Synopses & Reviews
“Ward Just is both a writer’s writer and an astute tracker of human souls under duplicity and duress . . . American Romantic, his eighteenth, is one of his finest.”—Gail Godwin, New York Times Book Review
Harry Sanders is a young Foreign Service officer in 1960s Indochina when a dangerous and clandestine meeting with insurgents—ending in quiet disaster—and a brief but passionate encounter with Sieglinde, a young German woman, alter the course of his life.
Absorbing the impact of his misstep, Harry returns briefly to Washington before eventual assignments in Africa, Scandinavia, and the Mediterranean. He marries the captivating May, who is fleeing her own family disappointments in worn-out upper New England and looking for an escape into Harry’s diplomatic life. On the surface, they are a handsome, successful couple—but the memory of Sieglinde persists in Harry’s thoughts, and May has her own secrets too. As Harry navigates the increasingly treacherous waters of diplomacy in an age of interminable conflict, he also tries to narrow the distance between himself and the two alluring women who have chosen to love him.
“Wise and elegiac recognition of the fading of American confidence and competence in ordering an unruly world . . . a sly parable of loss.”—Wall Street Journal
“An introspective novel . . . Wide-ranging and well-written, it may be Just’s finest work to date.”—Christian Science Monitor
Review
"The latest from Just (Rodins Debutante, 2010, etc.) considers the toll that a life lived upon the great stage of international politics can take on a man of substance.
Harry Sanders is from a family of Connecticut liberals, the moneyed FDR types, those with Marsden Hartley paintings, Killim rugs and Regency tables at which congressional representatives, generals and financiers dine and debate. In the period before American troops arrive en masse, Harry serves with the State Department in Vietnam. Not yet 30, Harrys asked to undertake a not-quite-official mission. It goes awry. Mired in disinformation, Harrys stranded in the jungle, injured, forced to kill. Once the "war turned into an ironists feast, a smorgasbord of contradictions and false hopes," Harry becomes damaged goods, but State owes him, and so comes a lifetime of assignments to Paraguay, Africa, Norway. Theres a comfortable, even loving, marriage to May, but Harry forever remembers Sieglinde, a German woman with whom he had an affair in Saigon. May is warm and welcoming, though never quite of a place, forever shadowed. Sieglinde is haunted by World War II's bloodletting and by Germanys history. Minor characters, especially Harrys ambassador mentor, fascinate and shine with veracity. The narrative follows Harry, albeit with a significant but short detour with Sieglinde (an episode where her character is broadened). Just writes without quotation marks, but the narratives beautifully descriptive story is easily parsed, growing especially intense when Harry is trapped in the jungle and later when he is assaulted by grief. Just offers instances of wry, sardonic observation—as when Harry dismisses Che Guevara as a motivator of female Viet Cong—while also delivering striking imagery, exampled by his description of the jungle as wearing "the tortured face of one of El Grecos saints. A godforsaken face, morose and resigned." Just is sometimes cynical in his appreciation of diplomacy and existential in regard to God, but Harry, as much a realist as a romantic, is a man astride the American century.
