NONFICTION
How They See Us: Meditations on America
Edited by James Atlas, $14
If the examined life is still of any consequence in this country, now is a good time to look abroad for insight. Editor James Atlas puts the means to do so in our hands with this probing collection of essays.
The contributing writers are an international assembly of voices who bring into sharp focus the post- 9/11 United States and its damaged relations with other countries. Although held together by no common ideology, these writers share the virtue of deep reflection.
By turns, they are enraged, betrayed, awed and hopeful that America, which has been humbled by 9/11 and brought to the antithesis of its optimism in Iraq, can re-envision its ideals.
For Leilah Nadir, an Iraqi Canadian, the war in Iraq has shattered her image of the United States as a beacon of human rights; she unleashes her disillusionment by calling the United States “a note threatening to kidnap my children.”
To Luís Fernando Veríssimo of Brazil, O.J. Simpson’s fall from grace was much like that of Jay Gatsby, who thought he could cross the boundaries of American class and culture, but failed.
Veríssimo links that reminder of the loss of New World innocence to an awkward conversation between himself and a fellow airplane passenger, an American woman unaware that the World Cup is taking place in her own country. Ultimately, the woman apologizes for knowing so little about Brazil, and Veríssimo ends the essay with a touch of humility: “After all, I, too, could be completely wrong about her country.”
FICTION
31 Hours
By Masha Hamilton, $24.95
Masha Hamilton’s career as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East gives her new novel, “31 Hours,” the authority of a true witness. It’s the desperate story of a disenchanted young American coached by Islamic radicals plotting an act of terrorism in New York City.
Hamilton has used both her considerable empathy as a writer and her experience in the Middle East to create an intimate portrait of 21-year-old Jonas Meitzner. It’s not easy to like him for what he intends to do, much less admire him, but Hamilton makes us aware of his humanity.
The novel follows Jonas — buying last-minute supplies, worrying, trying to reassure himself through the rituals of prayer and cleansing — as he prepares to carry out a suicide-bombing mission.
At last, alone in his nearly empty apartment, he thinks he will call his girlfriend and say goodbye. “He punched the number . . . and heard nothing. He tried the speed dial for his mother, and then for his father, and then, staving off desperation, he tried to call a couple of friends he hadn’t seen in months.”
Finally, he understands that his handlers have disabled his phone. It’s excruciating to watch him realize how completely he has been separated from anyone he knows.
While Jonas is reckoning with the choice he has made, Hamilton weaves the stories of his potential victims and the people who love him. His mother, Carol, solidly kind and responsible, wakes up in the middle of the night, certain that something is profoundly wrong with her son. We also see Vic, who became Jonas’ lover on a rainy morning in a tent by a lake in the Adirondacks.
These portraits show us the well-intentioned figures lining Jonas’ road to ruin and their helplessness as bystanders.
In the hours before his planned attack, Jonas eats a gyro and loves the taste of it. He remembers his mother, the smell of her. He recalls making love with Vic. Sensitive, lonely and full of the anger and doubt many young people feel, Jonas seems in Hamilton’s hands not a stranger, not an impenetrable figure of dread whose behavior is beyond our understanding, but the ordinary, fragile child of ordinary, fragile people.
You don’t exactly want to look at the story of what happens to Jonas, but Hamilton has made it very hard to tear your gaze away.
