Review by New York Times Review
A critical assessment of Condoleezza Rice's career. IF there was a single low point in American diplomacy in recent years, it may have been the Bush administration's handling of the 2006 Lebanese war. For weeks, while Israel responded to Hezbollah's abduction of two soldiers on July 12 by heavy bombing of Lebanon's infrastructure and Hezbollah rained rockets on Israel, the United States blocked efforts to arrange a cease-fire. On July 21, asked why she had delayed going to the Middle East, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explained that the devastation represented "the birth pangs of a new Middle East - and whatever we do we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one." When the cease-fire finally came, on Aug. 14, more than 1,100 Lebanese and nearly 160 Israelis had been killed, and the pro-Western government of Lebanon had been badly weakened. There was no new Middle East. Glenn Kessler, a diplomatic correspondent for The Washington Post, was starstruck when he first met Rice, at the 1992 Republican National Convention. "She was poised and elegant, charming but forceful - and utterly sure of herself." In "The Confidante," a brilliantly reported book, he treats her like a star; but he also looks unflinchingly at her record in office. And the picture he gives is dismal. On the critical issue of North Korea's nuclear ambitions, Rice as national security adviser failed to impose a coherent policy on administration doves and hawks. The result was a break in negotiations - and years of inaction that North Korea used to stockpile enough plutonium for almost a dozen weapons, until finally in 2007 American concessions led to Pyongyang's agreement to shut down its nuclear reactor. In the Middle East, Rice as secretary of state called for "democracy." Henry Hyde, then the Republican chairman of the House International Relations Committee, warned against an outside power trying to implant democracy in a society where it is unknown. "It may, in fact," he said, "constitute an uncontrollable experiment with an outcome akin to that faced by the Sorcerer's Apprentice." When Hamas won the Palestinian election and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt cracked down on opposition parties, Rice had to backpedal about the need for democracy. On Iraq, Rice as national security adviser in Bush's first term failed to bring any detached light to bear on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's blind optimism. Kessler says she bears major responsibility for "both the haphazard way the decision to attack Iraq was reached and the administration's failure to have a plan for the occupation." And she made the case for war on television, saying things like "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Kessler points to a puzzling aspect of Rice's record. When she was named national security adviser in 2000, she was seen as a realist on the model of her mentor, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to the first President Bush. (Scowcroft opposed the invasion of Iraq.) But as secretary of state, she became a visionary who talked about transforming Middle Eastern states into democracies. One obvious explanation for the change is George W. Bush. Rice is extremely close to him, and he is a true believer in visionary foreign policy. Kessler suggests that her mimicking of Bush's view may be political opportunism, to secure her intimacy. But he also offers an alternative explanation: her change could be religious in origin, a reaction to 9/11 by a person who is a Calvinist with "a deeply religious, moralistic streak." Anthony Lewis is a former columnist for The Times. His new book, "Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment," will be published in January.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Admirers of Abu-Jaber's previous exquisite and witty novels will be surprised that she has written a mystery, albeit one poetic in tone and profound in its inquiry into the nature of memory and the self. Set in wintry Syracuse and narrated by Lena Dawson, a reclusive fingerprint expert working in a gossipy city crime lab, Abu-Jaber's complex drama revolves around a baffling string of infant deaths. Is the culprit SIDS, something environmental, or the work of a serial killer? Separated from her police-officer husband, Lena is assaulted by painful questions and bizarre flashbacks. Why didn't her foster parents adopt her? Could she have been raised by a great ape in a rain forest, as she believes? Lena does have an exceptional sense of smell and phenomenal intuitive powers, which enable her to solve difficult murder cases. Drawing on time-tested literary antecedents as well as such television characters as the protagonist in The Closer for her smart yet chaotic and underestimated hero, Abu-Jaber crafts an utterly magnetic story of children abused and cherished, of toxic secrets and severely tested love, and of the struggle for identity and truth. Readers seeking gorgeously rendered fiction as well as intelligent and atmospheric mysteries will find Origin extraordinary. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2007 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Abu-Jaber, who dealt with Arab-American themes in her earlier novels, Crescent and Arabian Jazz, shows her versatility in this gripping contemporary thriller. A spike in the number of local SIDS deaths piques the interest of Lena Dawson, a fingerprint specialist at a Syracuse, N.Y., forensics lab. Is it a statistical fluke or is there a killer at work? Determined to account for the dead infants, Lena joins the investigation, which stirs tantalizing memories from her dimly recollected early childhood. Despite her fragile mental state, Lena proves capable of surprising resolve. Her relationship with her protective ex-husband, her budding romance with a detective and her quest for her own lost past add psychological depth. Abu-Jaber's lovely nuanced prose conveys the chill of an upstate New York winter as well as it does Lena's drab existence before she was drawn into the mystery of the crib deaths. This enthralling puzzle will appeal to both crime fans and readers of literary fiction. 9-city author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
What appears to be a series of crib deaths might actually be murder. From the author of Crescent; with a nine-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-A baby is found dead in its crib. The police call it sudden infant death syndrome, but the distraught mother is convinced that it is murder. Lena, a fingerprint specialist known for solving a puzzling child-murder case a few years earlier, is drawn into the investigation. Her almost uncanny intuition-and the deaths of several more babies in short order-sends her searching for a killer. Lena has distanced herself from people, choosing to live in a sparse, cold apartment after separating from her philandering, controlling husband. In fact, life-threatening cold permeates this chilling tale, a metaphor for many elements of the eerie mystery, including Lena's childhood. She has strange, fractured memories of the time before she was three when she moved in with foster parents. As the investigation progresses, there is a sense of urgency to catch the killer as it becomes apparent that Lena's life is in danger, and that her mysterious childhood is somehow connected to the infant's. She is helped and protected by a young detective with his own past. As the weather thaws, Lena also begins to warm to the people around her as she learns the deep, dark secret of her origin. Teens fascinated by CSI will find this haunting mystery gripping, all the way to its surprising conclusion.-Ellen Bell, Amador Valley High School, Pleasanton, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A moody thriller from Arab-American Abu-Jaber (The Language of Baklava, 2005, etc.) that transposes the author's usual questions of identity onto a young lab tech who believes she was raised by apes. Life is grim for Lena Dawson, a fingerprint examiner for the Syracuse police. Uncertain about her own origins, or her sanity, the delicately pretty technician has carved out a spare existence for herself since her philandering husband, Charlie, left, and has also lived down the brief flare of fame that followed her uncovering of crucial evidence in the murder of a child. Still, she knows her grasp on reality is tenuous, and she's content to live now primarily for her work. Her fragile solitude is disrupted when a grieving woman, unconvinced that SIDS was the cause of her baby's death, seeks her help. Lena's own acute senses tell her that something is amiss when other babies turn up dead. She's soon interacting more than she'd like with the desperate mother, her own brittle foster parents and a wounded detective named Keller, who sparks rough jealousy in her ex. Lena's sanity is challenged when she starts to think she's being stalked by the killer. But Abu-Jaber transcends formula, weaving the whodunit in prose as evocative as poetry. In winter-gray Syracuse, Lena's senses are heightened. Haunted, moving crime fiction. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
