A Day and a Night and a Day

October 6, 2008
British writer Duncan's cerebral, propulsive seventh novel (after The Bloodstone Papers
) digs with philosophical intensity into the timely question of what makes both a terrorist and a torturer tick—with a twist: the terrorist is Augustus Rose, an African-Italian-American former journalist turned successful New York restaurateur. Rose, recruited during his naïve youth into an international organization that practices “vigilante democracy,” is imprisoned in Guantánamo, where Harper, an efficiently cruel U.S. operative, interrogates him, providing the main thread of the novel's three plot lines. The second recounts Rose's complex romance with Selina, which blossomed in 1968 when he was age 21 and ended three decades later with her death in a Barcelona bombing. The third sees a post-torture Rose retire to a bleak British island where he's awaiting death, until he's drawn into the violent world of a girl who befriends him. Duncan describes physical pain and emotional anguish with dramatically distilled, merciless prose, all the while carving a wondrous love story out of a tragic contemporary world where torture has become a numbing norm.

May 15, 2009
Londoner Duncan's seventh novel (after "The Bloodstone Papers") is as timely as it is heartbreakingwhich is both a warning and a recommendation. Herein is the exquisitely crafted story of Augustus Rose, a man of mixed ethnic background who came to terrorism late in life. The backdrop is the protagonist's harrowing interrogation by the U.S. government, but the narrator's memories of his lover soon take precedence. The mix of brutal politics and wrenching personal emotions is reminiscent of William T. Vollmann or Salman Rushdie. The interrogator's philosophical asides may be a bit much for American readers ("This is the crux. The failure of the scripts. Love, justice, equality, salvation"), but a certain class of readers will devour the book like an emergency broadcast even through our hero's dissolution.Travis Fristoe, Alachua Cty. Lib. Dist., FL

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.