The White Mary: A Novel

Boy howdy, what a solidly bad book. You gotta love a novel in which the author, in the very first sentence, tells you that the main character is a thinly-veiled author insert. It's one step away from actually titling the book The White Mary: My (Often Embarassing) Ego-Driven Melodramatic Fantasies About My Life and Me, Me, Me. And in that regard at least, boy does Salak deliver.

According to the back cover, she is an award-winning journalist. That may very well be. Unfortunately, she would have done us all a favor by writing about her real life experiences instead of burying them under this paint-by-numbers relationship forced march. Folks, at best, The White Mary is a 350-page outline of the story Salak has yet to write. It is quite show more literally scores upon scores of pages of nothing but endless exposition told in lifeless, cliche-ridden prose. The author--I mean, main character is devoid of any personality beyond what the narrative (such as it is) demands that she evince at any given moment in order to drive the "plot", and thus equally devoid of any ability to induce sympathy or indeed, interest in readers. The love interest is the epitome of the spineless, emasculated "celebrate your inner child and deal productively with your issues" new age eunuch...it almost verges on self-parody. (Seriously, when I, who never, ever thought I would ever in my life find myself wishing desperately that a man start evincing more stereotypically masculine traits, end up doing just that, you know it's bad.) His concern for the protagonist is supposed (I guess) to be genuine and touching; rather, it comes off as creepy and desperate.

Now, as I can't actually back any of this up with quotes yet (although I would dearly love to make others share my pain), as I received the book as an ARC, perhaps a summary of a typical scene from the novel will suffice. The main character, who just can't handle the fact that her boyfriend loves her so much, escapes to a party where she gets drunk and goes home with another man who, insulted by her ballsiness, anally rapes her. After which, she gets up--after being sodomized, no lube, no preparation--and takes a walk for a bit.

And this book prides itself on its "gritty realism." Except when said realism would hinder the melodramatics of the daytime soap cliches it loves even more.

This is all such a shame because parts of the book--namely those told from the POV of Tobo, a Papua New Guinean shaman--are solidly decent. It's a shame both Salak and her editors opted for the lazy, trite, and overwrought instead of working on improving the passages where Salak did evince some promise as a writer. show less

"The White Mary" is the story of Marika, a journalist who travels to Papua New Guinea in search of her childhood hero, Robert Lewis. Lewis was pronounced dead after an apparent suicide, but a missionary claims to have seen him alive in the jungle. Unfortunately for Marika, she takes the wounds and struggles of the past into the jungle with her, and finds her emotional difficulties are just as bad as the practical difficulties of jungle travel.

I was excited to read this novel by Kira Salak because I gave serious consideration to becoming a foreign correspondent, but after reading about some of the horrors experienced by Markia and Lewis, I'm glad I didn't. Salak does a good job of making the reader feel some of the horror and revulsion show more experienced by her characters in war zones without resorting to gross-out tactics. The book also excels in showing the different attitudes and beliefs of the Guinean tribes featured without looking down on them.

My main quibble with this book was the ending so stop reading now if you don't like spoilers. Basically after a lifetime of misery and commitment issues, Marika comes out of the jungle with all of her emotional issues resolved. While I don't have a problem with that resolution, I do wish that her transformation had either not been so complete or not so sudden. It seemed to this reader that her night with Lewis "cured" her, which felt unsatisfying.

Overall, this was a pleasant read. I would recommend it to people with an interest in books set in island cultures and who don't mind a somewhat unlikable protagonist. show less

*Tour-de-force in the Jungle

Droning insects, screeching monkeys, and slithering snakes create the opening scene after you crack open the cover of The White Mary, Kira Salaks fictional debut. The fetid and uncanny stillness of the swampy atmosphere has the reader imagining they have been transported back into a Jurassic period of time, devoid of human occupation with only the wildest of nature's creatures around you. The story begins with the heroine, gliding in a dugout canoe through the eerie, yet magical, mangrove infested waterways of Papua New Guinea. She is being led into the heart of the jungle by a native guide named Tobo, who thinks she is a white witch because of her red hair. The soundless environment is only occasionally show more broken by the buzz of a mosquito, or the sudden crackling ripple of water broken by a surfacing crocodile.

