The Gloaming

July 18, 2016
In her second novel, Finn (Away from You) follows divorcée Pilgrim Jones from her privileged life in Switzerland to the wilds of Tanzania, offering a dark, wrenching story of loneliness, guilt, and life after tragedy. Abandoned by her international lawyer husband, Tom Lankester, for a mousy mutual acquaintance, Elise, Pilgrim struggles to regain her balance. Distracted by Tom’s betrayal, she causes an accident in the Swiss town of Arnau in which three schoolchildren are killed. Although cleared of any charges with the support of Detective Inspector Paul Strebel, Pilgrim, wracked with guilt and tormented by the accusations of the locals, seeks a fresh start in the remote Tanzanian village of Magulu. Pilgrim’s desire to live—alone—in such a place is unusual, and her presence piques the interest of Dorothea, the flamboyant local doctor, and Kessy, “a policeman without laws” who patrols the desolate no-man’s-land. As she gains familiarity with her surroundings, moving from village to village, Pilgrim comes to understand that none of the expats she meets is without baggage: not the sociopathic Ukrainian mercenary Martin Martins, nor grieving mother-cum-aid-worker Gloria, nor the skilled, damaged pilot Harry. The arrival of a macabre package—the remains of an albino man, said to contain a powerful curse—only implicate Pilgrim further in the mysteries of Tanzania. Finn’s sure-footed prose, an intricate, clever plot, and the novel’s powerful examination of cultural divides enrich this story, leading up to its shocking, brilliant conclusion as Pilgrim and the others search for salvation in an unforgiving land.

Starred review from July 1, 2016
A propulsive literary thriller toggles between Switzerland and Tanzania.In a concise, elegant seven paragraphs, Finn (Shame, 2015) opens her second novel with the intimations of an affair. The narrator, Pilgrim Jones, has discovered that her husband, a globally influential human rights lawyer, has abandoned her, and his deception sets up a lethal incident. Pilgrim awakens in a Swiss hospital, having smashed her car into a village bus stop, killing three children. For reasons that only gradually come into focus, she decamps for Tanzania, where the bush is "a tangled, knitted green stretching over the earth, a hot wool itching with insects, snakes, and birds." Finn, who writes with a psychological acuity that rivals Patricia Highsmith's, switches between Europe and Africa in tense alternating chapters, rewarding close attention. The book is terrific on diplomatic detail and police craft, the murkiness of human motivation and the pervasiveness of corruption. The parallels on both continents are subtle and thrilling. The Swiss investigator of Pilgrim's car crash, preparing to face the dead children's families, lets the rain pummel him: "It was better if he looked wet and bedraggled; his sympathy would appear more authentic." Finn, who grew up partially in Kenya, writes supplely about Africans and the whites who move among them. The novel travels 175 pages in Pilgrim's voice, then switches into third-person segments centered on each of five characters who've crossed her path: the Swiss police inspector, a tiny Tanzanian doctor, a Midwestern American bent on starting an AIDS orphanage, a Ukrainian mercenary, and a drunken white ne'er-do-well. Each has been altered by atrocity, a quality that Finn imbues with familiarity. "Tom would say to me that violence becomes an identity," Pilgrim thinks, "how people see themselves in the world, and to ask them to stop being violent is asking them to erase themselves." Remarkably well-paced and well-written, this novel ends with an existentially astute finale. Don't expect to be able to set this book down or forget its haunted characters.

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November 15, 2016

In this intent and unexpectedly suspenseful work, Pilgrim Jones has devotedly followed her husband as he attends to his various NGO duties, mainly in Africa, only to be abandoned for another woman in the Swiss village where they are living. But here she doesn't play the role of stereotypically to-be-pitied wife, having accidentally fatally struck three children when she drives away in anger after discovering yet another betrayal; Finn (Away from You) skillfully and uncomfortably makes her guilt and disquiet the reader's as well. Pilgrim lands in Africa, making herself useful by carrying away the cursed remains of an albino African from the scrubby village where she was staying to the Tanzanian port city of Tanga. There, she falls in with a brassy expat and is eventually trapped in a plot for vengeance more twisty and real than a lot of domestic thrillers could manage. VERDICT An embracingly and impeccably written study of one woman's anguish; highly recommended.

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