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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"The descent to Hades is the same from every place.", May 23, 2008
Diogenes A few weeks ago I got into an extended conversation about the life and death of Kevin Carter. Carter was a photojournalist. Carter first made a name for himself in his native South Africa. His photos of life under apartheid were published around the world. His primary claim to fame arose in 1993 when he traveled to war-ravaged Sudan. His photo of an emaciated little girl, struggling to get to a feeding station while a large vulture sat nearby waiting for the girl to die, won him a Pulitzer Prize. It also caused a great deal of controversy as people who were horrified by the picture could not understand why Carter did not act to protect the child or carry her to the feeding station. Six weeks after winning the Pulitzer, Kevin Carter committed suicide. He was 33. Many people made an immediate causal connection between Carter's photograph in Sudan and his suicide. Others argued that Carter's life was far too complicated to attribute his death to one specific cause. In essence, those others asserted that no one event can be explained if we confine ourselves to seeking one cause for every effect. As Italo Calvino has suggested, "every event is like a vortex where various streams converge, each moved by heterogeneous impulses, none of which can be overlooked in the search for the truth." It was not long after that conversation that I picked up James Meek's "We are Now Beginning our Descent". The connection between Kevin Carter's story and the fictional characters that Meek creates is a powerful one. Adam Kellas is a British journalist. Astrid Walsh is an American journalist. They meet in the Afghan mountains in the months after 9/11. They each arrive in Afghanistan with a couple of suitcases full of emotional baggage. They leave Afghanistan with even more baggage after a chance encounter with some Afghani soldiers has devastating, if unexpected and unintended, consequences. In essence Meek sets up the construct of the ultra-neutral reporter who will observe but never interfere with the action he or she is covering and then creates a situation where that neutrality is or may have been breached. What Meek has done here is to provide us with a look at the vortex created by the brief meeting of Adam and Astrid. He also provides a look at the `stream' of both Adam and Astrid before and after their meeting. The result is a very entertaining and quite moving look at the lives of two people as they try to come to grips with their lives: with their lives as they existed before Afghanistan and as it exists afterward. "We are Now Beginning our Descent"is Meeks second novel. I thought his first work, The People's Act of Love was a remarkably good effort and I awaited Meek's second effort with expectation and a bit of trepidation. Second novels are challenging, both for the author and for the reader. The author is challenged to live up to the promise of his/her first work. The reader is challenged by virtue of his/her own heightened expectation and anticipation that the second work will outstrip the qualities of the first novel. Meek has met his challenge with ease. I think this book does live up to the promise of Meek's first book. The book also met this reader's challenge. It met my heightened expectations. L. Fleisig
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A complex character in a complicated world, April 14, 2008
After the success of The People's Act of Love, expectations for Meek's new novel have been high. In "We Are Beginning Our Descent" Meek demonstrates the best of journalistic and fiction writing as well as some of the weaknesses. Attempting to merge the two styles, his language follows the topic he addresses, thereby losing some of the narrative fluidity and impact. The mostly fast paced story demonstrates his talent for evocative descriptions, whether landscapes, war scenarios or people. Like the author himself, Adam Kellas, the protagonist, is a British correspondent sent to Afghanistan to report the news from there as his audience expects to hear it. It is not necessarily how it is seen on the ground and his frustration with the imposed restrictions is palpable. Meek's experience shines through when he describes, with a mix of irony and empathy, the living conditions of the media contingent hanging out together close to the frontlines. In his downtime Kellas is writing a deliberately provocative political thriller, that he hopes will afford him the means for an easy life in the future. And then he comes across Astrid, a seasoned feature writer from the US who is as aloof as she is beautiful...and an inadvertently provoked action leads to a moral dilemma that will occupy Kellas's mind from then on. Most of "We are Beginning Our Descent" is written in flashbacks as Kellas ruminates over where he has been and what is in store for him when his plane touches down in New York. The Afghanistan images and the portrayal of the local people he encounters are the most vivid and convey the reality better than many news articles. His character's reflections on his own less than successful life suggest a complex and emotionally charged and restless personality. His relationship to his eclectic circle of friends, in London and in his Scottish home region, is conveyed as essential for his emotional stability. Will it be sufficient to sustain him in the long term? While Meek's well-developed characterization of the diverse personality adds to the breadth of the story, these sections of the book are less powerful than the account from the frontlines. Overall an intriguing and worthwhile read. [Friederike Knabe]
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Men started out looking for love and ended up looking for dignity.", June 28, 2008
Journalists flock to Afghanistan after 9/11, among them would-be novelist Adam Kellas, thirty-seven, rootless and dispossessed by the terrorists' claim to the great theme of his novel-in-progress. Scribbling a new book in his down time, Kellas fixates on Astrid Walsh, an American journalist who waxes hot and cold, planting the seeds of longing that are so familiar to him, a man unable to totally inhabit his present, eyes ever on the horizon. Adam seeks love, success and a viable self, constantly betrayed by the truth and the disappointment that accompanies his every leap of faith. This interior journey is revealed in flashbacks; Kellas moves from place to place- mindset to mindset- personality reflected in the company he keeps, mirrored by his friends' actions and reactions, a strange brew of impressions that is not clearly defined. The result is a psychological maze; wandering through this emotional incongruence is the protagonist, spectral, existing in moments, forming and reforming his relationship to the world. In a tenuous, shifting existence, Adam is dependent on others for direction: his best friend, poet Pat M'Gurgan makes a decision to write fantasy, then retreats to his former passion for a finer craft, albeit less remunerative; an American journalist in Afghanistan draws close to Kellas, then disappears, stepping out of his life but never his imagination; Kellas aspires to create a significant novel, only to see his plot stolen by the masterminds of 9/11, unable to recover his equilibrium. The individual who emerges on these pages is an assimilation of images, as though we are piecing together this character from fragments to assemble a whole. Certainly, the most astute observations come from the women Adam has encountered over the years. Juxtaposed against our first meeting with Kellas in Afghanistan post-9/11, his evolution is more perfectly realized in the contretemps with the objects of his desire, yielding trenchant clues to Adam's chronic isolation and the longing he wears like a crown of thorns: "Love. Oh, Adam. You're just not qualified to use the word." Even in Afghanistan, Adam has difficulty fitting in, preoccupied by how he is viewed by others. He is a watcher, a thinker, an intellectual fearful of participation. A dreamer. Kellas is a competent journalist unable to write the novel that will deliver distinction and respect, a condition that constantly undermines his self-worth. Discontent, yet unable to perform to his own expectations, 9/11 has stolen not only his central theme, but the ability to replace one vision with another. In response, Kellas resorts to dissecting the women on whom he has fixated, demanding from them what is lacking in himself. Projections of desire, they cannot fail to disappoint. European in its angst and perspective, this novel reflects the ambivalence of a world off kilter and a man in search of self, dangerously flailing at his friendships. Yearning to reconfigure himself ("I am going to get away from the idealizing and the demonizing"), Adam turns to his work, this time in that Middle Earth, Iraq, another country in turmoil where he will dwell for a time. For Adam Kellas, unsure whether he is on solid ground or a land mine, "hope and defeat are still in balance." Luan Gaines/ 2008.
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