Another brilliant novel from Just: wise, introspective and full of humanity."--Kirkus
"Justs 18th novel (after Rodins Debutante) tells the sensitive, elegant stories of a young, desperately naïve American foreign service officer and the two women who love him. Harry Sanders is a low-level diplomat with the U.S. embassy in Saigon in the early 1960s. Its an exotic posting for a young bachelor, with the excitement of an emerging guerrilla war and the passion of a beautiful, restless German girlfriend, Sieglinde. Harrys budding career, however, takes a fatal turn when he is duped into a secret, unsanctioned negotiation with the North Vietnamese and his actions come back to haunt him. Years later, Harry marries May, and she follows him through 30 years of global postings and ambassadorships, during which time Harrys early career idealism becomes cynical posturing. And although he loves his wife, he cannot forget Sieglinde. In his work, he struggles to justify American interference in other countries affairs, while in his personal life, he is torn between his feelings for the two women. Only after he retires does Harry finally understand something about his life. Justs clever plot reveals a man conflicted by duty and loyalty, adroitly playing the State Department career game, but always wondering what might have happened if he had just made one or two different choices in his life. Its also a fascinating portrayal of American embassy operations and the treacherous shoals of international diplomacy and duplicity."--Publishers Weekly, STARRED review
"Justs writing in American Romantic is so good it makes any writer jealous...American Romantic is the cats meow as it moves to a surprise ending."--Buffalo News
"If Ward Just were a painter, he might be a figurative artist like Stone Roberts, whose Old Masterly polish gives his contemporary images a spooky resonance. "American Romantic," Mr. Just's 18th novel over four decades, is an excursion into the near past—this time, the early days of the war in Vietnam—that leads to wise and elegiac recognition of the fading of American confidence and competence in ordering an unruly world."--Wall Street Journal
Review
"Many of our best writers... are grappling with 9/11 and its fall-out; Just's take may be the best yet." Entertainment Weekly
“[A] riveting examination of personal loss and political criminality… Justs Forgetfulness is haunting, clarifying, and imperative." Booklist, ALA, Starred Review
"Superb—as suspense, as theater, as psychological warfare...[Just] is as seductive a raconteur as ever." Kirkus Reviews
"[Just] sets his journalist's eye on the ethically fraught war on terror....an emotionally charged narrative." Publishers Weekly
"A heartbreaking tale that is as contemporary as today's newspaper headlines and as timeless as the most profound classic tragedy." Bookpage
[Just]'s a master at blending the personal and political. Forgetfulness gets at the heart of terrorism and revenge. USA Today
Forgetfulness is a wonderful addition to [Just's] distinctive and distinguished body of work.
The New York Times Book Review
'Forgetfulness' is an intellectual and emotional marvel of a book.
Boston Globe
Written in a style both taut and reflective, this is suspense of the highest order.
Atlantic Monthly
Mr. Just's finest novel yet.
The Wall Street Journal
The first notable work by a major American writer to engage the moral and emotional complexities of the post-9/11 world.
Los Angeles Times
[Justs] muted power has never been more unsettling than in his new novel.
The Washington Post
It's the novel that the people who felt cheated by Updike's book ['Terrorist']seem to have wanted.
The Chicago Sun-Times
Review
"Spectacular . . . Truly visionary." Boston Globe
"Extraordinary...Mr. Just's novel makes you want to run screaming into the street to protest retrospectively the war he has so movingly recreated." The New York Times
"A powerful story beautifully told." Newsweek
"Its greatness will stand the test of time . . . One hundred years hence, A DANGEROUS FRIEND will remain a beautiful, beautiful book." The San Francisco Chronicle
"Emotionally wrenching and always beautifully observant, this is a work in the Graham Greene tradition." Entertainment Weekly
Review
"One of the most astute writers of American fiction." The New York Times Book Review
"Just writes...smart, well-crafted narratives -- wise to the ways of the world -- that use fiction to show us how we live." The Los Angeles Times
"Just...a virtuoso novelist, never uses two words when one, just the right one, will do." The Seattle Times
"Just writes seamlessly, mixing spoken dialogue, interior monologue, and narrative
the story unreels before the reader as in a film." Library Journal
"Just has never done anything better." Kirkus Reviews
"Just's prose is precise and smooth, A BMW cruising the autobahn." Boston Magazine
"[T]he intelligence that suffuses the narrative creates a compelling dynamic in which the historical forces of the 20th century are embodied in human terms." Publishers Weekly
"Just's imagination guides us on this journey...it's the stops along the way that count as much as the destinations." Newsweek
"Just...a virtuoso novelist, never uses two words when one, just the right one, will do." Seattle Post-Intelligencer
"Another carefully crafted novel of character and manners by [Just]
little happens to the characters externally, while much happens
internally." St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Elegantly written, strikingly intelligent
.an indelible portrait of a man struggling to make sense of himself in this ever-shifting world." Newsday
"Masterful and complex
fiction for thinking adults
. Capturing the sensual subtleties of place and the sensibilities of highly distinctive milieus." Book Magazine
"[A] mature and astute novel
Written with acute observations and lyricism." The Philadelphia Inquirer
A skilled observer of America's top people.