Marika Vecera is an award winning Foreign Correspondent Journalist. Her newest mission is to write a biography about her own journalist hero, Robert Lewis. After returning from a harrowing escape from an attack in the African Congo that nearly killed her, she buries her post traumatic emotions by writing about Robert Lewis' life who was recently presumed dead from suicide. In researching his life, Marika finds a startling piece of information that may lead to her finding he is still alive, deep in the jungles of Papua New Guinea.

This incredible and profound literary novel breaks ground and offers the reader a philosophical insight into Marika's upcoming travels. Both her journey into the interior of Papua New Guinea's dangerous country, and into the personal journey of her soul as she reveals an intimate portrait of her fears, heartaches, and journey of healing.

The book alternates between chapters of Marika's death defying trek through the jungle, her flashbacks of her near death attack in Zaire, and of her tender but tumultous romance with Seb, her psychiatrist boyfriend whom she leaves behind in a trail of tears. An added bonus too are wonderful Papua New Guinea folklore tibits that insert a little fun and lightheartedness when at times the story is so emotionally exhausting the reader might feel drained.

The reader encounters an inside view of Papua New Guinea's native village life with their throbbing drums, mosquitos that suck your blood incessantly like hungry vampires, and where witch doctors dance around ailing souls evoking spirit gods to keep them all from harm.

Within this story I found so much power, passion and poignancy. There is great depth and beauty to this novel that a reader doesn't encounter too often. I loved this book and felt awe inspired that an author could have such incredible talent. Salek has the incredible ability to at one moment describe abominable graphic violence enough to make you cringe, yet in other moments write the most tender and precious, sweet and sexy love scenes that have you crying for the beauty of it all. It is soul-searching, sensual, and yes, scary too.

I would highly recommend this book to most people I know, but it's certainly not for the weak-kneed or faint of heart. There are some scenes that are quite brutal and unpleasant. I believe, this is an award-winning book. It doesn't get much better than this. show less

I recently received an advanced reader's copy of The White Mary by Kira Salak to review from the publisher, Henry Holt. I was excited to learn of the novel, as I was an avid fan of Salak's wonderful non-fictional narrative of her kayaking tour to Timbuktu, "The Cruelest Journey".

Salak is a unique phenomenon and a wild spirit - traveling alone as a woman to places most men would be afraid to go in a group. Her non-fiction travel works capture the fear, wonder, and strangeness of traveling alone, a sort of female incarnation of Paul Theroux. I was looking forward to her first fictional work (although one wonders just how fictional it is, exactly). I was not disappointed.

The White Mary tells the tale of Marika Vecera, a journalist/war show more correspondent. The early parts of novel intertwine her experiences in Zaire reporting on genocide with a somewhat mysterious journey through the jungles of Papua New Guinea. We eventually learn that Marika is chasing the ghost of Robert Lewis, a journalist she worships and who inspired her career. She's also chasing some ghosts of her own; her time in Zaire has scarred her deeply. The White Mary is in fact an extraordinarily powerful portrait of a person who has "seen too much". Marika's near-death experience in the Congo has left her emotionally numb, and walled off from the care of those closest to her. Salak's rendering of Marika's psychological problems is done in pitch-perfect detail. The novel is sometimes adult, brutal and violent, and not for early teens or the faint of heart.

Just as folk musicians perform songs in pairs, it's sometimes interesting to read & review books in pairs. At the same time as I was reading The White Mary, I was also consuming "The Painter of Battles" by the renowned author Arturo Perez-Reverte (one of my favorite authors). The Painter of Battles covers very similar territory in some respects -
the protagonist there has "seen too much" as a war photographer and has given way to despair, retiring to paint a battle that spans all historical battles, and to avoid all human interaction (interestingly one of the key characters in The White Mary is a war photographer). Where the Painter of Battles is deeply philosophical and contemplative, the White Mary is visceral; the Painter of Battles is carefully drawn, exquisitely written and intriguing to read. And yet, three weeks later, the Painter of Battles is not finished, and The White Mary yielded in two sittings. It's that compelling; I had to finish it. Perez-Reverte's prose is smoother and more ornate, even in translation (or perhaps because of it), whereas Salak's prose is more muscular and direct. The writing in The White Mary is occasionally awkward but still compares favorably with that of such a distinguished author as Perez-Reverte.

