A few weeks ago I met a friend at Chili’s and we talked books. Having read my blog, and the rating system, he offered to loan me a few books by his favorite author; Alan Furst. These books are WWII-era spy novels with lots of history written in, story lines good enough to qualify as his version of a Multiples Read (MR), and a bit of love story. I left the restaurant with two novels; The Foreign Correspondent, and Dark Star.
Any event where I walk away with books is a great event, but I wasn’t expecting to really enjoy the books too much. Anytime a guy tells me a book has ‘strong female characters’, I lower my expectations. Most men wouldn’t recognize a strong female character if she hit him over the head with a plate of cookies. They think any woman in a story that doesn’t cry all the time and stands back with icy resolve while her male saunters off to a chest-beating contest is a ‘strong female character’.
My usual MR has some humor in it, with action scenes that make my stomach get tense. If there’s magic or science fiction, it’s even better. In my adventure stories, I want characters written with enough depth that after two or three reads I feel like I could call them up and ask to borrow some printer paper. I want the women to be complex, to have back-stories with hurts and accomplishments that make them seem like real women, even if I don’t like them.
Men’s adventure novels seldom measure up to this. Male authors just have a tough time getting inside a woman’s head. This isn’t surprising; my husband has known me since 8th grade and still finds me incomprehensible at times. I’m confident this is because I’m magnificently complex with attributes far beyond the ken of mortal man. Oddly, women authors can often write a male character with amazing coloration and depth. Maybe they just care to spend more time developing the ‘why’ instead of just the ‘what’.
Lois McMaster Bujold can write a male lead that makes me want to sign up for e-harmony just to find out if we’re as good a match as I think we would be. Obviously I don’t do this; I’m happily married and know these near-perfect men are works of fiction. Ask me how I know; go on. The answer is…they’re near perfect.
Alan Furst’s novel The Foreign Correspondent is a man’s story, written by, and for males. The women are there for romantic plot lines and to add some sex interest to the story. It works; the women are gorgeous, eager to jump in the sack with the very suave Carlo Weisz. Mr. Weisz is an Italian émigré to 1938 Paris, working for Rueters as a journalist. He takes assignments in war zones and covers visits by foreign dignitaries. In the evening, he works with other émigrés to publish a clandestine newsletter opposed to the Fascism threatening war in Europe.
As the story progresses, Weisz becomes drawn into political intrigue and eventually ends his relationship with a casual bed partner. The reason; a rekindled romance with the one woman he ever loved. She is a German girl in a marriage of convenience, living in Germany in the early days of Hitler’s influence. She is also working covertly, not as a spy, but doing what she can to oppose Hitler and Mussolini. They meet again while Weisz is in Germany for a story. He’s later drafted by the British to expand his efforts as a freedom fighter and uses this request to negotiate the retrieval of his girlfriend. The price; becoming a spy in reality and placing himself in danger during a return trip to Italy.
This is not at all my usual kind of reading because Alan Furst’s writing style is very dry. He doesn’t really tell the reader what is happening, he paints little word pictures and expects you to see the story. His narrative will describe a room, its occupants, the position of the main characters to each other along with their posture and then launch into the dialogue. The story progresses along-side what is being said, like props added to a stage-play while it’s in progress.
I had a hard time getting into the story, at first. Then I kind of caught the rhythm and started to see the word pictures. This book was like a new recipe that you’re not sure you like, so you keep coming back for another tasting. I kept coming back to the book for another taste, until I had consumed the entire story. This was a Best Friend Read (BFR), I read it carefully, my version of listening to every word, so I would understand what was going on.
The appeal was in the main character; Carlo Weisz. His job was interesting and with every assignment I learned more about the history of World War II, before it become a World War. He had a commitment to his work that I identify with, and also to his co-collaborators. Even when assassination and harassment threatened the group, Carlo still worked as the leader and held them together by his personal boldness. In difficulty Carlo was resourceful and clever, in company with friends he was easy and even sweet.
More than anything, I liked that Carlo Weisz understood the story as it happened. He spoke with every person and understood what was said, and what was unsaid. So often a story line turns on the miscommunication of the characters; an unspoken fear or desire causes weeks of anguish. Sometimes what is said gets filtered through the other person’s understanding but the meaning still isn’t clear to them. I’m so used to this writing theme that I’ve never even thought about it until it wasn’t there.
Carlo Weisz understands the nod, the shrug, the lifting of one eyebrow or the change in tone that signals ‘be careful’. As a person who never gets the subtleties of conversation, who usually misreads a nonverbal cue or even completely misses it until much later, it was a pleasure to share a book with someone who just ‘gets it’.
I’ve written about suspension of disbelief and how it allows me to drop fully into the world created by the story. In a really good book I can even look out through the eyes of the story person. I absolutely loved dropping into this world with its clarity and it’s intrigue. I said this isn’t my kind of story, and it isn’t, but I see how it could become so.
Read The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst, published by Random House. It will be an adventure.
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