Janette Turner Hospital

Mayhem in Monte Carlo

If I had to sum up this book in one word, the word would be messy.

Central to the plot is the nerve-gas hijacking' by Muslim fundamentalists of Air France Flight 64 from Paris to New York in the 1980s There are several interlocking stories set over two periods told by different voices, during the hijack and its twelfth year anniversary.

The actual hijack is told in excruciating and harrowing detail. That this is perhaps the clearest and most readable part of the book, should tell you something.

During the hijacking 22 children were released and around the anniversary things come to a head as one of the children Samantha, now an adult tries to work out who was really behind the hijacking, and why the children, now adult, appear to be dying off in unusual circumstances. Was it all a conspiracy theory?

Meanwhile a high-ranking CIA operative dies and leaves a key to his son Lowell, whose mother perished on the flight. Lowell’s mother was leaving her husband for a Jewish violinist, also a flight victim. Nothing is simple here. Lowell is instructed by his dad’s psychiatrist, to not only work out what it is for, but is ordered to keep the contents safe.

Lowell links up with Samantha who has been hounding him for years. He has been ignoring her, but now on the anniversary decides to listen to her. He works out the key from his father is the key to locker #64 (Flight 64, get it?) at the terminal for the ill-fated flight. The locker contains binders of notes and documents as will as tapes.He tries to keep it safe but only half succeeds and shares what is left of his findings (his house has been ransacked) with Samantha. They travel in a row boat to a secret place and sleep the night in a fisherman’s hut lobster netting. Anything for secrecy.

As for the adult hostages, after the children are freed, the plane, now in Iraq, is blown to smithereens. Ten men are still alive and are placed in a sarin-laced bunker, facing death when their protective gear will inevitably fail. They face a slow death, or by removing their protective head gear, a faster one. They choose the latter. With ten minutes to speak before the Saran gets them they remove their protective head-gear and tell. A Yiddish writer does a Hasidic dance, a philosopher delivers a wry deconstructive analysis, two lovers embrace, a diva sings Orlando Gibbons's metaphoric The Silver Swan. Is this meant to be poignant, to be showing the human spirit cannot be squashed? I cannot be sure. And by this time - it was near the end of the book - I didn’t care.… (plus d'informations)

Only a year after Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist, came Orpheus Lost by Janet Turner Hospital, and though JTH's is an infinitely better novel, it's no coincidence that these two authors were writing about issues arising from Western governments' responses to 9/11. By the middle of that decade there was deep disquiet around the world about the human rights of those suspected of terrorism. The legitimate fear of mass casualties from Al Qaeda's attacks had led to practices previously abhorred by the West: torture, detention without trial, the abrogation of habeas corpus; imprisonment under inhumane conditions; an excess of covert surveillance; and the suspension of legal representation for suspects on the grounds of national security. Public panic was exploited by politicians, effectively silencing all objections. Authors who spoke out against all this were rare.

This was a gripping novel. Leela, from 'Paradise Land' in the US Bible Belt meets Jewish-Lebanese Mishka Bartok from the Daintree Rainforest, and they fall in love. They are both students in Boston: she's doing the maths of music and he's doing the music of the Middle East. They make a lot of passionate love.

But Mishka goes to a mosque (to hear their music) and meets a man who says he recognises him as the son of a radical Islamist. This is the catalyst for Mishka, who has never known his father, and whose grandparents are Holocaust survivors, to set off for Baghdad with a false passport. This is because his identity is fragile and he thinks that finding his missing father will help him to resolve who he really is. He realises that he may not like his father or what he stands for (especially because as a fundamentalist, his father would abhor music), but Mishka feels that he needs to know.

Into this messy situation comes Cobb Slaughter, a childhood 'friend' of Leela, the son of a veteran of the Iraq war, and a private security consultant. He's a gung-ho military man with a penchant for summary justice and torture. Slaughter becomes suspicious of these visits to the mosque and Mishka's association with suspected terrorists. When Mishka disappears, he gets Leela arrested and has Mishka 'renditioned', a practice by which the Americans send their suspects to friendly nations who are less squeamish about torture, to do their dirty work for them.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/01/16/orpheus-lost-by-janet-turner-hospital/… (plus d'informations)

This was a challenging book to read. I didn't understand the characters enough to care about them until almost half-way through the book. It was only because I'd read two previous books by this author -- and loved them -- that I persevered.

Charlie, Catherine, Robinson and Cat are linked by a traumatic event in their past. In modern day, Lucy who worked for Charlie; then with Catherine and is dating Robinson's estranged son, Gabriel, becomes engrossed in their story -- wanting to understand what happened and why both Charlie and Gabriel are obsessed with finding Cat.

This is a complex, deeply layered story of obsession and the effects of trauma. However, the writing, while beautiful, left me as the reader largely outside the story rather than finding myself emmeshed in it and caring about the characters as if they were real. And yet, somehow, it haunts me weeks later.l… (plus d'informations)