The Dhow House
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Compulsively readable novel... well-written scenes worthy of John le Carre... McNeil's writing is most luminous, both spare and powerful' The New York Times'Completely absorbing, eminently readable... You won't read many better novels this year.' --The Daily Mail'This exotic novel handles large themes with assurance, tact and knowledge.' --Giles Foden, author of The Last King of ScotlandWhen Rebecca Laurelson, an English doctor, is forced to leave her post in an East African field hospital, she arrives at her aunt's house on the Indian Ocean and is taken into the heart of a family she has never met before. Amongst the all-night beach parties and cocktail receptions, her attraction for her much younger cousin grows.But the gilded lives of her aunt Julia's family and their fellow white Africans on the coast are under threat - Islamist terror attacks are on the rise and Rebecca knows more about this violence than she is prepared to divulge. Will she be able to save her new-found family from the violence that encroaches on their seductive lives? Or, amidst growing unrest, will the true reason for her hasty exit from her posting, be unmasked?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This is an interesting but somewhat disappointing novel from McNeil, who has won PRISM International awards for her fiction and nonfiction. The contemporary story begins as Rebecca Laurelson takes time off from her job as a field surgeon in East Africa and goes to stay with her aunt and cousins, whom she barely knows, in an unnamed country, on the coast of the Indian Ocean. They are white Africans whose wealth and privilege distance them from the black majority. During this extended visit, Rebecca begins a relationship with her much younger cousin, Storm. The family starts to understand that the unrest elsewhere in the country will not leave them unaffected, but tragedy strikes before they can depart. Nothing is quite as it seems; Rebecca is not just an innocent, altruistic medic, and it turns out to be no accident that she was posted to her family's country. McNeil excels at descriptions of the landscape and wildlife, but in the early sections of the book, with little else to give the story ballast, that aspect feels overdone. The book keeps circling around the same points with little forward movement of either characters or plot. The novel's second half gathers momentum and draws readers in, but both the relationships and the intrigue remain underdeveloped.
