Customer Reviews

Harbor

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There's no question that we need a novel like Lorraine Adams' HARBOR, an attempt to recount the experiences of a group of Middle Eastern immigrants in America pre-9/11. I admired much of the writing in this book, but I thought Adams' inability to bring life to her protagonist at certain key points prevented this book from fully working for me.

Some of the strongest scenes are early on, where Aziz (an ex-soldier from Algeria) jumps off a ship and swims into Boston Harbor. Of course, Aziz doesn't know the language and isn't in good health, and Adams does a wonderful job conveying his sensory disassociation from the world around him. Aziz never really loses that disassociation though, it's as if he spends much of the novel with earplugs on. Even when he's reunited with friends and later his brother, and begins to suss out what he thinks may be a terrorist plot, Aziz seems remarkably casual about what's happening. We also get flashbacks to Aziz's life in Algeria, where he - mistaken for another man - falls in with a band of mercenaries before escaping....again, Aziz seems carried along by events. Anyone not familar with Algerian politics will have a hard time figuring out some of these scenes.

I thought the end of the book was the weakest, as point-of-view ping pongs between several characters, including the FBI, and characters from early in the book are suddenly reintroduced.

Still, I think HARBOR is a very promising debut, and I hope Adams continues to tackle subjects of such relevance.

A riveting, thought-provoking book. Beautifully written, with excellent development of numerous characters. I was perversely sad to "leave" the bleak world of these immigrants when the novel was over.

My only comment to those who haven't read it is that the book requires VERY close reading to get the most out of it. 2/3 of the way through, when I was eager to charge through to the climax, I realized that I was confusing some of the characters and/or had not retained necessary information about them. Some, but not all,of this is attributable to the fact that most of the characters had unfamiliar names. At one point, I was as confused as the FBI agents as to who was who --- Rafik, Ghazi, Kamal, etc. I went back and carefully re-read the first 2/3 and it was well worth it. I do have to say that the chapter where Aziz first joins the rebels in the army camp is extraordinarily difficult to follow, and could have been edited better for comprehension. I read it about 5 times very rigorously, trying to follow what was going on, and it remains very confusing.

An extremely enjoyable novel that rewards the unusual effort that it demands from the reader.

As a first book, this is an impressive start. Few mysteries that I've read have been able to keep up with the changes going on in the world. With peace broken out between the U.S.S.R. and the rest of the world, you cannot use the KGB as the enemy any more. Here is a mystery, set in the United States but with the main character an illegal alien. Bewildered by the culture, a language he cannot speak, a world willing to take advantage of him and to use him for their own purposes.

And life is going at least OK when the F.B.I. starts to get involved with suspicions of terrorism both his and our assumptions about what is going on suddenly get much more complex. This is especially true as we realize that this is the time leading up to the 9/11 attacks. I find myself wondering just how Ms. Adams was able to develop such an interesting and complete character from a culture (Algerian) so different than ours. I think we have a new major player in the fiction scene.

It looks like I'm unusual in not being enthusiastically positive about this book. There is much to like about it: I felt that Lorraine Adams presented a sympathetic portrait of recent Arab immigrants to the U.S. and the difficulty they can have in adjusting to our culture. This is a much-needed book because of the huge divisions we have in the U.S. among Arabs, Jews, and Christians. I was really looking forward to reading it, and that's why I was disappointed.

Perhaps it's my ignorance of Algerian history and events, or maybe it's my preference for more details...but many of the scenes (particularly the flashbacks to Algeria, and the bar scenes in the U.S.) were hard to follow. I found myself scanning over paragraphs to get the general gist of the story, until I could get back to the more interesting parts. Reading over the many reviews of this book, very few reviewers mention this fault...although one called some of the text "unwieldy."

Incidents in the past are alluded to, for example, hashish dealings and one character's shady experiences in Paris and Morocco, but the story is not ever adequately told.

The intelligence services are depicted as clueless and apt to jump to conclusions without proving their theories. I hope to God that intelligent services are really not as inept as they are portrayed in this book!

The first part of the book was fascinating, and I was immediately drawn into Aziz's adventures. But the author eventually lost me as a committed reader. I did finish the book, but mostly because I was away for the weekend and didn't have other books to read. Otherwise I probably would have put it down.

I am disappointed, because I really wanted to like this book. I wanted more detail and a more thorough narrative of what was going on. I believe that the author has potential, but she needed a harsher critic before the book was published. I realize that I'm alone in this opinion of the book, but that's one reason I was compelled to write a review and state my opinion.

I thought this was a very thought-provoking and insightful novel. The writing style is such that you really crawl into the minds of the characters, particularly Aziz, who as the main protagonist is both innocent and guilty at the same time. It certainly gives an alternate view of what constitutes a terrorist/terrorism, and explores many motivations for why people do what they do-- from necessity/survival to ideology.

