Kaethe

Marchetta does not play around with small potatoes: fifteen years after a notorious terrorist bomb explodes in London everyone who was in any way involved is forced to reexamine their previous assumptions when a bomb goes off on the bus of a group of British teens touring France. After reading The Lumatere Chronicles I knew she was brilliant on aftermath, on exile, and PTSD, and divided loyalties, and complex characters with nothing but hard choices to make. But that was fantasy intended for a YA audience. This one prominently features teen characters, but focuses on the adults and is being marketed to an adult audience. Nineteenth century novelists often tackled such hard subjects with such diverse casts, but they would publish twice as many pages, too. She leaves Hugo and Dickens in the excessively detailed weather reports and makes Dan Brown’s puzzles look like dot-to-dots. This is the novel to drive through the heart of any simplistic notions about race, ethnicity, religion, and terrorism.

Library copy