The Clearing

The thing that makes this novel really work is its limited ambition and I don't mean that in a negative sense at all. It describes a photojournalist's trip to Afghanistan to cover a story about women choosing to take their lives rather than being forced to marry men much older than them. The novel covers just this limited period of time spanning the trip and a week or so leading up to it and the few story lines from the past that are included are so uncomplicated that they seamlessly blend in with the present tense. This feature of the novel--that it is uncluttered by too many fancy writing devices like competing subplots or too much jumping around in time or the presence of too many secondary characters--is what makes this book succeed. Although the book is of average length, the feeling I was left with after reading it was that I had just finished reading a short story.

Marciano uses a very sparse and clean writing style which accentuates the book's resemblance to a short story. But clearly, these very things that work so well for this novel can so easily fail if the plot itself is somewhat lacking. In this case, however, it is plausible, and fast paced, and, despite the several novels having been written about the devastation in Afghanistan, also seems very original. And even the people described in the novel, even the ones the author does not give too many paragraphs to, seem drawn--and drawn well--from real life. No effort is made to mask the grim situation in Afghanistan and this honesty only adds to this book's worth. Not a groundbreaking work of fiction, this, but well worth your time.