Masha Hamilton
Список книг автора Masha HamiltonWhat Changes Everything
Masha Hamilton’s fifth novel, What Changes Everything, is truly an American story, an exploration of our twisted, misguided, generous relationship with an enigmatic country. And it is told by a novelist of extraordinary talent who currently works in Afghanistan.What Changes Everything is the story of Clarissa who, in a gamble to save her kidnapped husband’s life, makes the best decisions she can in the dark nights of Brooklyn, boldly rejecting the advice of US authorities and against the wishes of her husband’s grown daughter. It is also the story of Stela, who owns a used bookstore in Ohio and writes letter after letter in hopes both of comprehending the loss of a son on an Afghan battlefield and of connecting with son who abandoned her in anger when his brother died. It is the story of Mandy, the mother of a gravely wounded soldier from Texas, a mother deeply saddened but somehow hopeful who travels to Kabul to heal wounds of several kinds. It is the story of Danil, an angry Brooklyn street artist whose life was derailed by a loss in this incomprehensible war half a world away. And it’s the story of Todd, a career aid
31 Hours
A woman in New York awakens knowing, as deeply as a mother’s blood can know, that her grown son is in danger. She has not heard from him in weeks. His name is Jonas. His girlfriend, Vic, doesn’t know what she has done wrong, but Jonas won’t answer his cell phone. We soon learn that Jonas is isolated in a safe-house apartment in New York City, pondering his conversion to Islam and his experiences training in Pakistan, preparing for the violent action he has been instructed to take in 31 hours. Jonas’s absence from the lives of those who love him causes a cascade of events, and as the novel moves through the streets and subways of New York we come to know intimately the lives of its characters. We also learn to feel deeply the connections and disconnections that occur between young people and their parents not only in this country but in the Middle East as well.Carried by Hamilton’s highly-lauded prose, this story about the helplessness of those who cannot contact a beloved young man who is on a devastatingly confused path is compelling on the most human level. In our world, when a family loses track of an idealistic son an entire city could be in danger. From the author of The Distance Between Us.
The Distance Between Us
Caddie Blair feels everything strongly—and so she works hard to keep her distance. It’s the ethical thing for a journalist to do, especially in a war-torn region like the Middle East. And Caddie wants to believe that nothing is as important as covering “the story.”There’s room for passion in her life—but that’s only physical. And Caddie keeps even those fleeting attachments under wraps, secretive, because she knows that when a journalist even appears to lose her detachment, she is already lost.So what is Caddie to feel when her lover dies beside her—shot in an ambush on the way to the next promising political interview, across the Israeli border into Lebanon?An authentic look at the emotional and ethical chaos within a war correspondent who becomes a bit too involved, Masha Hamilton’s The Distance Between Us is a straight-ahead story of human passion—desire, conviction, and the guilt of a survivor—struggling for order within the frayed justice of the Middle East conflict.A seasoned journalist herself, Masha Hamilton brings to this revealing novel the sharp eye and deep empathy that marked her debut, Staircase of a Thousand Steps (BlueHen, 2001). Beautifully turned, and peopled with an astounding cast of characters who are as true as they are perceptive, The Distance Between Us is finally the portrait of one woman’s search for the narrow pass between vengeance and emotional survival, when her only true attachment has been torn away from her.“If we knew where we were going to fall,” the novel’s most enigmatic character tells her, “we could spread straw.”