The Evolution of Shadows

August 17, 2009
Malott follows several characters negotiating the searing and scarring effects of war in his trenchant debut. In 1995, Chinese-American Lian Zhao travels to Sarajevo looking for her lover, Gray Banick, an American journalist who has disappeared. She's helped by Jack MacKenzie, Gray's mentor, and Emil Todorovic, Gray's interpreter. Malott explores each character, opening their lives to expose the wounds the war has inflicted upon them. While the novel does include its share of wrenching battle scenes, its emotional center comes from more nuanced themes: the friendship between Gray, Jack and Emil; Gray and Jack's addiction to war journalism; the hopelessness of Lian's loveless marriage; Jack's nihilistic attitude after being surrounded by death for so long. This could easily have been a clichéd war diary, but Malott avoids the pitfalls of sentimentality, providing a refreshingly clear-eyed evocation of friendship, love and loss.

Starred review from September 1, 2009
Alternating between 1995 and 2000, Malott's first novel concerns a group of journalists covering the Bosnian War who later return to Sarajevo to try to learn what happened to one of their companycharismatic photographer Gray Banick, who stared down atrocities through the lens of a camera. Among them are Banick's Bosnian interpreter, Emil Todorovic, who has suffered a horrific loss at the hands of the Serbs; hard-drinking correspondent Jack MacKenzie, whose addiction to the adrenaline rush of war has cost him his family; and Lian Zhao, a Chinese American woman. Lian had a brief but passionate affair with Banick in Kansas City, which ended when she bowed to the wishes of her traditionalist parents and married another Chinese American. Her feelings stirred again after receiving a letter from Emil asking about Gray, she returns with the others to the village where he was last seen in the hopes of uncovering clues to his fate. VERDICT This is a passionate, wrenching tale of love and war whose tone and subject matter offer an update to Hemingway.Lawrence Rungren, Merrimack Valley Lib. Consortium, North Andover, MA

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2009
When war photographer Gray Banick goes missing in the killing fields of Bosnia, two former colleagues and his ex-lover gather in Sarajevo to search for him. Lian Zhao thinks Gray might be dead, and it is this thought that has finally propelled her out of her marriage of convenience to the Chinese American doctor her parents introduced her to. Jack MacKenzie, a veteran combat photographer, has let his taste for whiskey get the better of him as he tries to suppress the horrific images he has photographed for decades. And Emil Todorovic, who worked as Grays translator, cant shake the guilt he feels over the last day he saw Gray or the sense of futility that subsumes him as he thinks of family members he has lost to the war that has destroyed his country. Their fraught search for Gray in the present is intercut with key moments they shared with him in the past. In his first novel, Malott strips down the language and amps up the tension as he creates an indelible portrait of the shell shocked and dispossessed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)