Customer Reviews

Season of Betrayal

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Whether you like fiction or non-fiction, "Season of Betrayal" will draw you in. Margaret Lowrie Robertson writes a compelling tale of human drama, intrigue and relationships but wraps it in a slice of Beirut that historians and journalists would be proud of. She demonstrates a familiarity with the city and subject that could only come from first hand experience. The words on the tongues of the denizens of the post-Marine-Barracks-Bombing Beirut ring oh so genuine. Her style is spare yet she communicates so much with so few words...not surprising given her experience as a TV Journalist. "Season of Betrayal" delivers a contex and understanding of the Mideast that you don't realize you've gotten because the story keeps the pages turning so fast. This is a great one.

Thoroughly enjoyed the read of this suspenseful novel which illuminated a greater sense of rocky times in Lebanon back in the eighties. In my opinion, the situation still exists much the same today which makes this book especially relevant and insightful. The ending is truly an extraordinary surprise.

In the throes of civil war, 1983 Beirut is a hotbed of warring factions and competing interests, the Americans about to engage in a peacekeeping mission in a place that has known no peace. Journalists gather at common watering holes, in this case The Commodore Hotel, sharing the tales of their wanderings over the globe reporting world events and cheering one another after brutal days best faced in the oblivion of drink. New arrivals, Americans Barrett McCauley and his wife, Lara, join this eclectic band of brothers, most of them, like Mac, addicted to the danger and an urgency to tell a story that can only be written by observers of the daily carnage. At the Commodore, the unofficial headquarters of the Beirut press corps, Lara makes friends with Thomas, a bit of an outcast now that the McCauley's have arrived.

An outsider herself, nothing more than Mac's wife, Lara is attracted to Thomas' sensitivity: "Fluid in the languages and cultures of other lands, he was at home in none."
Clearly Mac is a bully, a fact Lara either ignores or denies, struggling to map out a small territory in a war zone that terrifies her with its recurring carnage and mix of Syrians, Lebanese, Israeli's, Americans, Palestinians, Maronite Christians vs. Druze, Hezbollah, CIA, an ever-changing cast as volatile as the weapons that inundate the city. Her naiveté is stunning and dangerous, inciting Mac's jealousy and brutality, blundering through tradition in her need to explain the inexplicable: "There was no peace. There was no quiet. This was Beirut." Unlike her husband, ever in a hyper-vigilant state much like Frances in Hilary Mantel's Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, Lara clings to Thomas for comfort, careless assumptions fueling her rationalization of the choices she makes.

To understand the nature of the Middle East in 1983, the conflicts that rage unabated, exacerbated by the intrusion of other countries is challenging; but in this tense novel, the debris of death clears incrementally, allowing a view of passionate individuals, true believers, arrogant opportunists, helpless civilians and the international journalists in search of the story, "a place where rampant evil was an inventive, daily occurrence". Lara's passivity is most unsettling... and dangerous, approaching every circumstance of her life dressed as a victim of circumstance. She should leave Mac. She doesn't. She should have realized the danger. She denies it, the theme the fierce partisan battle in Beirut vs. the internal struggle of a woman who continues to betray herself out of fear; unfortunately, her personal discomfort reaches outside the marriage, destroying others, contributing to the chaos. Out of place and out of her depth.

In 1983, Beirut is a pivotal piece of the violent game that will play out over the years, culminating in the destruction of the World Trade Center. Unfortunately, it is Lara's immaturity that defines her time in Beirut, confronted finally by an elderly woman: "You amaze me Lara. All this time here and still you are so clumsy, still you trample like and elephant into such delicate areas." The Ugly American writ small, but deadly. Luan Gaines/2007.

I just finished Season of Betrayal. It is a stunningly well-written book and is a fascinating tale, even were it not so well-written. It could only have been written by a woman. There is not and probably never has been a male author clever enough to write what you wrote. It earns my highest accolade for a novel. Wow!

