From Publishers Weekly
Bauman's ambitious, uneven debut novel travels from New York to India to explore overwhelming loss, faith and belonging. Neil Downs is a Jewish emergency room physician whose only son, Castor, is shot in a Columbine-like massacre and then dies under Neil's care. Further complicating the tragedy is the possibility that Neil's wife, Sarah, a painter, may have cheated on him with a famous artist at the time of their son's murder. Unable to cope with Castor's death and the ensuing media frenzy, Neil flees to New Delhi, where his friend Charlie Bedrosian, the American ambassador, gives him a job as embassy physician. There he searches out Levi Furstenblum, a Holocaust survivor whose writings serve as a kind of guidebook for angry bereavement. Neil also falls into an affair with Holika, a beautiful, well-connected Indian woman whose politics challenge Indian social mores. With these new companions, Neil searches for meaningful direction for his life amid the brutal poverty of New Delhi. At its best, Bauman's prose evokes with a staccato fierceness Neil's alienation and desperate need to find meaning. At other times, Bauman relies on clichés ("How could I have been so blind," Neil utters during one crucial exchange) that sink the novel in melodrama. Despite the bumpy narrative, the book explores some difficult emotional and theological territory.
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Bauman's first novel is a magnificent debut, smart and intense, but accessible and riveting. Its central character, Neil Downs, is embraceable and human, a doctor for all the right reasons; and though he has led a good life, it is overturned by a random act of violence. His treasured young son, a brilliant and lovable pre-teen, is gunned down in a school shooting, and Downs finds later that day that his wife has betrayed him. When Downs' medical expertise cannot save his son and his spirituality cannot save his faith in his marriage, he turns to the universe in utter despair and moves to India, hoping to find either oblivion or hope. What he finds is a fascinating play of world politics encompassing a wide cast of characters. This story at first seems a strange foil for his internal turmoil, but as the two plots weave together, the connections become clearer. The binding thread of this narrative is the integration of suffering into one's worldview. Downs' favorite writer, Holocaust survivor Levi Furstenblum, denies all meaning in the universe, and his writings are interspersed within the book and espoused in real conversations between him and Downs, since Furstenblum is now living in India. In the end, the world does turn again, for all the characters, and the resolution is hopeful and fulfilling. This is simply a great novel, and hopefully only the first in what will be many more from the author.
Debi LewisCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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