Lulu in Marrakech

July 7, 2008
Fans of Johnson's NBA finalist Le Divorce
will know what to expect: a fish-out-of-water story about a clash of cultures. Still, the tone and scope of this agreeable if quiet story owes more to the author's early work—Persian Nights
, in particular—than the better-known ones about Franco-American culture clashes. Like that 1987 book, this one has more than a soupçon of politics thrown into its cultural comedy of manners. Lulu Sawyer is a CIA agent who arrives in Morocco, both to rekindle her romance with worldly English boyfriend Ian and to trace the flow of Western money to radical Islamic groups. She meets with characters both Western and Eastern, which allows for some typically Johnsonian observations (“ not so common among Algerians.... It's usually the Turks,” opines one character). The book works best in small moments and in scenes involving the supporting characters, but the central plot—about Lulu and Ian's relationship—never quite catches fire, and Lulu-as-CIA-agent seems tired and unnecessary. Most fans will wade through the overdetermined plot to get to the sly asides and the astute observation that are and always have been Johnson's forte.

August 15, 2008
In her first novel in five years (after "L'Affaire"), Johnson moves operations out of France and south to Morocco. In a "Notorious"-style intrigue, Lulu Sawyer is a CIA spy infiltrating the expatriate community in Marrakech. While undercover, she stays at the villa of her wealthy British boyfriend, where she meets a wide cast of characters who could all be innocent bystanders or double agents. They include her Moroccan contact, a young French-Muslim girl escaping certain death in Paris, a gorgeous Saudi wife, and a brother come to exact an honor killing. Morocco is not an original location for a spy story (think "Casablanca" and "The Man Who Knew Too Much"), but it works well as a showcase for modern issues like Muslim extremists, terrorism, and money laundering. Sprinkled with deception, romances, and quotes from the Qu'ran, this novel makes a good read, despite its rather unsatisfactory ending. Johnson's Francophile fans may be disappointed with this change in location from her popular Paris-set novels ("Le Divorce, Le Mariage, L'Affaire"), but other readers, particularly those interested in spy stories or mysteries with a strong female protagonist, will enjoy this. Recommended for fiction collections. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/1/08.]Anika Fajardo, Coll. of St. Catherine Lib., St. Paul, MN

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2008
Intrigued with the follies of Americans abroad, like Edith Wharton and Henry James, sly and cunning Johnson bridges literary fiction and high mystery like Patricia Highsmith and Joan Didion, orchestrating cultural collisions to reveal profound moral quandaries. After setting her last three mischievous novels in France, Johnson sends her latest young, intrepid, and clueless American woman to post-9/11 Morocco. Ostensibly, Lulu Sawyer has come to Marrakech to visit her British lover, the lordly and enigmatic Ian Drumm. In fact, she is a CIA operative on an intelligence-gathering mission made all but impossible by Islamic restrictions on womens behavior and Lulus spectacular ineptness. As guests gather at Ians palatial digs, including pregnant and acerbic Posy, and acquaintances shelter a young Muslim woman threatened with an honor killing, Lulu is drawn into the worst sort of covert debacle. In this tale of epic cultural chauvinism and conflict, Johnson subtly contrasts Europes mendacious game playing with Americas brute aggression and pulls back the veil to reveal that as outraged as Lulu and Posy are over the treatment of Muslim women, they, too, are held hostage to sexism. Johnsons masterful and delectable tale of the clash between West and East and the eternal battle between the sexes is an elegant political thriller, a diabolical comedy of manners, and a chilling tragedy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)