Salak's Marika is an extraordinarily well-drawn character; I never doubted her reality for a moment. And Salak regularly captures one of the key aspects of travel - the shock of experiencing fundamentally different cultural assumptions. Marika for example, is sent to the "women's hut" when she is menstruating, where she rages at the artificial and (to her, of course) ludicrous belief system that requires it. Marika's progress through something like post-traumatic stress disorder is carefully and believably painted, and you root for her to come back even as she spirals downward in self-destructive behavior.

In short, the White Mary is a powerful and gripping first novel, a cautionary tale full of danger, travel, and adventure, and at the same time gives deep insight into the human condition.

(If you'd like to explore the geography of The White Mary, I've plotted many of the locations mentioned in my Books/Google Maps mashup, CodexMap. show less

Marika Vecera is a young but accomplished journalist. She's spent her adult life traveling to remote and dangerous areas in search of her next story. After a particularly brutal assignment in the Congo, Marika returns to her home in Boston to learn that a fellow writer she's long idolized, Pulitzer Prize winner, Robert Lewis, has committed suicide. Amidst a series of self-destructive escapades, Marika decides to write his biography. While researching her story, she discovers a letter from a missionary claiming to have stumbled upon Lewis in the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Her journey to discover the truth is ultimately a journey of self-discovery.

Kira Salak is herself an award-winning journalist who has obviously spent a great deal of show more time in the areas about which she writes. Her vivid depictions of Papua New Guinea are so intense, you'll feel as though you're trudging through the jungles, machete in hand, right along with Marika. It is this quality that I feel really makes this book worth reading.

Descriptions of Marika's travels are interspersed with flashbacks of her downward spiralling love life. While I suppose these chapters give the reader a further glimpse into Marika's psyche, I think they also serve only to make her a far less sympathetic character. She's not someone I would ever want to know. In fact, I found her a bit too self-righteous in all her faults. I could easily have done without back information on all of her sexual exploits.

Fortunately, the guts of the book center around Marika's search for Robert Lewis and her experiences in PNG. Salak is obviously a talented writer and her ability to keep the reader interested creates a story that is truly captivating. I think I would have preferred if it had been written more as a memoir with more focus on the travels and less on Marika's internal conflicts, but overall, I thought it was a great debut novel (Salak has written other works of non-fiction). It's not light reading, but it's full of adventure and excitement and a good read overall. show less

This is one the best books I've read all year. Not only is the character of Marika Vecera believable, she elicited so much sympathy from this reader that I was torn between wanting to finish the book and not wanting to leave the world she inhabited.

I do realize this is a work of fiction but I reads like it's based on actual occurrences, and the author has confirmed this is the case. I'll admit it is very dark indeed. It contains scenes of torture, mutilation and suffering, but since the author had survived so much it seemed somewhat cathartic to even just read of her experiences.

P.S. I have no plans to travel to New Guinea... ever!

Kira Salak is an award-winning journalist and travel writer, who was the first woman to traverse Papua New Guinea, so it comes as no surprise that her debut novel features a female journalist, Marika, trekking through remotest Papua New Guinea. The book tries to combine the arduous, almost impossible trek which is motivated by Marika’s compulsion to find a missing journalist, with her doubts and insecurities about her deepening relationship with Seb, a psychologist who has a decidedly more compassionate view of the world than Marika, who in her journalistic pursuits has seen the worst mankind can dole out to one another (some of which is described in horrowing detail). The target of her search is Robert Lewis, a world-famous reporter show more whose suicide by self-drowning is left open for questioning since his body was never found. Marika is drawn into the hero-worshiping circle that surrounds Lewis, but she takes it one step further when she gets wind that he may still be alive and living in the jungle. There’s supposed to be a message here, possibly about not letting man’s inhumanity toward each other rob one of the ability to trust and love, but it all gets bogged down in poorly rendered, heavy-handed Conradian darkness, stereotypical unsavory missionaries, and poorly written love-is-real revelations. For more entertaining novels I’d suggest both At Play In The Fields of the Lord, or Poisionwood Bible. Or stick with Heart Of Darkness for the real thing. show less