Geography of Secrets

In 1963, John Le Carre narrated in one book a great spy and one fatal love story:
“The spy who came from the cold” was a symphony of places, small, squalid or grey; East Berlin check points, the Templehof airport, tawdry London strip clubs, Scheveningen and desolate Dutch dunes. These urban landscapes, more than Smiley’s people, Fiedler or Mundt, gave the reader an incomparably twisted Shakespearian atmosphere thick with mental cutlasses and poisoned intrigues, plots and counter plots by Montagues-like agents of the West drawn against the Capulets of the East. This was an era when wars were cold and heroes luckless. Leamas, a spy on the decline, and Liz, an idealist librarian, caught in between the poisonous hatred of rival ideologies.
Their planted love became though so real that death united them in a Romean and Juliettesque final love scene for which a wicked prop man had replaced Verona’s balcony with the Berlin Wall, complete with ladder, watchtowers, sentries and projectors.

48 years later arrives a new type of novel, beautifully published by Unbridled Book, which fits our new age of G0. An age in which Power is more defined anonymously by the corridors of countless Washingtonian beltlined bureaucracies “where one merely holds a place until one takes over and changes come in the form of Allied Van Lines”.
In spite of their bombastic and daunting acronyms, these agencies are nothing more than suites of offices where Noel, one of the two Characters of this novel is a classified pawn. Noel’s drone hits a school by mistake...in Pakistan and that brings Noel between his priest, his golf clubs and his conscience. Needless to say, the reader is somewhat puzzled by Noel, the pure product of GO where not one country can claim moral supremacy and omelets are made globally breaking more and more eggs.

In a parallel narrative, another character, "the narrator" or Noel’s other face if he were Janus, explores the past Byronic streaks of his father through witnesses of his past around the world.

Each of these links to his father unveils this past to you, the reader, from Ethiopia during the fall of the Negus or during the early part of the Vietnam war as described by Graham Greene in “The Quiet American” and then later during post-Tet. These conversations give the best moments of this novel as the reader is given the latitude and longitude of each of these encounters and like the user of maps, the reader "fills the empty spaces between the lines of this book, with his own imagined presence." Perhaps will you also like”A Geography of Secrets” by Frederick Reuss and by reading it, gain admittance to its “impervious realm of complex hierarchies and obscure grammars.” The prose is beautiful and it is almost a succession of moments in a spy life, one of the past, one of the present. ( )

Two men with different stories. But both trying to make sense of secrets in their lives. One in the dark past, the second erupting in the present. One family related, the second work related. For a long time it seems there is nothing to tie these stories together. I wondered half way through the book how their lives might weave together.

Finally came to the conclusion that the tie was their respective world views shaped heavily by their shared profession. As cartographers they both like to literally “map out” any problem they face in their minds until they can metaphorically wrap their arms around it and understand it on their terms. They do this quite well in the external world of concrete things and processes, but decidedly less well the world of people and emotion. As one character finally realizes:

“He knows his precise location as he crosses the fourteenth street bridge, where he is in relation to the [Washington DC] monuments, the city grid, traffic patterns, the federal bureaucracy, election cycles, wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, GWOT – all the big structures. It is reassuring to know his place [in the government] …he fits in just fine. It’s ordinary life he can’t connect to.”

Great psychological story and highly recommended for anyone who has worked in a job a bit too long and wonders what became of the person they once were; anyone who has recently lost a father and is trying to piece together what that means for their family; and for professional cartographers or those who insist on viewing all of the world through the lens of a map. ( )

"A geography of secrets" by Frederick Reuss is a novel of secrets and how they effect those who make them and keep them, never to be shared. The setting is, sensibiliy, Washington D.C., a captol of secrets kept and otherwise. Two men struggle with secrets.

One's struggle is with secrets to be kept, the destruction of a school but what he thought was a terrorist center and how it was done. He sees the destruction he has wrought and the picture haunts him through the book. Being a decent church-going sort of guy he wants to share his angst with someone, but falls far short. He has not shared with his wife or family any of what he has done. Despite his efforts to share the bridge between them has been crossed and no longer does the wife or daughter care - they have their own secrets. The priest cannot bring resolution to him for the feelings inside him for his error. For this he is given a higher position, no longer assessing as he did before.

The other man searches to find a secret kept many years about his father who has recently died. A broken family, a second marriage and the father's death in a far country leaves the only son, who sees his embittered mother only occasionally, to seek the father's secret. He finds what, or more exactly who, the father's secret was. He finds this person, but no rapprochement occurs, leaving some secrets to lie.

I enjoyed this book for several reasons. First the stories were told in alternating chapters, bringing the reader along on both tales at once. The narrative was clear and gave me a picture of the characters and the surroundings. I had a difficult time putting the book down, it kept me up late more than one evening. I felt the struggle to keep a secret and the struggle to discover a secret. I felt some satisfation at resolution both felt at the end. Not a great book, but one I may someday re-read. Four stars. ( )

A beautifully written exploration of the effect a lifetime of keeping secrets can have on a person. Told in alternating first person and third person chapters, this book does male mid-life crisis (a genre that I often feel very disconnected from) just right. International in scope, but centered in Washington D.C., this is a solid character study with a universal feel. Best of all, it has a wonderful structure, made even more perfect by the narrative shift on the last page.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2011/02/geography-of-secrets-by-frederick-reuss.ht... ] ( )

Life is all about secrets, the ones we keep from others and the ones we keep from ourselves. Written as separate but parallel stories, A Geography of Secrets explores these secrets and the damage they can do to an individual and to others. Both Noel and the unnamed narrator have family secrets that tear apart their serenity, forcing them to reevaluate everything they ever thought about their lives.

The novel's beauty lies in the synchronicity of the two stories. Both men spend their lives analyzing topography, which makes them uniquely observant to various aspects of life. Yet, each is left questioning his place in his own family after certain secrets make themselves known. However, the secrets themselves are not important, as the reactions to these secrets truly drive the novel.

Make no mistake, this is a story that is just as mental as it is physical, mirroring the external and internal aspects of secrets. The language is simple and evocative. Mr. Reuss doesn't hide behind the words but lets the psychology of the story unfold effortlessly. Through it all, the reader is drawn into each man's plight, drawing parallels between the two, and superimposing any conclusions drawn onto his or her own life.

Not for everyone, A Geography of Secrets is a simple but dramatic story. There are no chase scenes or suspenseful moments. Rather, the drama occurs quietly, as each man searches for answers and makes decisions that have momentous implications for others. For the right reader, Mr. Reuss' exploration of the power of secrets is one that will definitely leave its mark.