Missionaries

Missionaries is one of those books which take a few seemingly completely disparate characters, and over time manages to weave them into a cohesive narrative. This is a strategy which can work really well, or go disastrously wrong. It’s a technique I like when it works well, and luckily here it does. Klay further complicates things by introducing his major characters at different intervals in different years. Initially they tell their own stories.

Abel was a young boy, Abelito, in 1999 when the guerrilleros came to his Columbian village seeking “justice”, which Abelito knew was just another word for executions. His father hid him in a boat and pushed it downstream, saving Abelito, but the rest of the family was murdered. His story show more is told by the older disassociated Abel.

Lisette was a journalist in Kabul in 2015. Most of the other westerners had left long ago, but she found it difficult to live in the west, where no one seemed to care what was happening in places like Afghanistan. At least in Afghanistan, she felt able to act, to perhaps make someone care back home while they read the morning news and drank their morning coffee. Now she was looking for a war to cover “where we’re not losing”.

Then there was Mason, a miner’s son. In 2005, he was a medic with Special Forces in Iraq. He believed in the mission then, believed that he was “experiencing the violence and horror of this place so that they didn’t have to experience the same things in Fayetteville, North Carolina”. That was about to change.

Lastly there was Juan Pablo. a lieutenant colonel in the Colombian army. In 2016, his concern was what would happen with a pending treaty with FARC, and afterwards should it materialise.

Klay manages to bring all four together in a believable fashion, at which time the novel switches to third person narrative. There is ideological struggle here between Americans reared on democracy as a black and white concept, and the realties of South America, where just achieving consensus on what democracy is, may prove impossible. There is an unfiltered portrayal of American actions in foreign wars, yet the American characters are sympathetically drawn.

There are echoes of Robert Stone and Philip Caputo here, but some of Klay’s characters actually do believe there will be a better tomorrow, despite and maybe even because of what is happening today. Whichever side of the debate you fall on, it makes for powerful reading. show less

4.5 stars. Simply excellent. It takes a lot for me to say the comparisons to Conrad are apt, but they are. While it’s likely the book could have been edited a bit, even the somewhat extraneous material is extremely well observed. Likewise, I’m not sure that all the threads are woven together as neatly as one might wish purely from a craftsperson’s point of view, yet even there, perhaps they’re woven as well as the grand subject matter admits. This is a fine novel, wide and deep, dark, brutal, and heartbreaking.

This was a hard book. I had read Klay's collection of short stories about Iraq "Redeploment" and totally enjoyed it(I won the National Book Award). so I wanted to read his first novel. Although this is not a subject matter that I normally read about, I chose it because of his first book. This was a well researched novel that dealt with a very serious subject matter. Namely, global warfare in the 21st century. It centers around Columbia in the months proceeding the vote on the settlement between FARC and the Columbian government meant to put an end to 50 years of violence. It is told through 4 main characters. Abel, a Columbian ex paramilitary, Lisette an American war correspondent, Mason an American soldier, and Juan Pablo a Columbian show more army officer. Klay does a good job of portraying 1st person narratives from each character against the backdrop of the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Columbian conflicts. You see the brutality of the war but you also the development of a global military group that consists of career soldiers and a growing number of contractors. There is more an allegiance to conflict than to the actual ideology that supports the conflict. Klay's problem is putting everything together. There is way too much detail and assumption of knowledge on the part of the reader. Because of the seriousness of the subject matter I felt a need to finish the book. It really felt more like a non-fiction description of reality wrapped in a fictional package in order to make it more palatable to the reader. My biggest takeaway was the knowledge I gained about the conflict in Columbian and how it continues despite the agreement with FARC. As always books like this increase your empathy with the non-military people that have to deal with the never ending violence. An educational book that is worthwhile for gaining knowledge but not an ultimate page turner. I do strongly recommend " Redeployment" which does a great job about the war in an Iraq and in an entertaining way. show less

A gratifyingly grim look at modern warfare. Reminded me a lot of Say Nothing, with the blurred lines between goodies and baddies. The plot zips along well enough but I’ll remember the mood a lot more than the characters.

I was not as engaged in this novel as I had hoped. It felt disorganized, although since chaos is part of war that may have been deliberate. Set in Latin America, the Middle East, and the US, the author paints a picture of the traits of war which are both universal and particular to geographic location. Meh.