A Permanent Member of the Family

January 27, 2014
In 2005, Sundaram withdrew from Yale without completing his Ph.D. in mathematics and declined a job offer from Goldman Sachs, as he tells in this impressive narrative. Instead, in 2005, he opted for the precarious life of freelance reporter in one of the world’s most desperate and downtrodden countries in the world—Congo. Settling in Kinshasa with a local family, Sundaram begins accommodating himself to the harsh realties of daily life while struggling to survive as a fledging reporter in an unfamiliar and strange environment. When Sundaram lands a position as a stringer for the AP news service he gains a bit of stability. He makes professional contacts, writes more stories, and garners a bit of prestige. He leaves Kinshasa, wanting to experience more of the country, traveling upriver on a barge to a region where multinational companies log the forests and introduce local populations to the effects of globalization. When war breaks out over disputed election results, Sundaram ventures into the fray, holing up in a margarine factory and becoming one of the few reporters in the war zone filing stories. The author skillfully captures the smallest details of life in a destitute land, blending the sordid history of Congo with his battle to forge a career in a troubled and forsaken country.

September 9, 2013
While well-known for his impressive novelistic output, Banks (Continental Drift) is also a prolific short story writer. This collection, his sixth, is made up of four never-before-published stories. The first, “Former Marine,” sets the exhausted, elegiac tone for the book. It features Connie, an aging ex-Marine who refers to himself as “the Retiree,” even though he was laid off: “It’s the economy’s fault. And the fault of whoever the hell’s in charge of it.” Connie robs banks, badly, to make ends meet, but they (inevitably) don’t. In the fine story “Transplant,” Howard Blume is recovering from a heart transplant when the deceased donor’s wife asks to meet him, to listen (with a stethoscope!) to Blume’s new heart. In the most subversive story of the collection, “Snowbirds,” a man dies of a heart attack in Florida, where he and his wife are spending the winter. Isabel, his widow, is nonplussed; in fact, she appears somewhat delighted at the prospect of a new life in the sun. While these exquisitely crafted stories are highly personal, they are also permeated by a sense of sadness about the death of the American dream, as the country struggles, out of work and seemingly out of hope. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.