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Beautifully written
I spent a good thirty minutes trying to think of ways to begin this review. The biggest challenge stems, as always, from my opinion of the book; an opinion that's torn.On one hand I can appreciate the story being told; the story of a broken marriage, a woman used to peering into the lives of others and having to, ultimately, examine herself with that lens. There's a touch of mystery, did "Wonderboy" cheat or did he not cheat? Who wrote that damning letter? Did the letter actually affect the alre...
Another novel abandoned out of boredom. I found the characters and their predicaments unconvincing either in terms of a novel or those of "real" life. Even the female protagonist's penchant for red wine (good Bordeaux or cheap domestic Turkish), although plausible on the face of it, didn't read as "true." And the nicknames, Flash for the female photographer and Wonderboy for her war correspondent boyfriend. Ugh!The second star is due to one interesting passage regarding language: "Turkish, Alif
I loved the fact that the author knew her way around Istanbul. I didn't like that every page she was self medicating with wine and just relaxing. It was also hard to follow the plot as it would go backward and forward with no visible dates to let the reader know if it was a flashback. I expected the photojournalist character to have a vision or to discover and confront what was wrong with her life. I don't really think the author summed up the problem. She just let the husband journalist die be
THE LAST WAR is my favorite type of novel--it is like a dream, a painting, a photograph--provoking thought, beauty, and doubt. The prose is beautiful, impelling the mind to see and the heart to feel. The dialogue is such that it could be our own--if it were we in the place of the characters, if we had their wishes and fears. There is much more here than words on a page. There is a backstory intertwined with the creator. This type of novel is an author's attempt to make sense out of life, or at l...
Certain sorts of people are attracted to the life and death workplace that is the war zone. For some it is mother’s milk to survive in the midst of death, whether as a combatant, NGO-er like Red Cross or MSF field personnel, or as a journalist. It can act as a drug, making one feel more alive than the hum-drum of a stable home with 2.5 kids and a spouse, in the same environment every day. The 2008 film, The Hurt Locker, captures that well. For good or ill, some need the rush of adventure, excite...
I really found this to be a stifling and fuggy "novel." It reads like a memoir (which I suspect it is) and for this I could not settle into the story. I had little patience for Flash who is pining away for an ambivalent husband. She is lonesome and depressed but instead of feeling empathy for her I felt annoyed by her inertia. Just glad to be done with it.
Why is it so much easier to ravel a story than unravel it? Great build up, initial suspense, tension, intrigue, alluring and appealingly mopey characters, and then, somewhere just over the hill it all goes to pot, or rather goes nowhere. This is one of those static books. It begins with the main character and narrator, a depressed and bewildered photographer "Flash" sulking in her Istanbul flat while her husband "Wonderboy," blissfully ignorant of her blues, covers the war in Iraq from Baghdad.
Usually when I finish a book, I think about whether I liked the plot or the characters or what not. This was one time where what really stood out was the writing. I thought that this book was beautifully written.The main character, Flash, is a photographer who makes her living covering wars with her journalist husband, Brando. The novel in set in 2003, and Brando is in Iraq. Meanwhile, Flash is in Istanbul ostensibly waiting for her papers to come through so she can join him. Other than a myster...
This was a really fast read. I finished it in a few hours. The story is about a couple in which the husband writes and the wife does the photography. For their entire marriage they are capturing different wars. By the time the reader meets them the husband is in Iraq and he wife is in Istanbul awaiting a visa to join him. She gets a weird letter from someone she doesn't know telling her that her husband is cheating on her. And the rest of the story is her unraveling and trying to decide whether
This book caught my attention on Firstreads and I was lucky enough to win it, but actually found it disappointing. I kept waiting for the plot to develop, only to get to the end frustrated that I had spent the time looking for something big to happen that never did. In my opinion this book was about depression and misplaced love, not war and romance and photography. I found the environments exciting and loved to learn about the exotic places Flash went. I hated the nicknames...Flash and Wonderbo...
I was thoroughly, and utterly enthralled with The Last War from the first page or two, until the end. It didn't take long for me to realize that this was NOT a story about the Iraq war, about a war correspondent, nor a story to reveal the culture of the Middle East; rather, this novel was a human drama, played out in far-flung locations that added an extra depth to the novel.Having spent time in Istanbul, I readily picked up on the locations and streets mentioned by Flash (as the author had spen...
Sometimes authors write books as a way to receive some psychotherapy. Lots of "life stuff" can lead a person to step outside of the self, evaluate what's not kosher and acknowledge some hard truths. I believe Ana Menendez did this in The Last War. She needed the therapy and writing it was the best way to get there.Sometimes these types of books are a curative for people who also need this therapy but are better readers than writers. That's me (despite my desire to be the latter). I guess what I
This novel has some great things going for it. The writing is really good, and I could tell the author really knew the places she was writing about and did it with grace not with flash (excused the pun!), and I appreciated that. But the relationship elements felt more contrived to me even though I read this story is based on true events. But the developments of the affair in the novel just didn't feel real, or at least not real enough for me to care, and I didn't get much sense of the love betwe...
I received a copy of this book from Goodreads (thank you so much) and was very interested since I had been an expat myself and lived in several countries overseas. The Last War states it is “a breathtaking novel of love, war and betrayal”. Flash is a photographer and is married to Wonderboy, a journalist. They both cover war stories, sometimes together and sometimes apart. At the beginning of the book, Flash is in Istanbul and Brando (wonderboy) is in Iraq. Flash is waiting for a visa to join hi...
From my book review blog, Rundpinne....[return][return]Beautifully written, spellbinding, and astonishingly detailed, The Last War by Ana Menendez is a compelling literary novel. Menendez takes the reader on an introspective journey through the last ten years of her life, taking the reader back to Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and where she currently resides in Istanbul. Margarita Anastasia Morales, known as Flash, is a photographer who has been traveling around the world with her journalist husb...
I probably read this on the suggestion of NPR. I can't really remember.This novel was very melancholy, about a photojournalist and her print journalist husband in the early years of the Afghan and Iraq wars. They are separated throughout the novel, with the suspicion of an affair by the husband looming over the main character's musings.It wasn't the worst novel I've read. I actually finished it. But I never connected with the main character and I was bored with her self-absorbed sorrow.I'm sure
Mesmerizing. It pulls you in deeper and deeper - just like a dream you cannot wake up from. So much of this novel is dream-like - the writing style, switching back & forth, characters showing up out of virtually nowhere, weird conversations. What is it about? - how a photographer living in Istanbul is dealing with the dissolution of her marriage, while her journalist husband is in Kabul covering the Iraq war. During this time, she "runs" into a friend she last saw in Afghanistan. This friend doe...
I picked this up at random from the library. The setting was interesting and the writing was good but lots of f-bombs. I read the first half really quick, anxious to see what would happen. I must admit the heroine started to annoy me and I wished she would actually do something instead of mull around feeling sorry for herself. There were twists that made it good. In the end though I can't say I really liked the book too much. It must be my old age but I'm starting to prefer the escapism of simpl...
Another first-reads win! The story is set against the backdrop of the U.S. invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, but mostly takes place in Istanbul. The main character, Flash, is a photojournalist married to Brando, a journalist; both cover wars around the world. The couple has a residence in Istanbul and when Brando reports to Iraq, Flash stays behind for reasons unknown to her. When she receives a letter about her husband's infidelity, she begins to reflect on their past. Told in part in flashbac...