The 1980’s was the decade in which Brian Moore’s reputation became firmly established.  The Colour of Blood, shortlisted for the Booker Prize,  won the Sunday Express Prize, the Canadian Authors’ Association Prize and the Hughes prize.  One of Moore’s thrillers, I came to it with high expectations, having loved both book and film of The Statement.

I can’t say this one thrilled me though. The ending was too obvious.  Maybe I’ve read too much Moore but I knew that the loose thread in chapter one would be used to sew things up neatly.  The ride to that ending is a 4-day roller-coaster which sees Cardinal Steven Bem, stripped of his regalia, finery and privileges, forced into the life of a fugitive before staging a triumphant return to silence his politically-motivated peers …

Did I mention the word politics?  What’s that got to do with religion?  Do the two mix?  Should they indeed?  Those questions form the underlying theme of Moore’s novel.  Even if the setting is now consigned to history (the novel is set in a Soviet satellite state), the theme is as relevant today as it was in the 1980’s.  The Catholic clergy of this unnamed country - nonetheless clearly Poland - is divided.  Bem is the voice of moderation.  He will accommodate the State provided it does not impose itself on the doctrine of the Church.  Others, however, see things differently and wish to incite the citizens to action.  4 days before an importance religious festival, an assassination attempt is made on Cardinal Bem, after which he is taken, unwillingly,  into protective custody.

The question is who are his would be assassins and who are his captors?  The Communist state or an extreme branch of the Catholic church which will not reconcile itself to Bem’s point-of-view. 

We still live under tyranny: the tyranny of an age when religious beliefs have become inextricably entwined with political hatreds.

As in Lies of Silence Moore depicts religious extremism as a destructive force.  However, for once, and I have to say that for me this was the particular and refreshing strength of The Colour of Blood, we see Moore convincingly depict the mindset of a sincerely religious man, a man of conscience.  Cardinal Bem may have developed an arrogance to accompany his high office but his private,  prayerful moments are humble and devout.

I am Your servant, created by You.  All that I have I have through You and from You.  Nothing is my own.  I must do everything for You and only for You.  Tonight at the meeting I was obsessed by politics.  I thought of the danger to our nation.  I did not think of the sufferings we cause You by our actions.  My fault, my most grievous fault.

Impressive words from the pen of a devout atheist.

Lies of Silence by Brian Moore
I have recently read two books back-to-back dealing with the fictional exploration of The Troubles in Northern Ireland: The Truth Commissioner by David Park, and then Lies of Silence by Brian Moore. Both are brave, are different in what they fictionalise, but this is not to compare the two; that would be unfair because the latter was written by a vastly superior writer to the former, and that makes the true difference, certainly as far as fiction is concerned. This is especially so in the way each writer addresses the moral landscape, which became – for me - the fundamental deficiency in Park’s book, as I have commented upon in that thread.

Moore is rightly famed for his fictive range and the three that I have read consist of enjoyably separate universes. In view of this range I have wondered if there exists a thematic unity to Moore’s novels, or whether I could discover it even if I read them all, as Lizzy has set out to do. I was surprised to learn from Lizzy’s blog that the setting, or certainly part of the idea of Lies of Silence, came from a real life experience of Moore’s.

Caution: what follows below is spoiler packed and could almost be blacked out in its entirety.

In Lies of Silence, Moore does not launch immediately into the action of the kidnap and bomb run, which a lesser writer may well have done. His book is an exploration of national, tribal and personal betrayal and needs to provide the moral intersections at which these betrayals will occur. Moore uses the first chapter to give us a strong sense of the wavering morality of the character of Michael Dillon. Alongside Dillon he begins his presentation to us of Andrea Baxter, Dillon’s young lover, and Moira, his wife. But it is Dillon we know by the end of the first forty pages, from that first desperate “Please ?” to Andrea to meet him for a late walk, to the craven refusal to answer his wife’s bedtime question as to what was wrong, because he knew ‘they would be up all night’. Moore barges into the chapter’s last paragraph to kick a character when he’s down: ‘He kissed her, a traitor’s kiss.’

But they are up all night, when the IRA break into their house. The chaotic terror, the menace of the masked men, the fear of - and from - the young volunteers, the shift between psychological and physical power among the captured and their captors, the behavioural explosion of Moira, and the seeming acquiescence of Dillon as he approaches the hour of his will-he/won’t-he dilemma are dramatically and brilliantly done.

