De Niro's Game (original 2006; edition 2006)

The writing was really beautiful, but by page 150, I was still waiting to be engaged by the story, care about what would happen, or even just plain connect with the protagonist. It never happened. I started skipping passages because I just didn't care. ( )

Great novel. Covers the war time lives of two childhood friends and the different paths they take to survive 'hell on earth' civil war torn Beirut in the 1980s. Fast paced and well written it provides a great insight into the hearts and minds of young men living in chaos. ( )

Despite its many accolades, I'm not bowled over. Some parts, like the descriptions of the anxiety of living under the threat of violence, the increasing influence of the militia on Bassam's life, his forced interactions with them, and particularly George's frantic description of the massacre at the Sabra and Shátila Camps are written with such intensity it's almost physically painful to read.

However, interspersed with such intense parts are some very meandering, almost rambling, enumerations of locales or events or scents or "whatevers," which I can only assume are meant to be poetic attempts at social criticism, but that in actuality act as roadblocks for the story and softens a blow that I thought should be gut-wrenching. Having the narrator simply list things he sees or thinks does not make for a stream-of-consciousness narrative; it makes for a bunch of lists.

The last portion of the novel, which starts with the same rambling thoughts but now in an almost psychedelic style, quickly becomes a straight spy story which completely derails the novel. Unfortunately I can't "un-read" that last portion, so I end up with a novel that started off strong and packed a heck of a punch, then meandered in the middle, only to end in a place where Agent 007 would feel at home. ( )

Hage lived through nine years of the Lebanese civil war before emigrating to Canada in 1992. This novel of a young man in Beirut sure feels like it. It's brutal.

The narrator, a young man called Bassam, doesn’t seem to remember a time when there wasn’t a war. Death, even of children, has become a, well, casual fact of life. The reflexes automatically kick in when a bomb falls or someone is injured. But if that someone dies, even an old friend, the feelings don’t express normally; they’re tamped down so far, they might be dead.

Bassam is, at least nominally, a Christian (Maronite, I guess, but could be Greek Orthodox, Armenian or who knows?), so it’s taken for granted that he supports the Christian militia and some of his school friends are already in the militia (you can never get out). Unless he screws up--a distinct possibility with his casino scam--he works at the port. The corrupt militia warlords are something like drug kingpins or gangsters in a ghetto.

Although it seems to be Palestinians (no dates to give a clue) the Christians are fighting, the usual journalistic boilerplate is absent, so many readers will have to check out Wikipedia. Or better: Mirror of the Arab world by Sandra Mackey (2009). In other words, this is not a novel that in any way help you understand the roots of the conflict or how the various groups have historically interacted.

A communist uncle is over on the other side of the wall, in the eastern part of the city, but you get no idea of which disparate groups are allied there (yeah, Muslims, but remember the Druze and Shiite Hezbollah and ..). The war has been going on so long that everyone seems to have forgotten the original passions. Joining up with the Israelis to expel Palestinians was at one time unthinkable but everyone seems to have forgotten why.

The novel falls apart about two-thirds of the way through, once Bassam escapes Lebanon and lands in France. I even checked to see if pages were missing. The whole tone of the novel changed from realism to almost dreamy, imprecise fantasy. It doesn’t feel like Hage has ever been to Paris. In reality, if he kept with the initial tone, there of course would be the visual shock of being in a land at peace; I was more struck that he had no feel for what it’s like to be an illegal alien, probably a swarthy one at that, in France.

For a start, all the other aliens would be feeling him out. Wondering if he's Arab, Turk, Portuguese, Jew? Then there would be the not subtle racism of waiters, taxi drivers, etc. Then there’s the whole preposterous story of his dead friend’s unknown half-sister and their father being a Mossad agent (he was Jewish, after all)

Another problem with the whole France episode: a Lebanese guy of this age and background seeking asylum would know perfectly well what kind of organizations and human rights lawyers to seek out once he landed in France or any other Western country. He’d even know the kind of story he’d have to tell them (torture helps, but given the state of Lebanon at that time, he might not even have to go that far.) He’d probably know that there were more welcoming countries than France at that time top, such as the Netherlands or Scandinavian countries in late 1980s or early 1990s.

I'd advise just stopping once Bassam gets off the freight boat from Lebanon, Again, the precision of how this is arranged jars with what follows.

I would like to have seen more about Laurent, or people like him, even though his poetic waxing also doesn't mesh well with the rest of the Lebanon section, which is poetic too but in a starker, steam-of-consciousness Kerouacian way. He's an older man, with French or imagined European airs, who made a fortune as a middleman between Africans and French and Portuguese traders (including arms traders, I assume). We need more of a glimpse of what Lebanon and Lebanese used to signify. In Asia and, I supposed, among Marxists he belongs to what used to be called the compradore class.

You can see the colons' story here, but in real life, they (least of all the French) never have this much self-awareness:

"We sucked the locals’ wealth, and offered their daughters as gifts. You see, no one liked us, but they all needed us. And then it happened, that day when the poor walked barefoot into the city, with guns and machetes in their hands, and chased us out of our penthouses. They stumbled over our long chairs, defecated in our mosaic pools, snapped our argilahs (pipes) in half, camped in our marble saloons with large windows that looked over their primitive villages, their shanty towns that we never noticed, their running sewage that they never smelled, their chocolate-skinned sisters whose bellies we used as pillows, whose pale palms we used as towels for our Semitic semen, for out sweating foreheads behind circled walls and guardian dogs …" ( )

Not as great as some of you reviewers are making out. It starts promisingly, with an original and engaging portrayal of a friendship in a war-zone, and enough details of the Lebanese conflict to contextualise the story. However, once the narrator goes to Paris the plot becomes increasingly ridiculous and banal. The referencing of Camus' 'L'Etranger' is just plain tiresome. The conclusion goes some way to making amends, but only if you suddenly accept that you have been reading a piece of genre fiction rather than a serious literary work, which I presume it aspires to be. ( )