Missionaries
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'Expansive, explosive and epic' Marlon James
'A courageous book' New York Times Book Review
A BARACK OBAMA BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
Neither Mason, a US Special Forces medic, nor Lisette, a foreign correspondent, has emerged from America’s long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan unscathed. Yet, for them, war still exerts a terrible draw – the noble calling, the camaraderie, the life-and-death stakes. Where else in the world can such a person go?
All roads lead to Colombia, where the US has partnered with the local government to stamp out a vicious civil war and keep the predatory narco gangs at bay. Mason is ready for the good war, and Lisette is more than ready to cover it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Klay's ambitious debut novel (after the National Book Award winning collection Redeployment) plunges the reader into war-torn Colombia, where allegiances are uncertain and tremendous violence is an everyday reality. The story follows the four characters: there is Abelito, a Colombian forcibly conscripted into a militia commanded by the infamous terrorist Jefferson, and who hopes to save the woman he loves from his murderous commandants. American journalist Lisette Marigny, meanwhile, is embedded in Afghanistan until she is dispatched to B gota to report on gang activity, only to be kidnapped by guerrillas. En route from the Middle East is Mason, an Iraq War veteran and Special Forces medic reassigned to fight paramilitary narcos in Colombia, which he naively imagines will be a "good war." He befriends Juan Pablo, a weary commando who frets at being little more than a common mercenary and reflects on his early ambition to join the priesthood. Through these four protagonists, Klay unravels the complexity of interventionist American operations abroad, from Kabul to Medell n. While the novel suffers from a surfeit of tedious subplots and can feel overwhelmed by Klay's exhaustive research, the prose is consistently staggering, whether in the characters' moments of self-reflection or unflinching descriptions of brutality ("A chainsaw appeared, and suddenly everyone who had watched, confused and amazed... knew what was about to happen"). Even though the whole thing doesn't quite tie together, it's quite a ride.
Customer Reviews
War stories
Author
American. Ex-USMC. His short story collection Redeployment won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction, the National Book Critics’ Circle John Leonard Prize for best debut work in any genre, and was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times. His long form journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and the Brookings Essay series. He won the George W. Hunt, S.J. Prize for Journalism, Arts & Letters in the category of Cultural & Historical Criticism in 2018, and currently teaches fiction writing at Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution in Connecticut. Six years research went into this book.
Plot
Bruised by their experiences of America's "bad" wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lisette, a journalist, and Mason, a US Army Special Forces medic, tangle with the civil war in Colombia. Juan Pablo is Mason's long suffering liaison in the Colombian military. After losing his whole family to a massacre by the Los Mil Jesuses militia in the north of the country, Abel ends up a valuable lieutenant in the organisation. Cue lots of extremely graphic violence, then more of the same. After President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón wins the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the conflict in 2016 (then loses the national referendum in support it), the Yanquis move on to another country and another war: Yemen.
Narrative
Third person from POVs of four protagonists. Deals with their backstories first, before moving on to recent events, but starts to flit around a bit then.
Characterisation
Satisfactory overall, although patchy. I get it that the characters are not supposed to be consistent because, like, the stresses of war and stuff, but they didn't quite work for me. On the other hand, I thought Mr Klay's characterisation of war in all its various guises and contradictions was excellent.
Prose
Vivid, if harrowing descriptions from someone with first hand experience of living with fear. Reads like a thriller much of the time but an awful lot of war cliches.
Bottom line
According to Mr K, his aim was to examine "the globalization of violence through the interlocking stories of four characters and the conflicts that define their lives." Lots of interesting stuff which somehow lacked cohesion. The author is clearly more focussed on the impact of death than the act of killing, but it's still not one for the faint hearted.