Engaging and well-written story of two families struggling with external and internal wars. Harsh at times, but true to human nature. The author is not detached and sterile about her characters, which is a welcome contrast to many contemporary novels with thematic plots. ( )

Contrasts the lives of the displaced and massacred Croats during their war against the Serbs in the 1990's to the lives of Americans during the first Iraq war who watched that war from the comfort of their living rooms and local fern bars. Didactic and ( )

Toby is the 21-year-old only son of Chloe, a book illustrator, and Brendan, a history professor. When Toby falls in love with, impregnates, and marries a brash, slightly untamed Croatian-American student named Salome, Chloe is horrified. She is certain Toby has been "trapped" by a woman she sees as unsavory and a threat. Meanwhile, Salome's past in war-torn Croatia suddenly rears up, creating havoc for her and Toby. Finally, Chloe is obsessed with a poacher (she's convinced he's "Middle-Eastern" - maybe Lebanese. Turns out he's a Basque) who has been hunting on her land and is determined to make him stop. "Big" themes such as freedom, war, and what it means to be American permeate the book - but I liked the relationships best. Chloe is so exasperating, but also wonderfully strong and intriguing, and the same goes for Salome. The men are mostly sweetie-pies (except when they're evil monsters), but pale in comparison to the women. ( )

What Valerie Martin's characters do isn't as interesting as who they are. Watching her create the intricate nuances of even the minor players in this excellent morality play is like observing an origami master at work.
As in Property (another Martin work I highly recommend), each of the characters is someone we both like and dislike, respect and abhor. Chloe Dale, the protagonist, leads the life many of us would love to have. She's talented, successful, relaxed, and fulfilled. She's also overly protective of her son, Toby, and has a streak of bigot in her that makes the reader sit up and take notice. It's the mix of sweet and sour that makes Chloe a fully-realized human being--and one fascinating to read about.
You'll have mixed feelings about every one of the characters: husband Brendan is unambitious but level-headed, son Toby a romantic naif blinded by his hormones. His wife Salome, a Croatian refugee, is mysteriously seductive and parasitic. Jelena, the unidentified narrator of great swatches of the book, is revealed like a slowly peeling onion.
There are enough plot twists and action to carry the story along, but the real pleasure in reading Trespass is in discovering the characters as Martin's fruitful mind conceived them. ( )

Trespass by Valerie Martin is a masterful work of literary, moral, and intellectual fiction, but it is also a compelling work of contemporary storytelling. I was hooked into the plot from the very first page—immediately submerged in a dark, moody world filled with threatening overtones. This book has taut suspense, but also great thematic power.

As the title suggests, this is a novel about trespass—about the myriad boundaries in our lives and the people who violate them. But more importantly, it is about how individuals choose to react to those violations. The main characters in this novel endure encroachment, transgression, intrusion, and invasion—all nuances of the title word. These transgressions give weight to the storyline. But it is ultimately how each character responds to these transgressions that captures the reader’s intellectual interest. Some characters make choices that lead toward health and a life. Others make choices that propel them on negative downward spirals. Martin shows us how her characters choose to live with uncomfortable truths and unchangeable reality.

The story begins in late 2002, that tumultuous period when the United States was getting day-by-day ever closer to war with Iraq. We meet the Dale family living a comfortable, bucolic upper-middle class life in rural upstate New York. The father, Brendan, is a professor of medieval history researching and writing an academic biography of a 13th-century king that played a significant role in the Crusades. Chloe, the mother, is a book illustrator researching and creating engravings for a new edition of Wuthering Heights. Their son, Toby, is a college student studying at NYU. Everyone in the family is liberal and politically active.

Two separate forces trespass into this world.

First, Toby brings home Salome Drago, a strange exotic Croatian-American NYU student whom he loves beyond reason. To Toby, Salome is bright, passionate, and self-confident; however, Toby’s parents find her moody, abrasive, and confrontational. Brendan keeps these thoughts to himself, but Chloe confronts her son privately with her distrust and dislike toward this new woman in his life. Chloe has nothing but antipathy toward this family encroacher.

Second, there’s an actual intruder loose in Chloe’s backyard—a poacher has left tell-tale signs that he is hunting within their private 10-acre woods. Chloe is obsessed with finding out who this man is, and getting him off her property. She feels threatened and violated.

Woven erratically throughout the novel is a parallel story about a woman living in Croatia some dozen years earlier. The woman in this story is both a transgressor and a victim. Her story is a passionate tale of a woman seeking her identity at all costs. But war intervenes, and this woman falls victim to some of its worst atrocities. Circumstances force her to make a series of fateful decisions, all in the face of untold hardship and suffering. The reader is left to examine these decisions and contemplate their overall effect on the lives of those most dear to her. Were these healthy decisions? Were they right? Has this woman created the best life she could for herself despite all the horrors she endured and the pain she caused others?

As the main story unfolds, readers ask similar questions about each member of the Dale and Drago families. These characters also experience a series of life-changing events, and the reader ponders the motives behind each character’s fateful decisions. At the end, the author wants us to try to gaze into the future and imagine how we might expect the lives of these characters to unfold. How will these characters fare in a future where they must constantly deal with issues of trespass?

Brendan, the historian, is in this novel for a purpose. As the novel draws to a close, Brendan is watching TV alone in a Trieste restaurant and realizes that America has finally initiated the long-feared war with Iraq. He and the other patrons of the restaurant watch, all with little amazement, as the horrific Shock and Awe bombing campaign of Baghdad is played out on live television. Brendan thinks: "The thing to do is to take the long view of it; this is his profession, after all. What is really happening on that screen is history-in-the-making, and not just recent history, but, should the planet survive, ancient history. Our fate is ever to rush into the past as if we thought it was the future. But we are in the history van along with all the other curious, faded civilizations that failed for reasons now obvious" (p. 256).

This is a novel in the best tradition of moral fiction. Enjoy the suspense, but linger over the messages. Frankly, I don’t see the happy ending that some other reviewers complain about. This book has an ending perfectly consistent with the whole. It is not a book that I will probably reread in a few years, and these are characters that I will probably soon forget. But I recommend this work highly because of its deep thematic impact and the compelling suspense I enjoyed while reading it.

If after finishing this work, you desire to see a truly outstanding independent film on an eerily similar subject, I recommend The Secret Life of Words. This is a truly amazing film—positively unforgettable in every way! ( )

Choloe Dale & her son Toby. Toby marries Croatian expat.

10.07 ( )

What I love about Valerie Martin:
1 - She never writes the same book twice.
2 - The caliber/quality of her writing. She always chooses the exact right word, tone, phrase, and is such a satisfying read. She's incredibly succinct.
3 - Her ability to weave a subtle story around the reader, like a net that slowly entraps.

The plot: seemingly mundane, but as you get into it, increasingly complex. A husband and wife (writer and artist team) send their son off to college. He meets his mate - a complicated dark-personalitied woman who his mother instantly takes a dislike to. Complex family dynamics ensue. ( )