The Last War: A Novel - Softcover

Menendez, Ana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061724777 ISBN 13: 9780061724770

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2010

Synopsis

Photojournalist Flash chases conflicts around the globe with her war correspondent husband, Brando. Now Brando is in Iraq awaiting her arrival, but instead of racing to join him, Flash idles in Istanbul, vaguely aware that her marriage is faltering. Her malaise is compounded by the arrival of a mysterious letter revealing Brando's infidelity—and by the sudden appearance of Alexandra, a fierce and captivating colleague who shared dangerous days with the couple in Afghanistan. As Flash spirals deeper into regret, anger, and indecision, she wonders if she and Brando were ever really happy—as she's forced to confront long-buried secrets and hard truths about her world, her marriage, her husband, and herself.

About this title

About the Author:

Ana Menéndez is a 2008 Fulbright scholar and the Pushcart Prize-winning author of two works of fiction, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, which was a New York Times Notable Book, and Loving Che. She has worked as a columnist for the Miami Herald and has also contributed to The New Republic, the New York Times, and Gourmet, as well as several anthologies. She lives in Miami, Florida.

From The Washington Post:

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Zofia Smardz War is hell. So is love, sometimes. Ask Ana Menéndez. Her somber third novel is an elegy to a marriage sundered by war and love. Just after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Flash (a.k.a. Margarita Anastasia Morales) is holed up in Istanbul, waiting for the documents that will let her join her preppy war-correspondent husband, Brando Price Phillips, in Baghdad. A freelance photographer, Flash (get it?) has, like many a journalist wife before her, put her career ambitions on the back burner to follow her husband ("Wonderboy," as she not always lovingly refers to him) to conflicts around the globe. Self-described "war junkies," they've survived Kashmir and Kargil, India and Afghanistan, riding the rush of war reporting, passionately pursuing conflict and action. But now Flash feels that "something essential had begun to give way" in their marriage. "The disillusion we had so long been running from had finally come for us." So instead of hurrying to join her husband in the latest war, she cools her heels in Istanbul, having coffee on the apartment balcony as the sun rises over the Bosporus, taking long walks through the city, picking up a local assignment or two and drinking copious amounts of wine. And brooding. There's lots and lots of brooding, about what went wrong and when and why. Then one day, she gets an anonymous letter in the mail. Brando, it says, is having an affair in Baghdad. Unsure of what her marriage has become, Flash isn't exactly surprised. But her brooding level skyrockets. She takes more walks and soon becomes vaguely aware of a woman in a long black abaya who seems to be shadowing her throughout the city, appearing just at the edge of her vision. Returning from one of her aimless rambles one evening, Flash is startled to see the woman standing in her living room. She is an old acquaintance named Alexandra Truso, who is also, as it happens, an old nemesis, one of those women who instantly attract men while making women feel invisible. What is Alexandra doing in Istanbul? She says she's waiting to get into Iraq. But as she and Flash renew their supposed friendship, other troubling questions arise. Why has Alexandra sought out Flash? Did she write the letter? What's her history with Brando? As Flash flashes back to a troubling event in Afghanistan while spending time with Alexandra and arguing with her war-traumatized husband over the phone, "The Last War" heads to a conclusion that strives to be both surprising and bittersweet, but it can't redeem the novel's dilatory pace. That's a letdown because Menéndez is an elegant, fluid writer whose prose goes down mighty easy. Her descriptions of Istanbul are lovely ("the shimmering water, the white gulls that swooped and dove over the domes of the mosques, the needle minarets"), and her insights can be spot on. ("I understood why so many painters cultivated madness; it kept desire flowing. Depression is not madness, it's just depression, the loser version.") But in the end, the novel is strangely static and enervated. I suspect that Menéndez is trying for the tone of weariness you'd expect from someone who's seen much too much, but too often Flash seems just incredibly self-involved. Interestingly, Menéndez, a former Miami Herald reporter, says she based the novel on her own receipt of an anonymous letter alleging her husband's infidelity. Apart from that, it "bears little resemblance to what really happened in those years," she says, but is nonetheless "the truest distillation of what they felt like." It's just too bad that feeling doesn't really come through.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0061724777
• ISBN 13: 9780061724770
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256