Another thing this book did for me was pique my interest in Algeria. Not much attention has been paid to this tragic, complex, and brutual conflict-- I am defintitely going to explore more.

The only negative I saw was every once in a while there are cartoonish/stereotypical characters that seem out of place in this otherwise deep narrative-- the rogue Treasury Agent, the fanatical Canadian fundamentalist muslim to mention a couple.

Otherwise, a compelling novel that keeps your attention throughout.

I was moved by this novel. I really liked Aziz, the main character, who is a good person who has accidentally lived through awful circumstances. I admire how the illegal (versus the legal) immigrants had to struggle to get to Boston, to live "underground" and live in basically an alien (to them) world. What strong people, to be able to work long hours, learn English on their own (no cushy ESL classes), and find friendship. I was disappointed to learn about the FBI trailing them, although it made sense. I wanted Aziz to succeed. I wanted Aziz to become a US citizen, because he's a good, hard-working person who deserves it. This is a view into a world that most natural-born Americans do not get to see. It's easy to scoff at people who are not like us, or to wish ill on illegal residents -- but this novel showed me that really, they are much like us and maybe they deserve our consideration.

Harbor definitely works as the gripping story of an immigrant trying to survive in an unfamiliar society. But more importantly, this book beautifully and heartbreakingly describes the duality of individual existence...the difference between the way we perceive ourselves and our own actions vs. the way the outside world perceives us. The book has haunted me since the minute I finished it.

In this tale of a young Algerian man who stows away on a ship and tries to make a life in America, Ms Adams draws a rich portrait of the feelings of dissociation the main character, Aziz, must have felt: trying to find a friend and fellow countryman; meeting new friends (mostly also Algerian); trying to make a living; finding out what shady business some of his friends are into. Slowly we learn the reason Aziz has fled Algeria (as if just being there wasn't reason enough): to survive, he impersonated another and joined a band of men who went about slaughtering people.

This is also a tale of prejudice and misinformation. An FBI investigation into a terrorist cell makes many assumptions, not many of them correct. The Algerians don't always have the most charitable opinions about Americans, either.

The result is a sad and somewhat powerful tale of trying to fit in but not wanting to, of being unwanted in the land you had hoped would save you, of surviving against all odds.

But I found it hard to be sympathetic to the characters. I had little patience for their misogyny and for their insularity. Although most of them were sad characters, they also seemed shady, each in his (or her) own way. The FBI agents seemed thrown in just to lecture us and to show us how incompetent they were. I also found it hard to follow the story, but maybe this was intentional, as Aziz was so lost in America at first; and the FBI agents, later, seemed to have trouble finding the hands in front of their faces.

Yet small passages from the book opened my eyes to how easy it can be to come to wrong conclusions, especially when suspicion and fear come into play; and how hard it is to be a stranger in a strange land -- how easy it is to disappear within yourself and your small circle, with no one paying you any mind except to think you're up to no good. This will probably be one of those books that will grow on me now that I've finished it, but I don't think it'll go down as an all-time favorite.

In our present, complex times, when the word "terrorism" flows so often from people's mouths, a novel such as Harbor becomes an important, even necessary read.

Utterly ironic, this is the story of Aziz, a young Algerian who arrives at the Boston harbor as a stowaway on a tanker. Starved and wounded in more ways than one, Aziz soon becomes part of a group of immigrants who, like him, speak no real English, lack any legal identity, and suffer from estrangement. However, in spite of these binding factors, all are individuals with distinct behaviors and sense of morality. Aziz's relationship with some of these "brothers" ultimately lead to disaster. Thus, in his attempt to escape the terrorism he left behind in his homeland, Aziz inexpertly ends up falling into its grasp once again, this time in the Land of the Free.

Aziz is a sympathetic and tragic character, a kind-hearted soul who is a victim of these dangerous times, and proof that terrorist are not born, but made.

The novel deals with themes of prejudice and twisted justice, and looks into the minds of "terrorists"--their routine, day-to-day, sometimes petty situations. It also looks into the "mind" of the FBI and other security intelligence agencies.

Many readers will find in Harbor an outstanding first novel, sparkling with crisp dialogue and a fast-paced, original style. However, this is not a regular "thriller," and the Arab names of the characters can get confusing at times.

Armchair Interviews says: Ultimately, Harbor is a disturbing work with an important message: One must never generalize, but look at the individual. If only for this reason, people should read this book.

I loved this novel. Having lived in North Africa for several years, I didn't believe the novelist could pull this off, but she does-- the cultural and linguistic details are stunningly accurate. The novel is suspenseful and well-paced; I couldn't put it down. Adams does a great job showing how easy it is to misunderstand other cultures, and how, in the case of issues like terrorism, things are often not what they seem.