No Bomb / No Moira: can one imagine such a drive ? Moore takes us along in Dillon’s head, right to the very brink. Dillon’s moral priority is for the greater number, the hotel guests (who include the equally distasteful Rev. Alun Pottinger, the sectarian target of the bomb) rather than his wife. It is only after the hotel has been cleared that Dillon asks about her. Do we believe in Dillon’s actions to this point ? Do we believe in Moore ? Yes. The dilemma is extreme, asking an unimaginable empathy. Perhaps is enough.

Moira is then faced with her reaction to her husband’s choice: hero for saving many lives, or villain for his willingness to sacrifice her’s ? And from this narrative point forwards she is spinning away from Dillon. However, her character needs something more to justify the apparent ‘flakiness’ of her actions. Moore gives her an eating disorder, an obsession with her looks, and the belief that she is only alive at a cosmetic level.

Moore’s cleverness in his succinct plotting of Moira’s betrayals is not only to have the confession of her husband’s infidelity arrive after the bomb run, but to have Dillon’s transfer to London, and her own moral stance on that, cause the split, conveniently for Dillon, it appears.

“‘No, you listen. You stood up to them this morning. You were willing to lose me to do it. Well, I’m going to stay here now and stand up to them, even if it means losing you.” She turned away. “What am I talking about ? I can’t lose you. I never had you.’”

Then comes the confession, but not before, and perhaps in the aftermath of his heroism, Dillon overreaches himself, commits what adulterers would term a “schoolboy error”, by holding hands with Andrea in the high-risk public arena of his hotel’s restaurant. In comes Moira “… tall, walking quickly”. Of course she has seen them. The brief conversation that follows displays Moore’s consistency in Dillon

“‘No. I rang Peg Walton this morning. I’m starting right away in her shop. How long have you known that girl ?’

‘What girl ?’

She jerked her head in the direction of the dining-room. ‘That girl !’

‘A few months. Why ?’

Suddenly she laughed, angry, close to hysteria. ‘Why’ she said. ‘Why ?’

Later in the TV make-up room, Moira and Dillon close in on the truth. But Dillon, having informed Moira that they need to talk “about us” cannot bring himself to the necessary words, and cedes the psychological space to his wife. It is only then, when Dillon is silent in the face of his wife’s question as to whether he is going to miss her – his young lover - by going to London, that she realises that they are going together, and the betrayal is deeper than she thought. In their next meeting in the tea room, Moore turns it up further when Moira asks Dillon if he would have taken the same decision had it been his lover, Andrea. Dillon then confirms that she is going to England with him, confesses that it is serious and that he wants a divorce …. but only in response to his wife’s questions.

For me there is an illuminating example of Moore’s skill when Dillon is exiting the TV studio in the lift.

“They stood in silence, watching the indicator ascend. ‘So it was Pottinger they were after ?’ the commissionaire asked.

‘It seems so.’”

Pure character. Quintessential Dillon. And magnificent writing. It has already been established beyond doubt that Pottinger was the target of the IRA bomb. Moore could have had Dillon say, simply, “Yes”. The finesse of Moore’s characterisation has Dillon equivocate, and qualify the truth with an uncertainty that does not exist. In the moral war zone of sectarian Belfast, Dillon has no indicator at that point of the commissionaire’s sympathies, and on a larger scale Moore shows the extreme distrust and caution of random human intercourse in such a setting. Such subtlety.

By contrast with Moira, Moore shows his bravado in characterisation. From quiet beginnings Moira’s behaviour is unleashed stage by stage as each betrayal takes place: by Belfast, by her fading looks, by her friend Peg, and by her husband. Within the confines of tight plotting in a tight book Moore is accomplished across a wide range of character evolution.

Like the action of the beginning, the introduction of a new character at p.201 of a p.251 book would perhaps in the work of a lesser writer signal a plot convenience. But the arrival of Father Matt Connolly is the harbinger of Dillon’s fatal moral convolution resulting in the final betrayal. In Dillon’s second meeting with the priest, which takes place in Hyde Park in London, he experiences yet another moral spasm as regards testifying against the IRA who kidnapped him and his wife. Shortly after marching away from the priest in blind anger, he has to face Andrea’s question as to whether being a “coward” is more important than their lives together. The spasms become contractions. She reminds Dillon that he promised that he would not testify. With further prodding into his ever-shifting backbone, Andrea gets Dillon to agree not to testify and to ring the police, and if possible the priest, to tell them this. He never makes the call … and so finally betrays Andrea, breaking his earlier promise to her. Those whom he does not betray are, ironically, the IRA as they ensure that he does not. I found that the novel’s depressing irony. Dillon’s fate is a function of Dillon’s nature, as if Moore had nothing to do with it.

