The Distance Between Us

Rating:
Summary: "God and gunfire"
Review:

As a journalist covering the Middle East conflict, Caddie Blair is in the thick of the action, tracking the everyday violence around her. Convinced that her attachment to her lover, Marcus, is void of real commitment, Caddie assumes his compliance with her assessment. Before they have a chance to discuss their relationship, Marcus, Caddie and two others cross the border of Lebanon in pursuit of an interview with a Lebanese crime king. On that impulsive journey, Marcus is killed in an ambush. In this embattled land, death lurks but a step behind.

The territory of grief and loss is as unfamiliar to Caddie as the terrain of war is familiar. Suddenly, there is no Marcus to balance her stories with his inspiring photographs, no more small moments of peace and intimacy in an island of unpredictable horrors. Living on the razor's edge of danger has lost its appeal, rendering Caddie more tentative in her work. Refusing to take time off as ordered, Caddie is trapped in the memory of Marcus, with his penchant for isolating the images of the eight and ten-year olds, whose faces tell the real story of the conflict. Struggling to remain objective, Caddie carries a rage in her heart, a need to avenge the loss of the man who humanized the inhuman in his sensitive, prize-winning photographs.

The crux of the novel is Caddie's inability to cope with her grief and process the resulting anger. Haunted by that fateful day in Lebanon, Caddie is in flight, desperate for emotional purchase: "the turbulence of some gigantic machine careening forward at reckless, pointless speed". She has carved a niche for herself, an identity, objective journalist. Ultimately, what Caddie will realize is as familiar as her own breathing: that while these are her stories, to the people living this nightmare, these are their lives. When she meets an enigmatic Russian with his own sad tale, Caddie forges an emotional bond that allows her to confront the dark roots of her own psyche, though at first she confuses the Russian with Marcus' nascent goodness.

Author Masha Hamilton (Staircase of a Thousand Steps), a foreign correspondent herself for ten years, speaks the language of a terrain too long littered with the corpses of Palestinians and Israeli's, arguably one of the most significant crises of this generation. Hamilton is unflinching in the face of such violence, providing searing descriptions of what humans do to each other in the name of God, as her protagonist is thrust into a world of absolutes, where lives are crushed with impunity. "She has, after all, a survivor's pact with this land: both are tainted now, but both will endure." Luan Gaines/2005.


Rating:
Summary: A Superb Novel Which Gives Violence A Human Face
Review: "The Distance Between Us" is an extraordinarily powerful, beautifully crafted novel. Masha Hamilton's prose is, at times, luminescent and lyrical, and at others, spare and almost brutal in its honesty. She paints here a poignant portrait of a woman facing a major crossroad in her life which will change her forever. This novel is more a sensitive psychological study than a book with an action driven plot.

Catherine (Caddie) Blair is an American journalist stationed in Jerusalem, who has been covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years. She prizes her professional detachment and shies away from anything that smacks of sentimentality. It is important to keep her emotions under wraps in both her writing and in her personal life. "Reflect the story; don't absorb it," is her creed, "because if you allow yourself to feel the full force of sorrows and horrors, you will succumb to them."

On a trip to Lebanon for an important interview, Caddie's Land Rover is ambushed and her lover, Marcus, is killed. His death stuns her; shakes her to the core. She, who has covered so many battles, so much violence, finds herself musing at the many colors of a loved one's blood. Accustomed to holding her emotions in check, she doesn't know what to do with the onslaught of feelings that threaten to overpower her. For the first time that she can remember her reporter's gift of perfect recall is gone, as is her ability to be a cautious observer. She fears that after this life-altering event, she will never be "restored to even an accepted facsimile of what she was before."

Ordered back to New York for R&R by her editor, Caddie persuades him to let her remain longer in Jerusalem under the guise of writing a feature story on the "effects of violence." Overwhelmed with rage, a need for revenge, survivor's guilt, (Would Marcus have accompanied her if she hadn't asked him to do the photography for her article?), Caddie searches for a response to the murder. She considers revenge, retaliation, among other possible solutions. Compelled to act, she needs to do something that will bring her peace and allow her to move on with her life. And she longs to write something to compensate for all the barriers which sometimes got in the way of her stories. "A piece that will show intimately how violence shreds sleep and appetite and memory, disfiguring those it leaves behind. A story that will get close enough to give violence a human face."

Ms. Hamilton brings her characters to life on these pages, especially Caddie. She is developed lovingly, and the changes she makes in the novel's 279 pages are intense and deeply felt. The novel's secondary characters are phenomenal, real originals - from interfering, gossipy Ya'el to Mr. Gruizin, who paints a red stripe on the mailbox of any out-of-town neighbor - to ensure their healthy return. There's mad Anya, who shouts and whispers her prophecies from street corners, Mrs. Weizman, always ready with her chicken soup to feed Caddie, and Goronsky, the man who suddenly enters Caddie's life and helps her define her ethical limits. The characters have one principal commonality - they have all been scarred and altered by violence.

The author's vivid descriptions of Jerusalem brings that city to life. Her landscapes, images of light refracting against Jerusalem stone, the contradictory mix of the city`s inhabitants, the frenzy of everyday activity and the silence of Shabbat, evoke a timelessness and enrich the novel tremendously. This is a rare book - a real find. Highly recommended!

Masha Hamilton has actually worked for The Associated Press as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East and has covered the Intifada. This firsthand experience is evident in the story's detailed development.
JANA KRAUS

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable: What Violence Does to One Woman's Soul
Review: Masha Hamilton does not flinch when she writes. THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US is the story of an American journalist, Caddie Blair, who finds herself suddenly bereft, when her photojournalist lover is killed in an ambush. Caddie refuses to leave Jerusalem, preferring to cover the violence around her. She also begins to understand it in a visceral way, as she moves in so close to "the story" akin to a moth to a flame. This is a powerful, wrenching book, with language that is spare, poetic, and beautiful.

As a journalist, author Masha Hamilton has covered the world's hot spots. Obviously this book went close to the bone. Read it. You will never forget it.

Rating:
Summary: An Absolute Must Read
Review: Masha Hamilton has brought to life a part of the world most of us know only through headlines. The Middle East is nothing if not an inexplicable testament to the horror people can bring to one another, but Ms. Hamilton has managed to bring a part of that world to life with style, grace, and a profound understanding of what it means to live there. Also, as a former journalist who covered that region, she allows us to look into the soul of those adrenalin junkies known as war correspondents.

Her characters, her sense of place, her ability to create tension and resolution are deeply powerful, perhaps made more so by her disciplined, tightly controlled writing that allows for no more--and no less--than is required to make her point. As all great writers, she leaves us wanting more. It was a book I hated to finish.