In the name of battling terrorism in all its forms, from anarchism to fundamentalism, the government has deployed any number of technologies (a taser delivered via text messaging) and biologicals (modified viruses that force the afflicted to seek treatment at state-run health facilities) against its own citizens. Yes, innocents will be caught up in the wash, but isn't that a fair price to pay for ensuring the safety of the majority?

Into this world of corporate statism, in which advertising is ubiquitous and career success depends upon branding and loyalty, wade a handful of loosely affiliated protagonists who each, in their own way, resist the status quo while trying to advance in a hostile world. The aspiring photographer who agrees to be a corporate guinea pig for their genetic experiments, the corporate IT professional who hacks for her subversive friends, the young revolutionary trying to make the docile public sit up and take notice of the corruption around them, and the adrift slacker who refuses to listen... Driven by their hopes and dreams, they try to succeed, to fulfil themselves, in a world too distracted by its vices and its devices to realize that their freedoms are slipping away. It's little wonder then that life in this South Africa is an uphill climb towards anything like contentment.

Though Moxyland is, in the main, too impressed with itself, and though it manages, at times, to drag even though it is a brisk 300 pages, Ms. Beukes' tale of corporate power in the age of totalitarianism lays claim to one of the best endings to a Sci-Fi novel in some time. Narratively driven by four main characters, each of whom tell their stories in the first person, Moxyland is thematically in stride with the works of William Gibson and George Orwell, each of whom wrote masterfully about the dangers of corporations and governments respectively. Ms. Beukes has dusted off their 20th century concerns, updated them with some 21st century worries about the powers and distractions of social media, added a healthy splash of Clockwork Orange-style jargon and cooked up a work of quality science fiction. Yes, some of the concepts are a bit farfetched for 2018, and her attempts to create a new lingo fall somewhat flat, but I can forgive these sins when the author brings her story to such a powerful and appropriately merciless conclusion.

Alarmist? Yes. Fretful? Certainly. But Ms. Beukes knew, all along, where she was taking her readers. They will not be disappointed... (3/5 Stars)

Comrade J by Pete Early

From The Week of November 28, 2011

Though we all, from time to time, find ourselves in disagreement with our nations, their laws, their customs, and their relationships with foreign powers, we still love the lands into which we were born. After all, with every formative moment we spent within their borders, they wove us into their societal tapestries, ensuring that we would be part of them, that we would know them in ways that we could never belong anywhere else. Our nations brand us as surely as we brand them, in shared experience and outlook and it is this mutual connection that fosters patriotism.

But of course, as much as it is valuable for a nation to have an identity, and as nourishing as it is for us to have a nation to belong to, nations are nothing more than mental constructs, agreements on paper that draw invisible lines on maps, not on land. The Earth did not decree that there should be 200-odd countries divvying up its landmass. We chose, and in many cases forced, such divisions. And as much as these divisions give our lives structure, they also bring us conflict. For national identity, in the end, fosters competition which in turn breeds jealousy, which engenders rivalry, which cries out for war. Mr. Early's tale may be a fascinating recount of post-Soviet conflict between the New Russia and the distracted United States, but ultimately it demonstrates the powerful divisiveness of nation states in a nuclear world.

Until the day, in 1993, when Boris Yeltsin ordered the Russian army to fire upon its own people as a means of holding onto power, Sergei Tretyakov was unwaveringly loyal to his motherland. Intelligent, ambitious and hard-working, he maneuvered his way into the powerful arms of the KGB, absorbed its training and enthusiastically set about implementing its harsh wishes. As a respected member of its directorate of foreign affairs, Tretyakov adopted numerous, diplomatic guises, first in Canada and then in the United States, as a means of recruiting spies, purchasing national intelligence, and furthering the aims of Soviet Russia. In this, he was, for more than a decade, prolifically successful, sending hundreds of stolen cables, schemes and political intelligence back to his masters in Moscow.

But after he saw the Russian tanks firing on the symbols of Russian government, Tretyakov, then a colonel in the KGB, could no longer ignore the injurious but obvious truth that he was working at the behest of a political class comprised of liars, thieves and opportunists who were not only unworthy of the risks he had taken in their name, they were unworthy of the country for which they purported to act. From that day forth, Sergei Tretyakov was a man searching for a newer, better home. Seven years later, as New York station chief for the SVR, the foreign-affairs successor to the directorate under the KGB, he defected to the United States, taking with him both a wealth of intelligence about Russia and a message for his soon-to-be fellow Americans. The new Russia may well be democratic in name, it may well have softened its stances and disarmed some of its nukes, but it is, in no way, a friend to America. According to Tretyakov, the Cold War is still alive.