Perhaps the ultimate betrayal of this novel is Dillon’s betrayal of himself, a young published poet masquerading as a hotel manager, after which the rest is fictionally possible. It’s as if Moore, like a chess grandmaster, makes a move early in the opening which ultimately defeats his unknowing opponent many moves later.

At the beginning of the novel Dillon recollects the first time he meets Andrea who mistakes him for one of the Irish Poets who are being filmed at the hotel of which he is a manager.

“‘You’re one of the Irish Poets, aren’t you?’ she asked, and in that moment all the wrong turnings he had taken in his life came back to sentence him.”

Craft of the highest order.

This book is a gem in more ways than one. Embarking on the Mooreathon with Lizzy, I wanted to read all of the books on offer. This one is the most expensive to buy used. And used is the only way you can get it. So, not wanting to spend £10 or more on a copy from 1987, I ended up with an old musty copy from 1970. The price in the U.K. is listed as 5/-. I have lived in the UK a long time, but I don’t know what that means. Helpfully, there’s also (25p) listed. It was 80c in Australia, 75c in New Zealand, and 60c in South Africa. But I digress.

The title of this book refers to a poem of the same name by Wallace Stevens. There are a few lines of that poem quoted within the book, but if, like me, it doesn’t make much sense to you, don’t worry. Moore may have wanted to make some sort of statement with that reference, but if he did it’s lost on me, and there’s plenty more that I do understand.

The Emperor of Ice-cream is mostly a story about a young man named Gavin. He’s bored with school. He doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life and is at the point where he needs to make decisions about it. He thinks his parents don’t understand him, and he’s not sure he likes them much. Pretty much every 17 year old in the land, but there is never a dull moment for the reader. Gavin is flawlessly presented, along with his dual alter-ego black angel / white angel. But it’s not only Gavin who is portrayed so well. We get insight into the personalities of many other characters. How does Moore do it, in only 190 pages?

In short, this book is near perfect. The end ties together a bit too neatly if you take it too literally, so I decided not to.

I highly recommend this book. It’s up there with Judith Hearne. In fact, I think it’s surpassed it; high praise indeed.

James Tait Black Memorial Prize 1975

Governor General’s Award for Fiction (English) 1975

 At last - a Brian Moore novel that was the bride, not the bridesmaid.  Though I must say I am somewhat surprised that it was The Great Victorian Collection that bagged the awards.  How so?

Take the premise:  “When Anthony Maloney woke up one day in Carmel, USA, he glanced out of his hotel window, and noted, with surprise, that his dream of the night before had come true.  A vast open-air market stetched in front of him, filled with the most exquisite and priceless collection of Victorian objects.”    What follows transforms the life of Anthony Maloney, an ordinary 29-year old young man, assistant professor of history at McGill University in Montreal, making his first trip to the West Coast.  He can’t believe his luck!  Dreams come true after all!  However as The Great Victorian Collection is subjected to the scrutiny of the press, antiquarian experts, a burgeoning tourist industry and even a police investigation, the dream rapidly transforms into nightmarish reality.

Of course, the premise is absurd.  This novel is an “impossible premise treated realistically”.  Even so, Moore had his struggles - well, what atheist wouldn’t when dealing with a) the supernatural or b) a secular miracle? According to Patricia Craig in her biography of Moore, the novel was written and revised, revised again and again as new ways forward presented themselves, and then ultimately rewritten following advice from an editor that “the fantasy element was satisfactory but it fell a bit flat when it came to characterisation”.  Now I’m only guessing here, but may I suggest that Moore added a messy marriage break-up and a messy romance into the mix following this criticism - and believe me they are messy.  However, they don’t really satisfy and have little to no relevance to the main plot.

OK - so why the awards?  Others have suggested that this is Moore’s Borgesian novel.  Never read Borges so I can’t confirm.  Kafka’s Metamorphosis I have read and Moore’s novel is of the same mould - a bit more humorous perhaps.

