The Room and the Chair - Tapa blanda

"Lorraine Adams is a singular and important American writer. "The Room and the Chair" establishes this without question: It is remarkable for its ambitions and its achievements. It's a war novel, a reporter's novel and a psychological thriller. It encompasses the broadest outlines of our world. . . . It is gutsier and throws a wider net than the topical and gorgeously written "Harbor ". [It] begins with a plane crash and Air Force pilot Mary Goodwin hanging wounded from a tree in Washington, D. C. . . . From there, it moves through the snows of Hindu Kush to Bagram Air Base, with a detour to [a] 7-star hotel in Dubai. . . . But its center is the room of the title, which is the newsroom of a newspaper not so loosely based on the "Washington Post, " where Adams used to work. This territory is so accurately and perceptively portrayed that anyone who's spent time in a newsroom, especially in the era of print under siege, will recognize the unsavory, nauseating mash-up of romance, hatred, rivalry, corruption and (at the same time) the almost saintly quest for truth. . . . There are all kinds of influences at work on this book: One feels the hand (but, gratefully, not the style) of Henry James, of Joan Didion, of Ward Just (Gore Vidal too). Also in the mix are John le Carre and Norman Mailer. (Have they ever been mentioned together before?). The book is about war's human toll on soldier and civilian, on the guy who pulls the joystick as well as those who are the targets below. . . . The action flies along. The novel is replete with profound offhand remarks about the human condition, some of them so arresting they can make you gasp. The women especially glow with life. Mary is a fully realized heroine, almost Victorian in her decorum, yet lusty beneath the uniform in unexpected ways. Mabel Cannon, wife of the newspaper's aging star reporter, is frail and vivacious, sexy and insecure. Baby, a teenage prostitute who witnesses the crash, is especially affecting . . . Indeed,

'The Room and the Chair' is a novel by the award-winning author of 'Harbor' that moves from a newsroom in the American capital to a cockpit over Afghanistan, from an Iranian cemetery to a military intelligence office in suburban Washington, as it explores a world of entwined conflicts and the way narratives about violence are told.