Exiles in the Garden (Hardcover)

~ Ward Just (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Few if any novelists have captured Washington politics with the astute insights of Just, who here casts his dispassionate eye on a man who comes to question whether one can achieve a well-lived life on the outskirts of political action. Born and bred to the political arena, Alec Malone, son of a powerhouse U.S. senator, becomes an outsider twice removed, first by choosing photography as his profession and then by turning down an assignment in Vietnam. Content with his wife Lucia, the daughter of a Czech refugee, Alec dislikes the neighborhood cocktail parties, where a cosmopolitan mix of émigrés and exiles makes Lucia aware of the cultural chasm running through her marriage. Alec is devastated when she leaves him and bemused when, much later, his daughter follows in Senator Malone's footsteps, though it's the sudden appearance of Lucia's long-lost father that provokes Alec to question the meaning of an existence that has avoided the barricades. Just writes with confidence and authority as he works through larger themes of politics, history, war and historical judgment. This intellectually rigorous narrative is absorbing, timely and very Washington. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley For nearly a century the received wisdom in political Washington has been drawn from the famous speech Theodore Roosevelt delivered at the Sorbonne in April 1910. "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better," he said. "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood . . . ; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of his achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory or defeat." Three and a half decades ago those words served as epigraph for "Facing the Lions," Tom Wicker's fine if now regrettably forgotten novel about ambition and power in Washington as seen through the story of a senator transparently based on the late Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. The words never appear directly in Ward Just's even better novel, "Exiles in the Garden," but they always lurk just beneath the surface as Just examines, with subtlety, sensitivity and empathy, the lives of two men: Alec Malone, his protagonist, now about 70 years old, for whom "the civic life of the nation held no attraction," and his father, Erwin Harold "Kim" Malone, 95 years old, who "had been a senator for nine terms, fifty-four years, retired now for a decade and still alert on good days." Just, who himself was very much in the arena for Newsweek and The Washington Post during the 1960s (he left the paper a dozen years before I arrived, and we have never met), most notably as a correspondent in Vietnam, said farewell to that arena upon his departure and has been a writer of fiction ever since. "Exiles in the Garden" is his 16th novel and is, for my money, one of his three best, the others being "A Family Trust" (1978) and "An Unfinished Season" (2004). He summarized the preoccupations of his fiction in the title of a short story collection published in 1979: "Honor, Power, Riches, Fame, and the Love of Women," though fathers and sons certainly should be added to that list. His books have never had spectacular sales, but most of them are still in print, impressive evidence that he has a loyal following even in this difficult time for the book industry. Like most of the rest of Just's fiction, "Exiles in the Garden" is deceptively quiet. It moves at a leisurely, reflective, even pensive pace, but the reader never loses sight of an undercurrent of tension. Alec is an only child whom his father envisioned going into politics, "commencing a dynasty; state attorney general, his father thought, then governor, and after that anything was possible." Alec, though, "preferred Shakespeare's life to the life of any one of his kings or pretenders, tormented men always grasping for that thing just out of reach." He became a photographer, went to work for a newspaper in Washington and did well, was asked by the managing editor if he'd like to do a six-week tour in Vietnam and responded with a "no thank you, he had a wife and young daughter," a choice that derailed his career but was true to his conviction that "photography glorifies," that "it's not trustworthy." The choice derailed his marriage as well. Lucia, his wife, born Czech but reared by her mother in wartime Switzerland, ran off with Nikolas, a dashing Hungarian, "a prodigy, a full professor of literature, a fixture in the lecture halls and at the many discreet protest meetings in Prague and Budapest and beyond." Taking their daughter Mathilde with her, she swept off to Europe, leaving Alec alone in a little house in Georgetown. Alec was startled and saddened by the letter he received from Lucia, telling him of her decision, but he got on about the business of life. He has since fashioned a career as freelance photographer and has developed "the usual habits of one who lived alone: a fixed diet, a weekly visit to the bookstore, a scrupulously balanced checkbook, and a devotion to major league baseball and the PGA Tour." He also has occasional liaisons with Annalise, a lovely and talented but second-tier actress in movies and television. He is faithful to her and she, apparently, to him, but theirs is a sometime thing; Alec is content with his bachelor life, his freelance assignments, his visits with Mathilde, who is now in her 40s and working, successfully, for the State Department. Thus "Exiles in the Garden" is not a "Washington novel" as the term is commonly understood, but it is very much in and of this city. Just deftly and sharply portrays the Washington that Alec had known as a boy and young man, the Washington in which his father had flourished as "a cloakroom man, his arm around someone's shoulder, a whispered confidence, a promise, often a threat." The Washington of the 1960s was still a quiet Southern city, having a rigid social structure with blacks firmly kept at the bottom, modest Fords and Chevys parked on Georgetown's streets, a palpable sense of promise and excitement as the young Kennedy Administration settled in. Now, though: "The grandes dames were gone. The elder statesmen were gone. The small town of [Alec's] youth was now a metropolis spilling over into the Virginia and Maryland countryside, farther each year. When you looked at the downtown, with its barriers and snipers on the roof of the White House, you could believe you were living in a garrison state. Alec noticed that his street was crowded with German automobiles, the large versions." In that lost Washington, when Alec and Lucia lived on the quiet Georgetown street, next door to them lived an elegant émigré couple who had regular cocktail parties in their rear garden, parties for other "displaced Europeans." Lucia was drawn to them, "finding something indomitable about them because they had lived through terrible times and had survived," and was delighted when she and Alec were invited to the parties. He, on the other hand, saw the partygoers as "damaged goods, a second-rate theatrical troupe giving nightly performances of the heartbreak of central Europe." Then, long after his divorce, he meets Lucia's father, Andre Duran, who "had fought bravely in the war and been imprisoned first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets for what appeared to be decades." Alec is "all but overcome with admiration for Andre Duran, whose endurance seemed to him all but superhuman," in contrast with his own life and his "knack for making beautiful pictures." Andre tries to explain that he "had no choice" except to go to war and fight as bravely as he could, but Alec remains unconvinced. Alec tells Annalise that Andre "reminded me of my father," because "those in the arena lived by the arena's rules, always opaque to outsiders." She replies, "Let up on yourself, Alec. You're an honorable man," but he remains unconvinced. Ward Just knows, though, that he is wrong, that there is honor outside the arena as well as in, that Alec's quiet life has had more than its share of dignity, accomplishment and resonance. It is not necessary to be a senator or a resistance warrior in order to make a contribution to the larger world. [e-mail]
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (July 7, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0547195583
• ISBN-13: 978-0547195582
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #90,635 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Complex and thought-provoking, June 29, 2009

