Customer Reviews

Exiles in America: A Novel

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In Williamsburg, Virginia, in their late forties William and Mary professor Daniel Wexler and psychiatrist Zachary Knowles have been a happily "unmarried" couple for over two decades yet. However, they look so solid to everyone who knows either of them that they assume the pair will remain together until one dies. However, their close loving relationship no longer includes sex between them; instead Daniel has affairs while Zack has become celibate.

When the college's resident artist of the year arrives, Iranian Abbas Rohani and his Russian spouse Elena with their two children, Zack and Daniel are the first to truly welcome them by inviting them to dinner. While Zack and Elena hold an intelligent discussion, Daniel tries to impress the arrogant attractive Abbas by showing him his paintings. Zack and Elena begin to forge a close friendship, but Abbas devastates Daniel by saying his paintings are poor. After seeing Abbas' superior work, Daniel and the Iranian hunk begin an affair that threaten both marriages at the same time that Abbas' pious older brother Hassan demands he and his wife return to Iran immediately.

This is a well written interesting relationship drama starring four fascinating protagonists that is a modernizing of the late 1960s movie "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice". The story line digs deep into the four prime players mostly through their relationships with the other three in a sort of rectangular connection. Though at times Christopher Bram seems to want to normalize the coupling which takes away from the prime premise that relationships come in all forms, fans who appreciate a deep character study will enjoy this fascinating look at Zack and Daniel and Abbas and Elena.

Harriet Klausner

That Christopher Bram is one of our finer novelists today is a given (The Notorious Dr. August: His Real Life and Crimes, Gods and Monsters, Life of the Circus Animals, In Memory of Angel Clare, etc). EXILES IN AMERICA is a very astutely constructed novel, one that explores the concept of displaced persons, whether those persons be gay men in a straight homophobic town, artists in a world of grounded minds, immigrant visitors in the land of the free, or Muslims in a path of fear guarded closely by the Christian ethic. Mix these possible people in a country post 9/11 and prior to America's (read Bush's) declaration of war on Iraq and there is a story brooding.

For the most part Bram finely tunes this novel with well-drawn characterizations, a gift he continues to elucidate in his writing. But something has entered Bram's writing mind that is a bit disturbing: he seems to have lost some of the respect for his readers that has never happened prior to his novel. There are moments of 'dumbing down' the reader by excessive explanations of obvious knowns and even stumbling at the close of the book to speak not in the voice of the characters he has created but in his own vacillating voice as a writer - a section of this otherwise fairly tense read that breaks the magic and adds little.

Daniel, an artist with painter's block who now only teaches art in Williamsburg, VA, and Zack, a psychiatrist who has given up his New York practice to follow Daniel to his present college teaching position, have been together as a couple for twenty one years, the last ten years at least of which have been an 'open marriage': both men are agreed that transient liaisons outside of their marriage are acceptable as long as they talk about them. Daniel, though in his late forties, has fears of aging and continues to pursue flings, while Zack has settled into a nearly asexual state. Into their milieu come a new guest faculty artist, Iranian Abbas and his Russian wife Elena (a couple with two children who also have an open marriage), and soon enough Daniel and Abbas are lusting after each other in what continues long enough to become an affair. The story is centered on how these four people react not only to each others' needs and fears, but how Zack and Daniel become enmeshed in the growing American suspicion of Middle Eastern 'potential terrorists', a factor surfacing when Abbas' older brother Hassan arrives from Tehran insisting that Abbas, Elena and their children return to Iran because of the incipient war between the US and Iraq. These conflicts focus the instabilities and consequences of the lifestyles of the four friends and introduces an entirely new attitude to Exiles in all its meanings.

Bram writes brilliantly and moves his story at a terrific pace: EXILES IN AMERICA is a difficult book to put down once started. For this reader the only problem other than the ones mentioned above is the lack of charisma: it is difficult to truly care about any of the people in this book. But perhaps that is another 'alienation' Bram wants to introduce - a metaphor for the isolation among people that has been heightened by the current preoccupation with distrust of intimacy and people outside our individual realm. Bram poses questions, delivers the goods, and once again proves that he can create a fine story based on a tough theme. Grady Harp, January 07

It's intimidating to review a writer with the stature of Christopher Bram, but fortunately, this excellent novel does not disappoint.

