Into the Sun

July 1, 2016
How living in Afghanistan profoundly affected a group of friends. Canadian-American writer Bechard won the 2007 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for his quirky and lyrical debut novel, Vandal Love. He draws upon his extensive experience as a foreign correspondent and photojournalist to fashion his second novel, an ambitious and nuanced story about a small group of friends in Kabul in the wake of 9/11. It's divided into 10 parts covering nearly 40 years. Michiko, a Japanese-American journalist, narrates the sections titled with her name in Japanese characters, while the other sections, told in the third person, focus on three of her friends: Alexandra, a human rights lawyer; Justin, a born-again Christian from Louisiana who teaches English at a local school; and Clay, an ex-soldier and childhood friend of Justin's who's a private contractor. In the shadows lurks Idris, an Afghan student of Justin's. Michiko begins in Kabul in March 2012, describing a Taliban attack on a house where these friends were attending a party. She tells us she's conducted a monthslong investigation revealing they were all nearly killed because of a "love triangle: a convoluted story of pettiness." Two days later, Alexandra, Justin, and Clay die in a car-bomb attack. Idris was driving; he survived. Both of these incidents had to be "pieces of a larger plan that was still in the works. More people could die." As the narrative--made up of Michiko's investigation and the novel she's writing--goes back and forth in time (1999, 1976, 2006, 1993, 2012) and place (Maine, Louisiana, Quebec, Dubai, Kabul), we learn about motives and betrayals. She fractures the "narrative, shifting the pieces, mixing them, inter-leafing [her] past and theirs." Bechard does a fine job of describing the experiences and emotions of these friends and their "stories of courage" that "made no sense, only to burn away, to dissolve like smoke beneath the sun."Despite an overly convoluted plot, this is an insightful and affecting look into the lives of those who risk everything to help the people of Afghanistan and tell their stories.

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August 1, 2016

This novel has an explosive beginning--literally. A house party in Kabul comes under attack from insurgents, and host and guests retreat to a safe room, watching the outside carnage on surveillance TV. Among them are the principals: Justin, a devout Christian teacher; Clay, a defense contractor and longtime friend/enemy of Justin; Alexandra, a writer and lover to them both; and Afghan student Idris. A car bomb soon takes many of these lives, but whose? The narrator tries to understand, in fact to fictionalize, the intertwined relationships of the first three characters, even traveling to Louisiana, Maine, and Canada to figure out background and unravel the skein of alliance and betrayal. Laurence Sterne would love the plotting here; as far afield as the book goes, it always circles and loops back to the safe room, and the car bomb. In the end, readers will understand the complicated dynamics, but it's a long journey and the pacing is uneven--some episodes are incandescent, others needed better editing. Characters aside, Bechard (Vandal Love) has written a novel of Afghanistan--its past, present (and future) turbulence, and those wishing to get a sense of Kabul without going there should start here. VERDICT For lovers of literary suspense and intrigue with a capital "L."--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

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