http://www.projo.com/books/content/BOOK-EXILES_08-09-09_4TF47EO_v11.19c8474.html
August 9, 2009
By Sam Coale
This beautifully wrought, suspenseful, psychologically astute and
conspiracy-haunted first novel by the former books editor of The
Providence Journal tackles a fascinating subject which, for me at
least, has long been off the fictional table: the intricate and
intrigue-ridden lives of American Vietnam War protesters and
deserters in Sweden.
The novel hinges on a strange circumstance: Lenny Spiegel happens to
look like Brian Aaronson, the guy who smashed up a local draft board
in The States and fled with his girlfriend Tracy, first to Canada and
then to Uppsala in Sweden. The police break in on Lenny's room and
manhandle him, thinking he's Brian. Lenny, incensed, decides to go to
Sweden to see if he can help the anti-war movement.
The plot thickens, as they say. The attractive Tracy gets Lenny to
surrender his passport to Brian so that Aaronson can sneak out of
Sweden and lure American soldiers from Germany to Uppsala. Slowly
Brian's persona begins to take over Lenny's personality not
literally, but in the sense that he's viewed as Aaronson by the other
deserters in ARMS: "American Resisters Movement Sweden." Lenny
winds up on a TV talk show as Brian and gets caught in an anti-war
parade that turns into a riot. He beds Tracy at last.
Nothing is as it seems, including Aaronson. Plots are afoot.
Connections are made with some strange Peace Church, Third World
terrorists, China and the CIA. Every action becomes suspect with
whiffs of betrayal, double-crossing, embezzlement and more.
I don't mean to reduce this formidable and wonderfully written novel
to a "mere" thriller, because Krieger a onetime academic who wrote
a book about Shakespeare's comedies before becoming a reporter and
editor at The Journal, and won an O. Henry Award for his first
published short story, "Cantor Pepper" knows how to get into the
bones and marrow of his characters, the uneasy sexuality and fragile
identities of American exiles in their twenties, the queasy alliances
and sudden attractions that flourish and fade. The central focus
remains Lenny's self-doubts and uncertainties. He's a bit of an
innocent, a bit credulous but intensely likable and sensitive, more
thoughtful perhaps than perceptive.
Krieger's evocation of the Swedish landscape in all its incarnations
and seasons fleshes out his characters' secrets and flaws. There's a
lusty Portuguese deserter, his girlfriend and the actress he's drawn
to; crude angry deserters; right-wing Swedish politicians; a Swede to
whom Lenny is helplessly drawn, and a reporter, determined to figure
out who's who.
This is a great, gripping book, elegantly styled and provocative with
its troubling underplots and psychological fathomings. People die,
identities shift and change, the military police and shadowy
creatures lurk on the sidelines, lust battles love. And through it
all Krieger manages to explore the loneliness and isolation of exiles
everywhere, the uprooting and the homesickness, and the burden of
solitariness that no matter what happens, none can shake.
--
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