The New Yorker
Review
"Set mostly in Washington, it provides shrewd observations about that stiflingly self-centered capital and its public ways and private folkways....[Just] writes perceptively about the contrast between European and American values. Best of all is the epigrammatic quality his writing achieves" - Los Angeles Times
"Exiles in the Garden is [Just's] 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 has a loyal following even in this difficult time for the book industry." - Washington Post
"cultured, beautifully controlled fiction....elegant" - Cleveland Plain Dealer
"The novel is fascinatingly readable and at the same time deeper than we expect....[Just] leaves us pondering that ageless question of where the personal becomes the political or if it is possible to maintain a distinction at all." - Miami Herald
"One cannot read the fiction of Ward Just without concluding that we are all expatriates, or, to crib from the title of his latest novel, that we are exiles in the garden of our lives." - Chicago Tribune "Master novelist Just continues his commanding inquiry into the complexities of inheritance, politics, bloodshed, art, fame, and fate, taking measure of the everlasting wounds of war and moral compromise. A virtuoso writer of graceful wit and offhanded gravitas, Just tells this elegant yet harrowing tale of the entanglement of the personal and the geopolitical in sentences infused with the tensile strength of suspension bridges spanning earthly fire and the dark tides of the psyche." - Booklist
"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." - Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Ward Just's 16th novel offers further proof that, as much as any author working today, he writes for grownups. Exiles in the Garden is another of his intricate, intellectually challenging character studies that trades flashy action for a psychologically astute investigation into the deepest recesses of public and private morality....Ward Just began his career as a journalist and that training is evident in his keen eye for detail and his ability to penetrate to the essence of his subjects' lives. In characteristic meditative style, he reveals how the choices of his flawed, complex characters resonate down through the decades. His latest novel is one more brick in an edifice of work that someday should be read by historians looking for insight into the world of modern American politics and contemporary statecraft." - Shelf Awareness
Synopsis
From American master Ward Just, returning to his trademark territory of
Forgetfulness and
The Weather in Berlin, an evocative portrait of diplomacy and desire set against the backdrop of America's first lost war
Synopsis
In this astute novel of Americans abroad, Ward Just turns his keen eye toward the dark underpinnings of nationalism, fame, and artistic integrity. When a famous Hollywood director travels to post-Wall Germany to rekindle his genius, he is unexpectedly reunited with an actress who mysteriously disappeared from the set of his movie thirty years before. Masterly and atmospheric, The Weather in Berlin explores the subtleties of artistic inspiration, the nature of memory, and the pull of the past.
Synopsis
Harry Sanders is a young foreign service officer in 1960s Indochina when a dangerous and clandestine meeting with insurgents—ending in quiet disaster—and a brief but passionate encounter with Sieglinde, a young German woman, alter the course of his life.
Absorbing the impact of his misstep, Harry returns briefly to Washington before eventual assignments in Africa, Scandinavia, and the Mediterranean. He marries the captivating May, who is fleeing her own family disappointments in worn-out upper New England and looking for an escape into Harrys diplomatic life. On the surface, they are a handsome, successful couple—but the memory of Sieglinde persists in Harrys thoughts, and May has her own secrets too. As Harry navigates the increasingly treacherous waters of diplomacy in an age of interminable conflict, he also tries to bridge the distances between himself and the two alluring women who have chosen to love him.
Ward Just, returning to his trademark territory of Forgetfulness and The Weather in Berlin, delivers an utterly compelling story of Americans trying to run the world, yet failing to master their lives.
Synopsis
From one of our most critically acclaimed authors comes a masterly story of terrorism and revenge and one mans attempts to extricate himself from his past.
Thomas Railles, an American expatriate and former "odd-jobber" for the CIA, is a respected painter living with his beloved wife, Florette, in the south of France. On an ordinary autumn day, Florette goes for a walk in the hills and is killed by unknown assailants. Her death devastates Thomas, and in the weeks and months that follow he struggles to make sense of a world that seems defined by violence and pain.
