The Warlord's Son

For months I have been savoring, a few pages at a time, the novel, The Warlord's Son, by Dan Fesperman. At some point, I had a feeling that maybe things weren't going to end all that well for some of the characters, and so I peeked into the last part of the book which I never, ever do but I did with this one. There were the 3 main characters, hale and hearty having escaped from the wild lands beyond the Khyber Pass.

So I read on, confident that things would work out well, although the author, now that I think about it, was signalling wildly that everything would NOT work out well. So you believe what you want to believe. Yesterday, on the train, I read and read and finally took the book up to bed last night to finish it.

Yikes, did I get a surprise. There was another twist at the ending a things did not work out, as signalled. It bothered me all night. "It's a book!" I told myself this morning. Why was I so upset? Maybe that one of the protagonists had been betrayed by his countrymen. It seemed like such a likely scenario, and he walked into it so blindly, desperate to put the pieces together of the wonderful story he was going to write. I guess it sounded true. And lately, true has not been good. Not at all. So it was just a book, but it also held up a mirror to our time, and of course I didn't like the image in the mirror. Nobody would.

On the listserve DorothyL, the question was asked about East German mysteries, and I had to pipe up that agents didn't want to touch them, which is true in my case. I always wonder a bit ruefully if I had a bunch of neo-Nazis and low lifes would the agents have been keener on the book. Never mind the Stasi, and the KGB and the Russian navy and even the dog that formerly patrolled the border, an ex-wall dog. Never mind the Vietnamese almost-slave labor. Where the hell are the neo-Nazis? Okay, maybe the story just stinks. But it doesn't. It's pretty cool actually, with a really neat ending with twists and turns.

One can read Proust before bedtime with the assurance that none of the main characters will die a violent death, although right now I am reading the part that introduced Albertine. Whenever I read about her, the image of the face of one of my high school friends inserts itself. She just looks like Albertine.

Some of the Burning Man honchos had dinner at our little place in Nevada this week. But I wasn't there to hostess, alas. Thinking of desperate ways to get to the Man this year. It's like a religion. I see myself on a run up to Lowell to the store that sells whorish dresses to find a costume. And maybe a run by St. Vincent DePaul for some outre duds. I see my credit card bill next month. Gaaaaa!

Onward,

Grapeshot