Exiles in America centers almost entirely on two couples and the complications that bloom among them. There's Zack and Daniel, a late-40s gay couple, together for 21 years, who don't have sex with each other anymore. The other couple is Abbas and Elena Rohani. Abbas is a visiting art professor at the university where Daniel teaches.

An innocent invitation by Zack and Daniel to have the Rohanis for dinner because they're new in town leads to an affair between Daniel and Abbas, who is bisexual. None of this is secret, and soon the left-out spouses, Zack and Elena, find through sharing notes about the affair that they have a growing friendship.

The reader's interest holds as Abbas' dissatisfaction over his career as a painter slides all over the emotional scale, affecting the foursome in turn. It's 2002 and early 2003, just when the Iraq War is beginning, and this event colors their lives in ways they can't imagine--including creepy visits to all of them from the FBI.

It's hard to believe that the ruminations of relationships and the everyday lives of four fairly ordinary people can hold a reader's interest, but Bram's expert hand at characterization makes you want to be there as each layer of each character is peeled away. His sharp dialogue and realistic buildup of complications keep the story fresh and true.

While I don't normally like frequent viewpoint switches, Bram is masterful at the subtle transfer from one voice to another, even in the same paragraph--something I would never try in my own fiction. A welcome, relieving epilogue brings the story full circle, though with questions about humanity still lingering in the readers' minds.

One clear mistake, however, was Bram's choice at one important point to swing the story out of omniscient viewpoint and to directly address the reader (even using the words, "dear reader..."). This is a cheap shot that was not necessary and which weakens the story. In addition, there are a couple of characters that are completely unnecessary, most noticeably Ross, a friend to the gay couple who has no pertinent place whatsoever in this novel. Fortunately, Bram's storytelling is so good that such an error can be overlooked.

I find myself reading Bram's works based on the subject matter, then kicking myself about half way through. He starts off most books with some interesting characters caught in a situation that should make a good story possible and then find myself disappointed when it does not happen. Too much time is spent justifying relationships or perspectives instead of letting the story do this for itself. Two very different couples; two middle aged gay men (Daniel and Zack) and an Iranian man and his Russian wife(Abbas and Elena), meet and a sexual affair between Daniel and Abbas takes place and a friendship between Elena and Zack develops. The first half of the book is basically Elena and Zack telling the reader how 'okay' they are with their spouses fling. Then comes along Abbas' brother, an Iranian official, and this causes unwarranted reactions from the FBI ultimately causing Abbas and Elena to flee to Iran. After 300+ pages the author actually throws it to the reader to finish it. What he really seems to say is "I didn't know where to go with Zack and Daniel, I didn't really care what happens to them, so you figure it out." If I had cared about the characters I might have been angry, but ultimately I don't think that anyone was any different by the end of the book - they all had the same problems, they all seemed complacent with their decisions, and I was dissapointed and annoyed.

Christopher Bram's latest novel EXILES IN AMERICA is essentially about four characters. Zack Knowles, a psychiatrist, and Daniel Wexler, an art professor at a college in Williamsburg, Virginia, have been together for twenty years. Their lives are as bland as a bad pastel. They no longer have sex, they watch old movies, and Zack reads Victorian novels. Then their lives run amuck when they meet Abbas Rohani, an often sullen, almost always insufferable Iranian, and his Russian wife, Elena, when Abbas, another art instructor, is hired at Daniel's college.

The first two-thirds or so of the novel is about Daniel and Abbas' affair and how it affects them and their partners. Then Abbas' brother visits, and suddenly Abbas and Elena find themselves in a post September 11 quagmire because Abbas is Iranian.

Mr. Bram does some things very well. He writes effortless dialogue and sometimes uses beautiful metaphorical language: When a snow storm hits Williamsburg, "threads of eighteenth century woodsmoke climbed from chimneys along the street." Zack touches a client's "birdlike shoulder goodbye." At other times the imagery does not work. For instance, the writer compares a sphincter to a wedding ring-- not one time but twice.