By	Richard Lane "Frequent Reader" (Hillsborough, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

First of all, the book jacket and the Amazon blurb describing the book are incredibly superficial. They don't say at all what this book is about.

Enough rant. Anyway, structurally, this book is as complex as they come, with flash-backs and flash-forwards within each other, and changes in time and place coming without notice. However, the big-picture story is always the same, just being told from another perspective and at a different time. I was left with the feeling I was in the company of a master story-teller, who decided to drop his main narrative for a while in order to explain an earlier thing or two before proceeding. It works, and I was captivated. Part of my interest came from the fact that by accident, I am familiar with many of the settings of the book--New York, Washington, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Maine (yes, the story does move around...), and I like the way the author caught the essence of all of them.

The plot consists of a number of interwoven and interdependent stories. Each story per se is not terribly special. Boy meets girl, marries her, endures personal and professional difficulties, and gets on with his life. Girl immigrates to the U.S., meets boy and marries him, but still longs for the old country, eventually finds her bliss. Fathers have children, then adventures, and finally resolution. That's all ok, but taken individually not terribly uplifting or unique. The interactions among the different plot lines are fascinating, though, and combine together to create a wonderfully intricate story.

What makes the book special, besides the structural fireworks that are fun to observe, is the way it brings out the conflicts that most of us feel at one time or another. The old and familiar vs. the new and exciting. Thinking and reflecting vs. acting without thinking or reflecting. Freedom of thought and speech vs. freedom of action. Above all, the book is about the price we pay for our freedoms, whatever they are. Every main character has freedoms and acts on them, but each pays a heavy price for the freedoms he or she enjoys. To say much more might spoil the book for some, so I'll just conclude with the thought that this is a well-written and excellent book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep and subtle - is a private life worthy?, August 26, 2009

By	Jessica Weissman "poet and computer programmer" (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ward Just has produced yet another subtle novel for grownups, particularly grownups who live in a capital city but have opted out of its primary business, politics.

Just is a master of construction. The novel is made from a complex set of flashbacks, inner observation, re-entrant structures, etc, that are a wonder to observe but do not interfere with the narrative drive.

The main theme of the book is, I think, the contrast between living a private life and a life of political adventure and involvement. Alec, the viewpoint character, is a lifelong observer - he is a professional photographer and a good one. His father was a senator, and his wife's father was some kind of political hero/actor. Without spoiling the narrative, I can tell you that we see Alec struggling quietly with what makes a life worthwhile in the light of his father, his wife's father, and his politically-involved neighbors. The crux of the novel comes toward the end, in a series of unexpected meetings.

Even his daughter chooses to take part in the action in a way that Alec never does. But Alec has his life, and it is one that many might envy.

Do you envy Alec? Read the book and find out. If you're a writer you will definitely envy Ward Just's skill.

A few reviewers have opined that the book is dull. Perhaps subtlety moves across the line into dullness for them. I didn't see it that way, and I'm betting that you won't either. If you want more action, go read a spy thriller or something.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Exiles In The Garden of Life, July 6, 2009

By	Jill I. Shtulman (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Everyone is wounded in his or her own way in this very adult, highly pensive new novel by Ward Just. As the book opens, Alec, a Washington photographer, is at the bedside of his father, the long-nosed, multi-term power broker Senator, who is dying. We learn right away that his marriage has ended: Lucia, born Czech but raised in wartime Switzerland, ran off years ago with a dashing Hungarian with a strong sense of purpose. We also learn that Lucia had a limp, the result of a ski accident that left her partially maimed.

And Alec? He is the only one who has not suffered broken bones or scars, it seems, but he DOES suffer from macular degeneration -- an inability to see clearly. There is subtle symbolism in nearly every page of this masterfully-written novel.

The novel soars when it focuses squarely on the marriage of Alec and Lucia in the 1960s; a town with a powerful social structure, a sense of glamor and excitement with JFK at the helm. Lucia is particularly intrigued by the mysterious emigre couple next door; Alec differs, believing they are "damaged goods, a second-rate theatrical troupe giving nightly performances of the heartbreak of central Europe."

But things change quickly. The couple moves away, and another couple move in -- loud lawyers who tear down part of the garden to build a tennis court. JFK gives way to LBJ and then Nixon. Alec and Lucia move to a bigger house and Lucia moves overseas, leaving him for a chance of a more authentic life with her Hungarian. And Alec? He lives on, avoiding conflict, keeping as far as he can from the Washington scene, living his life the best he can on the sidelines. That is, until, decades later, he comes face to face with Lucia's mysterious father, who was imprisoned first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets, risking his life and abandoning his family for his ideology.

This subtle and well-written book demands concentration from the reader. But the questions it asks are timeless: "When do we become exiles in our own life? Is there true honor in turning down the opportunities for adventure to remain true to oneself? Are we foreigners ourselves in our own country?" I particularly enjoyed the inside look at Washington at a time when everything was changing.