The Distance Between Us: Summary and book reviews of The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton, plus links to an excerpt from The Distance Between Us and a biography of Masha Hamilton.
The Distance Between Us
by Masha Hamilton
Hardcover: Nov 2004,
304 pages.
Paperback: Oct 2005,
304 pages.
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."
The Christian Science Monitor
[An] exciting novel .... we're left thinking about the human tragedy
rather than the political scorecard ... [Hamilton's] determined to plumb the
conflicted motives of people who rush to see danger in the world or in their
newspaper. The result is a powerful portrayal of religious warfare and an
unsettling challenge to anyone watching.
The San Francisco Chronicle
The plotting is flawless. The pacing is just right—sometimes
reflective, sometimes action-packed. Hamilton is an accomplished stylist as well
... Perhaps most unusual of all, Hamilton the journalist gets the fictional
journalists just right.
Midwest Book Review, August 2004, by Laurel Johnson
I could endlessly quote passages of glorious prose from this book, but
won't. I'll let readers discover Hamilton's gifted way with words for
themselves. The author has given us the scents, sights, and sounds of Jerusalem,
the sorrows shared by Israeli and Arab cousins. And she's put starkly realistic
faces on human weaknesses and strengths......Graceful, luminous, elegant,
beguiling. Characters multi-faceted...plot engaging first page to last. Discover
Hamilton’s gifted way with words. A winner.
Kirkus Reviews
Thoughtfully written
but emotionally distant and overly cerebral.
Library Journal - Christopher J Korenowsky
With prose both beguiling and elegant, the story
will strike a chord in readers following current events in the Middle East.
Booklist - Marta Segal
All sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are presented fairly. Punchy
dialogue and prose style turn this introspective look at violence and loss into
a page-turner.
Publishers Weekly
Starred review. This is an
affecting, viscerally charged work that offers no easy moral answers.
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.
A
reproduction of a booklet written by 'Jews For Justice'
Two young friends caught in Lebanon’s civil war must choose their futures: To stay in the city and consolidate power through crime, or to go into exile abroad, alienated from the only existence they have known.
The year is 1949 and Nora, a prickly, strong-willed survivor of the Holocaust, has just walked off the boat in Israel with her German daughter-in-law, Louisa. Superb...a seamless interweaving of observation, memory, and imagination...A mature and absorbing story...
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Midwest Book Review, August 2004, by Laurel Johnson
Kirkus Reviews
Gayle Brandeis, author of The Book of Dead Birds