What Mr. Bram does over and over is tell the reader what to think rather than showing him and then trusting him to use his intellect to ferret out the novel's meaning: Examples: The reader is told that MoMA is the Museum of Modern Art; and Elena reminds Daniel of "a bird woman by Grandville." Then he tells us that Grandville is a nineteenth-century cartoonist. Bram also interjects statements and homilies throughout the novel that do not appear to be the words or thoughts of any of the characters. One example of many: "Life in couples usually writes white upon the page, except in times of crisis." (page 23.) Finally practically at the end of this too long novel, the author actually talks to the reader and asks him a whole series of questions concluding with "Are you really that much smarter than Zack and Daniel?" Then he opines that he is in the dark with these two characters-- a very strange ending indeed. My difficulty with Zack and Daniel (and Abbas and Elena for that matter) is not so much that I am in the dark about them but that they unfortunately are not very sympathetic characters.

Living in Williamsburg (the one in Virginia) are two sexually estranged longtime companions: Daniel, a frustrated artist and now an art professor, and Zack, a psychologist. Passing middle age, Zack has adopted a somewhat ascetic outlook on their relationship (they sleep in separate rooms), while his younger and impulsive partner sows a few wild oats with the occasional meaningless fling. Enter a brilliant Iranian artist, Abbas, whose emotional detachment vies with an oversexed personality, and his indulgent Russian wife, Elena, who knew what she was getting into when they married, and their two children. The resulting affair between Daniel and Abbas is a foregone conclusion, and much of the book is about the resulting emotional chaos among the members of these two barely functional families.

James Baldwin's "Another Country" travels through similar terrain (featuring three couples rather than just two), and the thematic similarity of the titles is probably not a coincidence. Like Baldwin's prose, Bram's meticulous sentences can be a thing of awe, and his characters, while often self-absorbed and even infuriating, are completely believable. Unfortunately, however, "Exiles" also reminds me a little of Patrick Marber's "Closer," in the decorous loquaciousness of its characters, who hyperanalyze every experience, statement, and action, as if they all were infected by the worst excesses of Zack's profession. It's a lot of talk and introspection, and what might work on the stage or in a story doesn't necessarily fly in a 375-page novel. The conversations in the first half of the book, dealing with fraught and emotion-laden issues, are so civil and precise and articulate that they seem surreal--an improbably messed-up therapy group plunked down in the equally improbable atmosphere of a colonial tourist trap.

The later portions of the novel are much less insular; the characters' self-inflicted crises are pushed aside by a truly perilous threat after Abbas's brother--a top Iranian official--sneaks into the country via Canada for a visit. Indeed, the last one hundred pages are so different in tone they seem borrowed from a different (and, dare I say, better) novel. Unlike many other readers, the ending didn't bother me at all; unless someone dies, relationships rarely resolve themselves in neatly wrapped Hollywood finales. Bram's postmodernist stance strikes just the right note. Forgoing the niceties of plot, the author instead sticks to his themes of exile and alienation; each of the four characters, flawed as they are, remain exiled in any number of ways--from their countries of origin, from New York, from their peers, especially from each other, and in the end from America itself.

Christopher Bram has written his most thought-provoking novel to date. He delves sensitively but deeply into a number of topics currently rocking the American cultural psyche: the definition of marriage and family, the gulf between East and West, the tension between security and xenophobia, etc. It's a great read that will leave you asking yourself questions for which there are no easy answers.

Exiles in America is a beautifully written novel that will be with me for quite some time. I was deeply touched by these characters and the drama of their lives. I, too, feel like an exile at times.

In October 2009, the NYC LGBT Center book group met to discuss this book.

Almost everyone thought that the plot approached magnificence, with all the correct characters and plot points in place, but instead of being great, the novel was clunky. The opening exposition was bald and bland. Most of the characters were missing something. And the ending really really sucked. The most sympathetic character was Elena, the Russian wife (via Paris and Berlin) who was full of poetry and showed, that even though she knew what was going on, she was trapped in a drama that could never end well for her. There were some interesting ideas about painting and being an outsider and love in marriage and sex (and sexlessness) both in and outside of marriage. But it wound up being unclear because the ending refused to answer questions about the outcome of the characters. The lack of an ending was a major problem for most of us.

This is the first novel I've read from this author and now I want to read them all! Such a great book, an interesting dynamic! You won't be disappointed but it will leave you w/many questions. I couldn't put it down, what a great read!