The cover photo of a shattered church is probably what induced me to cast aside my disinclination to to read novels by women (they tend to dwell too long on lip gloss and chintz prints for my taste). To think I almost missed what seems an accurate description of the chaos in Lebanon in 1983 and the US presence there.

Your story resonates with our current stumbling in Iraq in the midst of animosities a thousand years old, in which we played no part and of which we have little understanding, just as when the Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed during your stay there in 1983.

Even for those without an interest in Mid-East wars, yours is a charming and realistic love story, worth anyone's time to read, savor, and consider what it all means to all of us. Thank you for a wonderful book.

A wonderful glimpse into war reporting and the effects it has on the lives of the journalists in the trenches. Highly relevant to today's issues. Also, reminded me of Joan Didion's work. Looking forward to seeing what Robertson turns her talents to next.

Margaret Lowrie Robertson has written a compelling story with profound psychological insights into a crumbling society and an unraveling relationship.

John DeDakis
CNN Senior Copy Editor, "The Situation Room"
Author, FAST TRACK

Season of Betrayal is narrated by Larissa "Lara" McCauley looking back twenty years earlier to 1983 when she and her journalist husband (Mac) lived in Beirut. Her first introduction to the country was witnessing the slaying of a family removed from their vehicle at a check point. During her visit, Beirut continued to be filled with a constant barrage of gun fire and bombings that left her frazzled.

One of the first people Lara met was Thomas, who she describes as "Mac's mirror opposite". Thomas was thirty five, easy to talk too, willing to share his experience, and constantly trying to make her feel at ease while Mac would ridicule her "lack of knowledge" and naiveté. From the beginning it is easy to like Thomas and dislike Mac. Thomas was the good friend and potential lover while Mac was portrayed as the evil husband who cheated on his wife, wouldn't comfort her fears and deserted her in a foreign and volatile land for days at a time. She said that Mac "thrived on the volcanic atmosphere" of Beirut but Mac was just as volcanic as the locale. Lara would often rationalize that she was getting off easy compared to the people of Beirut.

Season of Betrayal is an appropriate title. There was more betrayal within the pages than I expected; than the obvious and it was a long season. This is my first novel by journalist and author Margaret Lowrie Robertson. This book is more than a story about the infidelities and woes of a married couple (although their acts have a great impact on the world they inhabit). Robertson has painted an interesting character study surrounded by atmosphere of foreign journalism, as well as giving Beirut and its people a face, albeit distant. Throughout she has the reader wondering how they would react under similar circumstances. She is an interesting story teller and I highly recommend reading Season of Betrayal. Reviewed by M. E. Wood.

Set in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983, this is the story of the wife of an American journalist covering the "military presence" in the country just as the fighting among middle eastern sects and US interests gets going, leading up to the truck bomb that took out over 200 marines in their headquarters, and the aftermath of that event. The political scene is filled in with suspenseful detail, but the personal story here is really the driving force of the book. Lara, "Mac" McCauley's wife, feels stranded by her husband's neglect and turns for friendship to the other journalists on the scene, striking up a bit of romance with one man in particular, the somewhat mysterious Thomas. We know from the first page that Thomas dies, and that Lara feels responsible. Her husband's behavior is not exemplary - Mac's affair with his interpreter becomes flagrant, and he becomes abusive to Lara (a pattern we are shown has existed all along in his adult life); she becomes more involved with Thomas and other Lebanese people who befriend her as she tries to make sense of her life and place in the world and in the war-torn country. With Lara as our narrator, we know that Mac's affair and hers will have ripple effects on the lives of others, all disastrous - her narration of events is compassionate and displays her desperate struggle to survive amid the unraveling and deceptive foreign world she inhabits.

This is an incredibly well written novel. The parallel universes of the protagonist, Lara, and the situation in Beirut, as both fall into deepening chaos is a timely story paralleling what seems to be happening in the Mideast today. Season of Betrayal is a very worthwhile read, which I highly recommend.