American Spy

Girl In The Cold War

At the best of times, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for a woman to get into the murky all-male world of espionage. And Marie Mitchell is young black woman FBI agent, who wants to a spy at the height of the Cold War. She knows that however smart or brave she may be, the men will not give her any significant assignments, so when she does get a dubious-sounding but exciting job, she takes it. 

Lauren Wilkinson’s American Spy is a perceptive novel with a likeable protagonist—it will possibly be made into a film soon, though this spy universe is not glamorous, like the one inhabited by James Bond or Ethan Hunt. It’s dirty and dangerous.

When the book opens, Marie is asleep at home with her twin sons in the next room. Her senses sharpened by her FBI training intercept a hitman, and she has to shoot him before he does. She knows that the racist white cops will make life tough for her, even though she clearly killed in self-defence, so she escapes with her kids to her mother in Martinique, and writes her astonishing story for her sons to read in case she does not survive another attack,

Back in 1987, Marie is doing dull jobs for the FBI, recruiting informants and dealing with “oppressive amounts of paperwork” that lands at her desk. The daughter of a New York cop, and younger sister of the ambitious Helene, whose dreams inspired her, Marie wants more out of her professional life.

A shady CIA man, Ed Ross, recruits her to join a mission to somehow find a chink in the armour of Burkina Faso’s charismatic leader, Thomas Sankara (a real life character), so that the CIA can get rid of him and install a puppet president—the kind of nasty game the US still plays, but back then the fight was against the USSR and all communist regimes around the world.

Marie is aware that she is the clichéd honeytrap, but she is genuinely attracted to Sankara; she also had another reason to accept the job—Daniel Slater, the man who recommended her, was the colleague and boyfriend of her sister who died mysteriously and Marie wants to find out what happened.

After a meeting with Sankara in New York, where he goes off-schedule to meet the black community in Harlem, Marie is sent to Burkina Faso. She finds serious attempts being made to overthrow Sankara, who is, nonetheless, hugely popular with the people for all the work he does for their upliftment. Marie is caught in bind, not willing to go beyond a point to aid the CIA, and then finding out that there are wheels with wheels. In reality too, Sankara was violently assassinated by his closest associate.

Marie gets out of Burkina Faso using her own quick thinking and courage, but realises soon enough that a spy can never really escape the past. Lauren Wilkinson deftly handles the various complex threads of the story, and paces it so that it never gives the reader breathing space. The book simply demands to be read in one sitting. American Spy is a worthy addition to the list of Cold War-era spy fiction. And, it ends at a point that indicates a possible sequel.

American Spy

By Lauren Wilkinson

Publisher: Randon House

Pages: 304

Sunburn

Perilous Polly

Bestselling author Laura Lippman’s twenty-third novel, Sunburn, is a twisty-turny romantic thriller, with a beautiful and sexy redheaded protagonist, who, after a bad marriage, decides to take control of her destiny, and uses her magnetism to manipulate people—a classic femme fatale.

Polly Costello, walks out on her second husband, Gregg and daughter suddenly, intuiting that he was about to abandon her with the kid. She lands up at the one-horse town of Belleville and takes up a job as a waitress in a bar. It turns out that she had killed her abusive first husband, went to  prison and was released by a governor’s pardon. Only a crooked insurance agent knows that Polly has a fortune from insurance and a malpractice claim, waiting for her to collect it. He hires a private detective, the good-looking Adam Bosk, to trail her and find out her plans. Adam gets a job as a chef in the same bar to get closer to Polly, discovers that she is not so easy to crack and ends up falling hopelessly in love with her.

However, he is never sure if she loves him too, or is just using him. Still, he is willing to give up his old life and settle down with her; she shows willingness to do the same, but she keeps him and the reader guessing.

Lippman gradually builds up the stormy weather outside and in the emotional turbulence between Polly and Adam and then turns up the heat till the explosion takes place. The bitter-sweet ending is totally unexpected. Polly is an admirable woman, who is aware how tough it is for an impoverished woman like her to get by in a man’s world, but has the smarts to research exactly how to kill a man with a knife to his heart, so that he dies with one blow. If it’s her life on the line, she knows what she has to do to survive.

Sunburn

By Laura Lippman

Publsher: Morrow

Pages: 304

2 By Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

Trapped By Truth

Following the success of their last book The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, have written another psychological thriller, An Anonymous Girl, which is not as suspenseful and twisted as the earlier book, but is taut enough to make it a page-turner.

Jessica Farris, a Manhattan make-up artist, always short of cash, agrees to be part of a study about morality and ethics. She, in fact, sneaks into the study by lying about how she landed there, which makes her an even more interesting subject for the invisible psychiatrist, Dr Lydia Shields. Jessica thinks she will answer some questions, collect her cheque and leave, but she is drawn into a web, by revealing more about herself than she should have. Answering questions like would she lie to a loved one, and has she deeply hurt someone she cares about, affect Jessica a lot, because of the guilt she has buried in her past. But by baring her soul to Dr Shields, Jessica walks into a trap.

