The Distance Between Us - Hardcover

Hamilton, Masha

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 193296102X ISBN 13: 9781932961027

Publisher: Unbridled Books, 2004

Synopsis

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.”

About this title

About the Author

Masha Hamilton worked as a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press for five years in the Middle East, where she covered the intefadeh, the peace process and the partial Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. Then she spent five years in Moscow, where she was a Moscow correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, wrote a newspaper column, "Postcard from Moscow," that ran in about 35 U.S. newspapers, and reported for NBC/Mutual Radio. She wrote about Kremlin politics as well as life for average Russians under Gorbachev and Yeltsin during the coup and collapse of the Soviet Union. She traveled to Afghanistan in the spring of 2004 as a freelance journalist. A Brown University graduate, she was awarded the Arizona Arts biannual Fellowship for Fiction in 2002 and attended Yaddo in June of 2003. She currently lives with her family in New York City, where she teaches novel writing for Gotham Writers' Workshop and is a shiatsu practitioner. The Distance Between Us is her second novel. Her first, Staircase of a Thousand Steps, was a Booksense pick and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

Reviews

Starred Review. A foreign correspondent's facade of emotional invincibility is shattered by the death of a colleague in journalist Hamilton's sharply etched, emotionally ferocious second novel (after Staircase of a Thousand Steps). Thirty-two-year-old Caddie Blair swears by "measured closeness and a dose of dulled feelings," but everything changes after a stunning ambush on the way to an interview with a Lebanese crime king leaves her lover, news photographer Marcus Lancour, dead in her arms. Caddie retreats to her flat in Jerusalem to make sense of her personal involvement in Marcus's death, refusing to take a cushy desk job in New York and continuing to work both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. A mysterious and alluring Russian professor, Alexander Goronsky, offers insider information about terrorist cell activity, feeding Caddie's need to seek (and witness) revenge. Hamilton's novel is as edgily paced as a thriller, with its jaded crew of international journalists, scenes of horrific violence by Jews and Arabs alike and explosive sex when Goronsky and Caddie come together to forget respective wounds. Hamilton no doubt enlists her own experience as a foreign correspondent to effectively flesh out the characters Caddie encounters, such as Jewish settlers Moshe and his blank wife, Sarah, and the Arab girl, Halima, who wants to bear witness. This is an affecting, viscerally charged work that offers no easy moral answers.
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War correspondent Caddie Blair loves the excitement and energy of her post in Jerusalem. On her way to an interview in Lebanon, Caddie and her colleagues are ambushed. Her lover--and photographer--is killed. The surprising event leaves Caddie wondering if she is somehow responsible for the tragedy. The arrival of a mysterious Russian emigre, Goronsky, leaves Caddie more unhinged as she desperately tries to solve the puzzle of the event and her own growing attraction to violence and revenge. Goronsky becomes Caddie's lover, and the question of who he actually is becomes a bit of a red herring in an otherwise smooth plot. Hamilton not only captures the conflicted feelings of journalists but also the conflicted feelings of those living in the middle of the violence. 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. Marta Segal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Unbridled Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 193296102X
• ISBN 13: 9781932961027
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288