For all of its flaws, Comrade J is a compelling read. Mr. Early, a journalist and author, was strongly encouraged by his contacts in the American intelligence community to hear out Sergei Tretyakov who, despite the danger inherent in coming forward, was eager to have his story told. And it's easy to see why. For beyond the salacious scandals, the stolen secrets, the plots and counter plots one might expect from a biography of a spy's life, Tretyakov is a representation of Russia, both its Soviet-era servitude and its post-Soviet opportunism. He, like many of his fellows, could adhere to Communism's strictures as long as he felt the system was fair and logical, as long as he felt he was working for people who had their country's best interests at heart. But when that was revealed to be little more than a lie, he carved out the best deal he could for himself and his family, just like Russia.

Unfortunately, though, so little of Tretyakov's story is verifiable that the reader is left wondering how much of his tale is actually true. Yes, Mr. Early has clearly gone to great lengths to confirm what he could, and the fact that American intelligence agencies were so eager to welcome Tretyakov, tells us that the man is credible, but there's simply no way of knowing how many of these events were twisted, distorted, or even made up. In light of this, it is impossible to know if Tretyakov's warning about the new Russia should be taken seriously.

Dancing In The Glory Of Monsters by Jason K. Stearns

From The Week of November 28, 2011

While we can all agree that war is a hellish and barbaric business that has few peers as measured by sheer destructive power, there is, at least, an opportunity for some good to come of it. The conclusion of World War II begot the Martial Plan which quite literally paved the roads for a united Europe. Stretching farther back into history, the colonial Americans earning their independence from the British in their revolutionary war laid the philosophical and political foundation for a nation that would become the most dominant force here-to-for witnessed by human civilization. However, as often as these bloody and costly conflicts might lead to a brighter tomorrow, they can just as easily leave behind festering wounds in the bodies and the minds of the belligerents who prosecute them, wounds that must be answered and then answered in turn in what swiftly becomes a loop of mutual annihilation. Though it is perhaps too early to decide which camp the Great War of Africa belongs to, the early returns, based on the observations of Mr. Stearns, favor the devastation of the latter over the hope of the former.

For the 30 years following the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected president of an independent Congo, this enormous and geographically diverse country in Africa was ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko, a murderous and self-indulgent tyrant who systematically plundered his nations resources, oversaw the decay of the national infrastructure, violently suppressed any form of opposition by dividing and conquering his enemies, and sold out what was left to foreign interests that looked the other way while he languished at the head of his own private fiefdom. It will come as no surprise then to learn that when the Mobutu government did nothing to prevent his country from sheltering the instigators and the implementors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, his house of cards finally collapsed when the vengeful Rwandans poured into his country and backed his enemy, Laurent Kabila, all the way to Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, where he seized power in the name of a new Congo.

Any hope, however, that the Kabila government might open the doors to the cleansing winds of democracy for the Congo was short-lived. Having been profoundly and irreversibly shaped by his decades in exile, Kabila demonstrated a shocking inability to govern and an unwillingness to allow anyone else to do it for him. This destructive combination crippled the new Congo and, in 2001, Kabila was assassinated, to be replaced by his only marginally more successful son. Ultimately, the crisis which grew out of the attempt to transform the Congo into a democratic state drew in eight African nations and authored countless rebel groups which ground out a five-year conflict from 1998 to 2003 that claimed the lives of upwards of seven million souls, many of whom were extinguished by disease and starvation, the handmaidens of war. This is one reporter's reconstruction of those terrifying years and the uneasy peace which has followed them to the present day.

Mr. Stearns, a Yale-educated writer and reporter, has, here, chillingly captured the costliest conflict since World War II. Marked by the chaos of shifting alliances and complicated rivalries, the author condenses a war that almost defies narrative into a dense but coherent series of events so tragic that they cause Mr. Stearns himself to wonder if the Congo is simply cursed, a country blessed with natural resources that must, nonetheless endure the corrosive caress of greed and rapaciousness. Yes, the work, at times, requires one to pause and consult Wikipedia as a means of digesting so many bloody events, but the portrait the author paints, of numerous, barely democratic governments clashing over both spilled blood and the riches of the Congo, is exquisite. He has clearly depicted the multitude of selfish ends that drove the instigators of this conflict and their failings which prevent it from being brought to anything like a fair and democratic conclusion.

Rarely has the Paradox of Plenty been more devastatingly exemplified. At times overwhelming, but otherwise a powerful reconstruction of what must surely be one of the most chaotic and despotic wars of recent memory. (4/5 Stars)