Dr Shields, a beautiful and sinister woman, can use this knowledge to destroy Jessica’s life. However, she breaks her own rules of keeping the interactions secret, to meet Jessica. The rich and sophisticated older woman, befriends the impressionable Jessica, and under the pretext of acting out some of the ethical dilemmas in real life, gets the young woman to perform some unpleasant tasks. Jessica is dazzled by the money, but also discomfited by what she is getting into. By the time she figures what’s going on, she is in too deep, and Dr Shields will not let her off the hook till she gets what she wants.

 Jessica inadvertently puts her family – parents and disabled sister—into jeopardy, and wrecks her budding romance with the charming chef Noah before it even starts properly. However Jessica may have been susceptible to Dr Shield’s nefarious plans, but she is not totally dumb. She starts pulling at any threads she can find and unravels a disturbing story that may have led to the death of another subject of Dr Shields’s so-called study.

The plot is far-fetched and the twists too contrived, but the cat-and-mouse game between the two women keeps the reader guessing till the end.

An Anonymous Girl

By: Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

Publisher: St. Martin's

Pages: 384

****************

A Woman Scorned

Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen collaborated for the first time for last year’s bestseller, The Wife Between Us, which will also be seen on screen soon.

It is a mind-bender of book, in which nothing is what it seems. For a while it seems like Vanessa, the discarded wife of the handsome and successful Richard, is stalking Nellie, the young woman he is planning to marry, but the reason she is doing that is not what it appears.

Vanessa married Richard and found that he ended up controlling her life to the extent that she was almost imprisoned in her large suburban home, which he bought without even consulting her. He keeps her in designer clothes and expensive jewellery, but she feels alienated. When he leaves her for another woman, her life crashes.

She has to move in with her aunt, take up a job as a saleswoman in a swanky store where her former society friends shop and feel sorry for her, and to cope, she turns to drink. A scenario similar to so many books, like Paula Hawkins’s bestselling The Girl On The Train. Then she tries to contact Nellie, to make her stop the impending wedding. The reason becomes apparent later.

Hendricks and Pekkanen use a back-and-forth narrative style that gets confusing, but also adds an extra layer of intrigue to the plot.  All the characters have something to hide, so things get deliciously dark, and the final twist does come up as a surprise.

The Wife Between Us

Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

Publisher: St. Martin's

Pages: 352

Asymmetry

Into The Writer’s Mind

Lisa Halliday’s debut novel, Asymmetry, won awards, ecstatic reviews and found itself on every list of the best books of 2018 list. Not every young writer gets such a welcome.

It is an in intriguing book, with two seemingly disconnected parts, and a third that is in the form of a radio broadcast.

In the first part, Folly, reportedly inspired by Halliday’s own relationship with Philip Roth, a junior twenty-something editorial assistant at a publishing house has a romance with a much older author of some stature, who is in line for the Nobel Prize. It proceeds from a simple conversation on a park bench, shared chocolate and ice cream and then progresses to a full-blown, but secret, love affair.

It is an unequal relationship, Alice, also an aspiring writer, is obviously in awe of the Ezra Blazer—he pays off her student loans, gives her gifts, suggests books for her to read (excerpts finds themselves into this book) and she brings to the table her youth and energy. He calls her on the phone, with caller id always blocked, sends her on errands and dismisses her when he wants her to leave. Despite the age difference, his experience and her naivete, there is a lot of joy in their romance—particularly in their shared passion for baseball. They have no future, however, as she would eventually tire of having a sick old man in her life. 

The second part Madness, has as its protagonist, Amar, an Iraqi American economist, detained at the airport in London, on his journey to visit his brother in Kurdistan. While various officers interrogate him, he looks back on his life, his childhood, his romance with a white girl, the difference between his life in the US, and that of his brother who opted to live in unstable and violent Iraq. In a post 9/11 world, his Iraqi passport automatically makes him suspect; the way he is treated is deplorable but the officials are being ridiculously over-cautious. 

The final section is a transcript of a radio interview with Ezra Blazer—who has finally won the Nobel-- on a programme called Desert Island Discs, in which the writer talks about his life and tells the RJ what music he would take with him on a desert island.

The accomplishment of Halliday’s novel is the fragile connection between the three parts, and her ability to write in multiple voices. Alice wonders if she could write from the point of view of a Muslim man, and Amar’s story illustrates the power of make-believe in storytelling. Writers can be whoever they choose to be, all that is needed is imagination and perhaps, empathy—not all that easy to come by.

Asymmetry

By Lisa Halliday

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Pages: 288

Nine Perfect Strangers

The Perils Of Wellness

Bestselling author Liane Moriarty, whose book Little Big Lies was turned into an award-winning series, has come out with her new novel, Nine Perfect Strangers.

Set in a pricey boutique wellness resort in Australia, called Tranquillum House, the book takes a look at the dodgy business that promises to transform lives in ten days. It is a given that the people who sign up for these health resorts have some problem in their lives. The domineering woman, Masha Dmitrichenko, who runs the resort with an iron hand, seems to know which strings to pull to make her clients feel better—physically and emotionally. Assisting her in running the resort are the impressionable former paramedic Yao, and the shrewd Delilah, who knows more than she is willing to let on.

