Customer Reviews

The Brides' Fair

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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I sat up till two this morning reading The Brides' Fair! Couldn't put it down! It's so well-constructed - weaving together all the different strands of the story, each of which contains possibilities which might emerge, tantalizes the reader with clues, and then ties them together at the end with surprises you never thought of!

One senses that the author has really lived it on the ground and knows whereof he writes. With all the really authentic insights into foreign intrigue, terrorism, the romance of the diplomatic life, exotic sex and shoot-em-up violence - it's surely a winner!

A marvelous adventure set in Morocco's Mid Atlas mountains. The plot unfolds quietly, steadily, and dramatically, leading to an exciting conclusion. The author blends an intimate understanding of the U.S. diplomatic community with a rich presentation of Islamic historical references, and - stay seated - a terrorist plot.
What makes this combination work so well, apart from the author's beautiful descriptive passages about Morocco --its history and its people -- is the array of characters whom the reader meets. I especially enjoyed the resolute courage and conviction, from different perspectives, of the young women: Maleka, Jamila, Karen, and Monique. In sum: a most enjoyable read.

Set in a beautiful remote part of Africa, The Brides' Fair takes us to visit a traditional Berber festival. There's an extended cast of diplomats, expats, Moroccan officials and mountain people whose lives end up interwoven in a complex tale of intrigue and danger. Descriptions of the region vie with the developing plot to keep us absorbed and mystified. Although the book is fiction, it gives an authentic peek into the interactions within an Embassy in a developing country. A winner!

The reader is taken on a suspense-filled journey into the remote regions of Morocco's Mid Atlas mountains. A real page turner with probing cross-cultural insights.

Morocco is my home away from home and the subject of my dissertation, so I have read a fair bit about it. Hal Fleming's The Brides'Fair, among its other merits, contains some of the best descriptive writing about Morocco that I have ever encountered. One example, a description of an abandoned compound in the Middle Atlas:

"While very modest when compared with the Moorish Alhambra in Spain or the lowland palaces, and without the subtle Islamic curves and calligraphy, the compound had once featured a series of reflecting pools and water gardens, the mosaic tile remnants of which emerged here and there from the weeds and grasses. An elaborate network of conduits leading to the ridge line to the south and the mountain aquifers beyond had once supplied the fountains that spilled into the pools. The picturesque ksar which the 18th century English engraver, David Roberts, would have coveted, consisted of three mostly crumbled multi-storied stone and rose mortar structures connected by simple colonnaded passageways. It had been built in the late 1700s by the Ben Tassen clan as an aerie commanding the valley below and as a sentinel against bandits and marauding Tuaregs from the desert, those who would rustle prized rams and abduct young wives and daughters. Later in a more settled time, it became a sumptuous mountain lodge for escaping the summer heat of the lowlands. In its final years, when the young heirs of the clan spent more and more time in the coastal cities and in Europe, the place had been left to the rough hands of herders and squatters." (183)

Since much of what Fleming describes - ancient Berber pendants, the domed tombs of marabouts, Moroccan meals and their settings, folkloric festivals like the Berber brides' fair of the title - are the sorts of things tourists cherish, one could almost use this book as a literary version of the Total Recall "vacation memory agency" which implants fictitious travel memories for a fraction of the cost of actually making the trip.

Framed by the lush descriptions, Fleming's page-turner plots the fatal intersection of terrorists, American diplomats and their Moroccan associates, and Middle Atlas Berbers. Characters of many nationalities and backgrounds, led by Americans and Moroccans, are exceedingly well-realized - though some of the terrorists come across as a bit too shallow (a common failing with virtually all literary depictions of terrorists I have seen, with the exception of Mohsin Ahmed's The Reluctant Fundamentalist).

But Fleming's overall treatment of the terrorism theme is far from shallow. By the end of this beautifully-constructed multi-layered thriller, the reader will have learned something surprising about who is really behind the terrorism of today's headlines.

Interviewed on my radio show [...] Fleming cited the old definition of "diplomacy" as "lying for ones country" to which I replied that I was glad that he had retired from diplomacy! As a former senior official with the State Department, he is unusually knowledgeable about Morocco as well as behind-the-scenes politics, and readers will derive both profit and pleasure from his knowledge.