Each night Thomas tracks the war in Iraq on the evening news while Florettes killers remain at large. When French officials detain four Moroccan terrorists and charge them with Florette's murder, Thomas is invited to witness the interrogation. The experience completely undoes him, changing his world utterly, and he finds himself unable to remain at a distance from America, the country he left so long ago.
Ward Justs most gripping and insightful novel yet, Forgetfulness is a haunting depiction of the corrosive effects of todays war on terror and its unexpected consequences for the individual conscience.
Synopsis
In this, his twelfth novel, Ward Just penetrates more deeply into America's role in the world than he has ever done before. This beautifully constructed large-canvas novel of Saigon in 1965 can be justly compared to Joseph Conrad's NOSTROMO or Graham Greene's THE QUIET AMERICAN. A DANGEROUS FRIEND is a thrilling narrative roiling with intrigue, mayhem, and betrayal. Here is the story of conscience and its consequences among those for whom Vietnam was neither the right fight nor the wrong fight but the only fight. The exotic tropical surroundings, the coarsening and corrupting effects of a colonial regime, the visionary delusions of the American democratizers, all play their part. In A DANGEROUS FRIEND, a few civilians with bright minds and sunny intentions want to reform Vietnam -- but the Vietnam they see isn't the Vietnam that is. Sydney Parade, a political scientist, has left home and family in an effort to become part of something larger than himself, a foreign-aid operation in Saigon. Even before he arrives, he encounters French and Americans who reveal to him the unsettling depths of a conflict he thought he understood -- and in Saigon, the Vietnamese add yet another dimension. Before long, the rampant missteps and misplaced ideals trap Parade and others in a moral crossfire.
Synopsis
For decades, film director Dixon Greenwood has lived the Hollywood life the studio intrigues, the abrupt rise and fall of careers, grand aspirations come and gone. Dixs own fame rests on his one great work, SUMMER, 1921, an antiwar classic that has become a cult film. Now he believes he has lost his imagination and genius for reading the times. His audience has vanished. So, on a kind of personal rescue mission, he embarks on a three-month journey to Germany, the birthplace, as he sees it, of the twentieth century.
In postwar, post-Wall Berlin, Dix finds the winter skies gray and the cultural climate turbulent. While fellow artists debate politics and art, he discovers that a nostalgic Prussian costume drama is the most popular program on German television. With decidedly mixed feelings, he agrees to direct an episode a fateful decision that unexpectedly reunites him with an actress who disappeared from the set of SUMMER, 1921 thirty years before. Their final collaboration takes Dix into the heart of the German century and back to his own imagination.
THE WEATHER IN BERLIN showcases Ward Justs unmatched eye for restless Americans abroad. Imbued with the glitter and darkness of both old Hollywood and the new Europe, it is a terrifically atmospheric novel by one of the most astute writers of American fiction” (New York Times Book Review).
Synopsis
Ward Just's twelfth novel penetrates deeply into America's role in the world. Set in Indochina in 1965, A DANGEROUS FRIEND tells a story of "the devolution of an innocent American crusading for democracy" (VANITY FAIR), a man living the conflict of so many Americans caught in a political and spiritual crossfire. Sydney Parade, a political scientist, has left home and family in an effort to become part of something larger than himself, a foreign-aid operation in Saigon. Even before he arrives, he encounters people who reveal to him the unsettling depths of a conflict he thought he understood, and in Saigon the Vietnamese add yet another dimension. This "fabulous, tense and dramatic" (LOS ANGELES TIMES) narrative needs neither combat nor bloodshed to tell its tale. A DANGEROUS FRIEND is the beautifully constructed story of civilians who want to reform Vietnam -- but the Vietnam they see isn't the Vietnam that is.
Synopsis
"One of the most astute writers of American fiction" (New York Times Book Review) delivers the resonant story of Alec Malone, a senators son who rejects the family business of politics for a career as a newspaper photographer.