But I’m not the greatest fan of absurdist literature - Borgesian (I presume) or Kafkaesque doesn’t float my boat.  But allegory does and it’s on this level that The Great Victorian Collection lifted itself for me.  A few sample quotes:

he was not dreaming; he had really created these things and had made them visible for others to see and admire.

But how could he go on living with a set of statues?  A man must live with a real woman .  How could anyone spend his life wandering up and down the aisles of a museum, night after night dreaming the same dream?  After six months, after a year, he would no longer be able to look at all this.  He would grow to hate it.

There was no longer any real life for him - no life at all apart from the Collection.

Think author, think of letting your novel out into the world, think death of the author.  As an allegory, The Great Victorian Collection really, really works.  But the reader really, really has to work to see the point.  And that’s possibly why, awards notwithstanding, The Great Victorian Collection, is currently out-of-print.

The Statement, published in 1996, is a complex story of a man who has been on the run for many many years. The story is told in such a way that the reader’s sympathies may suddenly shift, and there are many surprises. (This is a good thing for this reader.)

I found that many of the opening first lines of chapters were quite cumbersome. The combination of names, titles, and places could have been refined.

That’s the only criticism though - the book is full of intriguing characters and situations. It’s hard to review this one without giving anything away so I’ll close with: A recommended read.

Memento ergo sum - I remember, therefore I am.  A memory from a Latin class flags up the theme of Moore’s 6th novel and  Mary Lavery’s identity crisis becomes explicit when she forgets her name in the hairdresser’s.  She’s 32,  already into her third marriage.  She has not been Mary Dunne since she was 20.  But in the twelve years since, she’s been Mary Phelan, Bell and now Lavery.  No wonder the girl is confused!

And so Mary remembers her life. There’s not much pre-marriage detail. And that’s her problem.  She sees herself only in relation to the men in her life and when she’s dissatisfied, particularly between the sheets, she’s quick to find herself another.  Her beauty engenders no shortage of those willing to sacrifice themselves in the quest for her happiness.  Both sexes too! The end result, though,  is three overlapping relationships with no time taken in between to find herself.  She cannot know who she is but subconsciously she has a terrible guilt complex about her second husband.

In the present, Mary experiences a really, really bad day; one designed to highlight her inadequacies and uncover the evidence of her hard-heartedness and selfishness. Jittery and shaking from PMT, she encounters three people who are not what they claim to be: a bogus sub-tenant, a friend who is anything but and a man, who claims to be in love with her but wishes to hold her to account for leading him on (in the distant past).  It’s very unnerving and there’s a varied emotional landscape for Mary and the reader to travel. Pathos for the lonely old man, schadenfreude at the realistic sparring and bitchiness of the dialogue between the two women, and incredulity during the dinner with her second husband’s pal.  Moore making an uncharacteristic faux pas here.  No man would demean himself so.

The tones of each marriage are as different as those of the three encounters; Mary finding in her third husband,  a paragon of virtue, her “saviour”, her ”rock” - her words, not mine.  The woman has no identity without a man and, thus, she is without true female friendship.  Not my kind of female at all. And while I’m sitting in judgment, let me just say that she has a lot to feel guilty about with regard to her second husband!

Antipathy aside, Moore has created a living breathing (anti-)heroine in Mary (ex-)Dunne.  Written in a strongly-paced first person narrative, her voice is consistent and authentically female.  I recognised her mad twin - the externalisation of her PMT.  I do have issues with the secondary characters though - some are assigned bit roles with only sketchy characterisation.  And the novel would have been stronger without the melodrama of the last 30 pages. 

Even so the novel is very readable and easily digested in two or three sittings.  While it’s still finer than much modern fiction, I doubt I’ll revisit it. Mary and I are not destined to be friends.

1/2

Brian Moore, who died in 1999, was one of the few twentieth century novelists from Northern Ireland of real stature. He is sometimes referred to, inaccurately, as under-rated (in fact he’s highly rated, but woefully under-read); and as a writer’s writer, which is only true if the writer in question is Graham Greene, who considered Moore “my favourite living novelist.” In fact Moore is a reader’s writer through and through, marrying a real skill at storytelling with social insight and a giddy diversity of subject matter. All he needs is the readers.