There are nine clients at the swanky spa that promises a life-altering experience with a mix of yoga, massage, diet control, fasting, digital detox and “noble silence.” The only thing they have in common is that they can afford the high fee at the luxury resort, located in a beautiful heritage mansion in a remote area.

Romance author Frances Welty in her fifties, has just been scammed by a man she befriended on the net, the sales of her books are plummeting, her last manuscript has been rejected by her publisher and she has developed a back problem. Fond of wine, chocolates and the good life, Frances is a bit taken aback by the strict discipline at the resort and indignant when the food and drink she has smuggled in is confiscated, but she is willing to be open-minded about the experience. When her life is at rock-bottom, she has nothing much to lose.

She is the one fully-developed character in the book, though the others are interesting too--- the truculent, overweight sports management consultant, a young couple that won a fortune in a lottery and find their marriage unraveling, a shattered divorcee and mother of four, a couple with their teenage daughter coping with the suicide of their son, and a gay resort junkie.

With some difficulty, they manage the routine of getting up at the crack of dawn for meditation and exercise, they put up with the fasting and frugal healthy diet, but when things start going wrong, their individual strengths and weaknesses are revealed. The prologue has Masha going down with a heart attack, and the book then returns to her past, her radical metamorphosis, her ideas and dubious methods much later in the story; and, in spite of all she does wrong, she is quite a remarkable woman.

Nine Perfect Strangers is an entertaining read that also questions the belief of people in quick-fix solutions to their problems; wellness professionals make a fortune out of their doubts, fears and lack of self-awareness.

Nine Perfect Strangers

By Liane Moriarty

Publisher: Flatiron

Pages: 457

Washington Black

The Sky Is The Limit

Canadian writer Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black, shortlisted for the Man Booker prize last year, and winner of other awards and much acclaim, is set in the nineteenth century when slavery was still in existence, with all its attendant horrors.

The protagonist of this picaresque novel is George Washington Black or “Wash”, who started life on a sugar plantation in Barbados, under a very cruel master. At the start of the book, he is eleven years old, an orphan, who is looked after by another slave he calls Big Kit. His fate would have been like the other “field niggers” had he not been picked by his master’s eccentric, science-obsessed brother Christopher “Titch” Wilde to be his personal assistant. 

Titch treats Wash like a human being, and when he discovers the boy’s astonishing talent for drawing, he involves him even more in his researches. Much to the annoyance of his barbaric brother, Erasmus, Titch is busy building a hot air balloon, that he calls a cloud-cutter. During the process, Wash is burnt in an accidental blast and his face disfigured, which, strangely, does not hamper his destiny in any way.

When the Wildes’ cousin Philip, bringing news of their father’s death in the Arctic, inexplicably shoots himself the presence of Wash, Titch knows that the slave will probably be brutally killed for no fault of his. The two of them escape on the balloon, crash into a ship and then land in America, pursued by a slave hunter, hired by Erasmus.

Titch, who endangered his own life for Wash, abandons him in the Arctic wastes, where they go to look for Wilde senior, who, it turns out, was not dead, but living with his partner Peter Haas, amidst the natives. Wash’s amazing luck holds, as he survives, travels, to Nova Scotia and then London with a marine biologist Dr Goff and his daughter Tana, who falls in love with him. His life’s mission, however, becomes the search for Titch, or at least some information of where he is, and why he left him behind in middle of nowhere.

The book may be densely plotted and its twists often contrived, but its vision is still breathtaking wide, the narration of Wash’s adventure always gripping, and the prose evocative. All of which make it a rewarding read.

Washington Black 

by Esi Edugyan

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

Pages: 352

Normal People

Love & Longing In Dublin

Sally Rooney’s Normal People, came out to rave reviews and inclusion in the Booker longlist. The novel is a sombre version of When Harry Met Sally, using accepted romcom tropes—a couple having an on-off romance over many years-- but with utter seriousness and a marked lack of flippancy.

Marianne and Connell are first seen as teenagers, studying in the same class in the town of Sligo. They are both academically bright, but also socially awkward misfits—she is more of a loner than he is. Marianne belongs to a rich family, and Connell’s mother cleans her mansion. This social disparity does not get in the way of their love, though Connell is particular about keeping their relationship secret, and ignores her in public. When he does something truly hurtful, Marianne cuts him off totally and they only meet again in college in Dublin; she has transformed into a pretty and popular young woman, sought after by men, while he is unable to adjust to his new life away from home.

The two hook-up, break-up, love and hurt each other very intensely, but there is something tender and heart-breaking about their story—they are made for each other, but the only ones who cannot understand this is the two of them. Happiness and misery go hand-in-hand, and each encounter leaves them emotionally scarred. Rooney’s characters are endearing, even when they exasperatingly insist on complicating their lives.

Normal People captures the spirit of the millennial generation that is trying to redefine love and twisting itself into knots.

Normal People

By Sally Rooney

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Pages: 288