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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Nov 2004, 304 pages
Paperback:
Oct 2005, 304 pages
A straight-ahead story of human passion—desire, conviction, and the guilt of a survivor—struggling for order within the frayed justice of the Middle East conflict.
Caddie Blair feels everything strongly—and so she works hard to keep her
distance. It's the ethical thing for a journalist to do, especially in a
war-torn region like the Middle East. And Caddie wants to believe that nothing
is as important as covering "the story."
There's room for passion in her life—but that's only physical. And Caddie
keeps even those fleeting attachments under wraps, secretive, because she knows
that when a journalist even appears to lose her detachment, she is already lost.
So what is Caddie to feel when her lover dies beside her—shot in an ambush
on the way to the next promising political interview, across the Israeli border
into Lebanon?
An authentic look at the emotional and ethical chaos within a war
correspondent who becomes a bit too involved, Masha Hamilton's The Distance
Between Us is a straight-ahead story of human passion—desire, conviction, and
the guilt of a survivor—struggling for order within the frayed justice of the
Middle East conflict.
A seasoned journalist herself, Masha Hamilton brings to this revealing novel
the sharp eye and deep empathy that marked her debut, Staircase of a Thousand
Steps (BlueHen, 2001). Beautifully turned, and peopled with an astounding cast
of characters who are as true as they are perceptive, The Distance Between Us is
finally the portrait of one woman's search for the narrow pass between vengeance
and emotional survival, when her only true attachment has been torn away from
her.
"If we knew where we were going to fall," the novel's most
enigmatic character tells her, "we could spread straw."
Chapter One
The whole of heaven is off-balance as they rumble out of the city: clouds one
moment, darting sunlight the next. A dust shroud swirling around the Land Rover
prevents Caddie from seeing where they are going or where they’ve been. Far
behind them, a mosque wails its hellfire summons to those who believe. It’s
noon, then, and men of conviction are submitting their foreheads to the ground
in a graceful wave, while she barrels forward into the formless, blind middle of
a day.
The Land Rover rattles like a crate of scrap metal. Her shoulders ache,
she’s inhaling cupfuls of powdered dirt and they have at least another ninety
minutes to go. But those are only irritants. Her real worry is the driver, a
complete unknown. Rob and the hotel concierge rounded him up when the regular
chauffeur, the one Rob assured her was "the best in Beirut," didn’t
show. A driver is their lifeline in dusty, uncharted territory. This guy,
well—she catches her ...
Gayle Brandeis, author of The Book of Dead Birds
What a powerful, intense, beautifully written story. Masha Hamilton takes us
right into the brutal heart of the war zone, right into the guarded heart of
journalist Caddie Blair. With spare and stunning prose, Hamilton reminds us that
the distance between us often isn't as great as we may think.Hamilton dedicates her book to
Kevin
Carter, the Pulitzer-winning photograph particularly known for the
photograph that personified the Sudanese famine - a tiny girl
squatting on scrawny knees, head drooping heavily with a vulture lurking
behind. Two months after collecting his award Carter attached
a garden hose to his exhaust pipe and gassed himself. The note
beside him on the passenger seat read 'The pain of life overrides the
joy to the point that joy does not exist'.
For a summarized history of the region try these links, each covers broadly the same events, but each with their own
subtle differences in interpretation.
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