The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1960) is saddled with a bulky title but turns out to be one of the very finest among the dozen or so books of his that I’ve read. To begin with, it is far lighter in tone than much of his work, from his earlier personality-driven pieces like The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne or I am Mary Dunne to the later taut Booker-shortlisted thrillers The Colour of Blood and Lies of Silence.

The humour comes from the central figure of James Francis ‘Ginger’ Coffey, a fool and dreamer who has emigrated from Ireland to Canada (as Moore himself did in 1948). He tries to scam his way into jobs, he daydreams of a better life, he tries the patience of his long-suffering wife Veronica and daughter Paulie. When he loses a job:

[h]e economized by giving up their flat and moving to this cheap dump of a duplex. But he did not tell Veronica. For two weeks he sat in his rented office, searching the want ads in the newspapers, dodging out from time-to-time for half-hearted enquiries about jobs. But the trouble was, what his trouble always was. He had not finished his BA, the army years were wasted years, the jobs at Kylemore and Coomb-Na-Baun had not qualified him for any others. In six months he would be forty.

It’s difficult to explain what makes this novel so appealing. There is no fancy prose, no outlandish occurrences, no sense of boundaries stretched. And yet this is what makes it a success: it is an intimate story, perfectly done. It is full and satisfying by the end, and the only flaws I could detect were a couple of unsurprising plot developments. It is entertaining and page-turning but also rich in character: not only the central figures (and if there was any justice, the term ‘Walter Mitty character’ would by now have its own subset, the ‘Ginger Coffey character’) but the teeming hordes of minor figures who remain memorable despite their brief appearances. And Moore is adept at turning the mood to intense poignancy, such as when Coffey learns how much his fourteen year old daughter has grown up, when she threatens to leave home to live with her boyfriend:

He felt dizzy. He backed away from the door and sat down in the first chair his hand touched. In his mind, a child’s voice spoke: Do you like big elephants best of all, or do you like horses best of all? He remembered her asking that. Or: why do my dolly’s eyes stay open when she sleeps? Conversations which ended with him telling her something she did not know. Now, she had told him something he did not know.

I should add that it’s possible I got a further layer of pleasure from the feel of the Irish vernacular - not just the words, but the way they are delivered - which others might not share. Nonetheless, with The Luck of Ginger Coffey, Brian Moore has proved again his protean brilliance, and shown that a practically unknown book by a virtually unheard-of novelist can hit harder than the best loved and most well known. Only around a third of his twenty novels are in print in the UK, which in a better world would be close to a national scandal. Get them while they’re here.

As an expatriate of long standing Brian Moore felt that younger authors with in-situ experience would probably write about the troubles in Northern Ireland in a more meaningful way than he. Then he was caught in a bomb scare and found himself evacuated from a hotel with a coach-load of French tourists   ….. The next thing said tourists find themselves in the midst of a similar situation within his 1990 novel,  Lies of Silence.

Imagine yourself plumetted into the following nightmare scenario: your wife is held hostage while you are forced to drive a bomb in your car to your place of work.  If you raise the alarm she will be executed.  This is the unthinkable situation in which Moore places his protagonist, Dillon.  But to complicate the issue, this happens on the very day that Dillon has earmarked to leave his wife.  Another complication: Dillon is apolitical, unhappy about the situation,  but definitely anti-violence:

Dillon felt anger rise within him, anger at the lies which had made this, his … birthplace, sick with a terminal illness of bigotry and injustice, lies told over the years to poor Catholic working people about the Catholics, lies told to poor Catholic working people about the Protestants, lies from parliaments and pulpits, lies at rallies and funeral orations, and, above all, the lies of silence from those in Westminister who did not want to face the injustices of Ulster’s status quo.

So, what would you do in Dillon’s situation? And which choices does he make?   I can’t possibly tell you what happens except this traumatic incident paves the way for a second half in which tension subsides but terror becomes insidious. 

Moore pulls no punches and Lies of Silence, while set specifically in his home town, adds up to an absolute condemnation of terrorism of any kind.  Written in (unputdownable) thriller form, there were those who felt that he was demeaning his subject.  I disagree. The immediacy of the writing allows the reader to feel Dillon’s fear, experience his panic, make the same mistakes?

