Reviews

Ignatieff possesses one of the most impressive r?sum?s in contemporary letters. A Harvard-based scholar, he writes for an array of high-profile outlets, including the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and has produced well-regarded works of history (Blood and Belonging, etc.), memoir (The Russian Album, etc.) and fiction (Asya and Scar Tissue, shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize). Thus readers may be disappointed by this slight novel, which doesn't make full use of the author's literary powers. Charlie Johnson is a familiar type, a world-weary war correspondent who neglects his family and only feels at home in ravaged countrysides and in the seedy hotel bars that are "someone's idea of an oasis." He's covering yet another armed conflict, somewhere in the former Yugoslavia, when something truly shocking occurs: a woman is set on fire before his eyes. Charlie, feeling responsible for her death, sinks into a depression, leaves his wife and daughter, and hides out on the Polish farm of his cameraman, Jacek. Only one thing is able to rouse Charlie from his convalescence the idea of inflicting serious physical harm on the brutal commander who supervised the burning. He returns to Belgrade and joins up with a "fixer" named Buddy, determined to find the commander no matter what the personal cost. Ignatieff, who has covered his share of nasty conflicts, doesn't glamorize the war journalist's trade but neither does he move beyond the standard clich?s (the neglected wife, the nagging boss, the loyal sidekick). This is a readable but standard tale of redemption and revenge, one that would have benefited from the layers of psychological and political insight that Ignatieff brings to the rest of his work. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

For an aging war correspondent in Kosovo circa 1998, Charlie Johnson is strangely oblivious to the politics of his profession and personal life. That all changes, however, when he and his cameraman, under an insider's supervision, venture into the borderland in pursuit of a story that will boost their egos and bust the balls of their younger competitors. When an early patrol nearly finds out the trio, they take cover in a villager's root cellar, only to alert the Serbs accidentally to her. As punishment, she and her house are set on fire; soon after, she dies. In what could be called a revenge-cum-morality tale, second-time novelist Ignatieff (Scar Tissue) wisely avoids diatribe for surging emotional suspense that doubles for plot. While Charlie does hopscotch around Eastern and Western Europe in search of absolution and the murderer-colonel responsible for the blaze, he logs more miles in his mind, which cannot let go of the image of the burning girl. Readers will be hooked from the get-go and wish that Charlie's odyssey weren't quite so short. A fine complement to the author's nonfiction works-and a shoo-in for book groups-this is highly recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/03; see "Must-Reads for Fall," p. 40.]-Heather McCormack, "Library Journal" Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.