Synopsis
"One of the most astute writers of American fiction" (
New York Times Book Review) delivers the resonant story of Alec Malone, a senators son who rejects the family business of politics for a career as a newspaper photographer. Alec and his Swiss wife, Lucia, settle in Georgetown next door to a couple whose émigré gatherings in their garden remind Lucia of all the things Americans are not. She leaves Alec as his career founders on his refusal of an assignment to cover the Vietnam War a slyly subversive fictional choice from Ward Just, who was himself a renowned war correspondent. At the center of the novel is Alecs unforeseen reckoning with Lucias long-absent father, Andre Duran, a Czech living out the end of his life in a hostel called Goya House. Durans career as an adventurer and antifascist commando is everything Alecs is not. The encounter forces Alec to confront just how different a life where things "terrible things, terrible things" happen is from a life where nothing much happens at all.
Once again, "Ward Just writes the kind of books they say no one writes anymore: smart, well-crafted narratives wise to the ways of the world that use fiction to show us how we live" (Joseph Kanon, Los Angeles Times).
Synopsis
Thomas Railles, an American expatriate and former odd-jobber” for the CIA, is a successful painter living with his beloved wife, Florette, in a small village in the Pyrenees. On an ordinary autumn day, Florette goes for a walk in the hills and is killed by unknown assailants. Was her death simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was it somehow connected to Thomass work with the CIA? When French officials detain four Moroccan terrorists and charge them with Florettes murder, Thomas is invited by his boyhood friend (and former agency handler) Bernhard to witness the interrogation. Thomas's search for answers in this shadow world will lead him to a confrontation that will change him forever.
Synopsis
Set in Eisenhower-era Chicago, An Unfinished Season brilliantly evokes a city, an epoch, and a shift in ideals through the closely observed story of nineteen-year-old Wilson Ravan. In his summer before college, Wils finds himself straddling three worlds: the working-class newsroom where he's landed a coveted job as a rookie reporter, the whirl of glittering North Shore debutante parties where he spends his nights, and the growing cold war between his parents at home. With unparalleled grace, Ward Just brings Wils's circle to radiant life. Through his finely wrought portraits of a father and son, young lovers, and newsroom dramas, Just also stirringly depicts an American poltical era.
Synopsis
"The winter of the year my father carried a gun for his own protection was the coldest on record in Chicago." So begins Ward Just's An Unfinished Season, the winter in question a postwar moment of the 1950s when the modern world lay just over the horizon, a time of rabid anticommunism, worker unrest, and government corruption. Even the small-town family could not escape the nationwide suspicion and dread of "the enemy within." In rural Quarterday, on the margins of Chicago's North Shore, nineteen-year-old Wilson Ravan watches as his father's life unravels. Teddy Ravan -- gruff, unapproachable, secure in his knowledge of the world -- is confronting a strike and even death threats from union members who work at his printing business. Wilson, in the summer before college, finds himself straddling three worlds when he takes a job at a newspaper: the newsroom where working-class reporters find class struggle at the heart of every issue, the glittering North Shore debutante parties where he spends his nights, and the growing cold war between his parents at home. These worlds collide when he falls in love with the headstrong daughter of a renowned psychiatrist with a frightful past in World War II. Tragedy strikes her family, and the revelation of secrets calls into question everything Wilson once believed.
From a distinguished chronicler of American social history and the political world, An Unfinished Season is a brilliant exploration of culture, politics, and the individual conscience.
About the Author
Ward Just is the author of fourteen previous novels, including the National book Award finalist Echo House and An Unfinished Season, winner of the Chicago Tribunes Heartland Award. In a career that began as a war correspondent for Newsweek and the Washington Post, Just has lived and written in half a dozen countries, including Britain, France, and Vietnam. His characters often lead public lives as politicians, civil servants, soldiers, artists, and writers. It is the tension between public duty and private conscience that animates much of his fiction, including Forgetfulness. Just and his wife, Sarah Catchpole, divide their time between Marthas Vineyard and Paris.
Table of Contents
The Effort 1 The Family Armand 13 A Child in Such a Milieu 37 Dacy 56 Getting Used to It 74 A Shooting in the Market 98 Assimilate or Disperse 118 Big Dumb Blond 140 Plantation Louvet 165 The Life of the Mind 185 Pablo's Hat 208 The Arsenal of Democracy 235