Lies of Silence is more than a thriller - it’s a literary offering as evidenced by its Booker shortlisting (losing, in the end, to A S Byatt’s Possession).  What makes it literary? The quality of the writing, the assurity of pitch and pace, description and dialogue,  the flesh and blood of its characters.  Moira, Dillon’s wife is a complicated creation.  She is the one who raises the questions of courage, who refuses to kow-tow to the bullies. For that is how Moore pictures the terrorists - badly-educated, mean-spirited bullies.  But he reserves his scorn for the apologists - in this case a weasel of a priest who seeks to prevent justice being served.

Published in his 69th year, Lies of Silence shows absolutely no sign of Moore’s pen mellowing with age.   While that may have dismayed many at the time of publication, it ensures that the novel remains fresh, pertinent and (even if the situation in Northern Ireland is now radically different)  relevant to today’s reading audience.

What is the difference between a normal every-day thriller and a literary thriller?

I don’t know, but Lies of Silence reads quickly and easily just like any thriller. However, there are points made which tend to stick with the reader.

I think we can be assured that Brian Moore did not give credence to either side of “The Troubles”.

Beyond that though, there’s a study here about doing “the right thing”; can the value of one person’s life be weighed against the value of many? And once you’ve resolved that in principle, what if that one person was someone else? Tricky!

Lies of Silence reads like a thriller, but after nearly two weeks, I still remember it, so not my normal every-day thriller.

In 1856 Napoleon III sent Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin to Algeria to frighten the natives with a display of “magical” power so astonishing that they would be discouraged from starting a holy war against the French colonial power.  One of those stranger-than-fiction facts that Moore uses to full effect in his novel The Magician’s Wife (1997).

Robert-Houdin is fictionalised as Henri Lambert, who has retired to a secluded life in Tours with his wife Emmeline.   The first section of the novel focuses on the Lamberts and their recruitment into the French secret service. Henri is invited to a week-long gathering in the company of the Emperor and his Empress, ostensibly to perform for the aristocratic audience.  Emmeline, although bored with the seclusion of her life, is terrified of the grand world she is asked to enter.  But, prevailed upon by Henri, she accepts the invitation. The preparatory shopping list includes eight day costumes, including a travelling suit, seven ball dresses and five gowns for tea - all designed by the Empress’s dressmaker. Duly kitted out, they enter the theatrical spectacle of the French court, where appearance and conformity and sychophancy is everything.  Despite her best efforts, everything conspires to remind Emmeline of her humble origins (from the quality of the her cloth to the location of her room).  Henri is no support.  He is away most of the time, dealing with the real business in hand. However,  there are other men at hand, some gallant (Colonel Deniau), some not (Napoleon III himself), who have other designs on Emmeline. Given that her marriage has been long dead, it is only a matter of time before Emmeline, bored and unloved, falls prey to one or the other.  We observe and understand Emmeline’s loneliness and sadness at a marriage that is neither loving nor the exciting adventure she expected when she married her celebrity husband.

The second section takes the Lamberts to Algeria, where Henri is pacify the natives with his “magical” prowess.  He certainly has no doubts in his powers to perform. Emmeline accompanies him but the more she observes, the more she is disabused of the integrity of Henri’s task.  Colonel Deniau is on hand though to misdirect her penetrating gaze with his continued attentions which he does with ever diminishing success.  Even so, Emmeline is dragged into the deception when her husband’s male assistant falls ill.

It was Deniau who told him to ask me.  Deniau has convinced him that I’m the one he must use.  Deniau who uses him, who uses me, with compliments and flattery.  Deniau is the magician.  We are his marionettes.

Although there are many echoes, Emmeline is no Emma Bovary.  She is an astute assessor of the situation but powerless to prevent events from taking their course.  Through her eyes we see the ingenuity (or is that dishonesty) of her husband’s illusions, the frustrations of the Arabs, the dishonour of the French and an awareness of the ever increasing personal risks to her husband.

In a neat structural device, the sexual tensions of the first section and the danger to Emmeline’s honour are reflected in the political tensions of the second and the danger to Henri’s life.   The opulence, snobbery, sycophancy and moral lassitude of the French aristocratic court contrast strongly with the sincerity and charisma of the Arabs in the Algerian desert.  And let’s not forget the allegories contained in the French hunting scenes.

The ending, while bleak, is not quite what the reader expects.

(Originally published on Lizzy’s Literary Life 17/10/2007.)