Due Preparations for the Plague

This review is for the W. W. Norton & Company hardcover first edition published in July 2003, 401 pages. This edition does not have a reader's guide. DUE PREPARATIONS FOR THE PLAGUE is Janette Turner Hospital's tenth novel. She also has published five collections of stories. This is a literary spy thriller about the hijacking of Air France flight 64 bound for New York from Paris in September 1987. The narrative present, however, begins in September 2000 and focuses on two persons whose parent or parents died during the tragedy. The story has suspense, intrigue, CIA agents, spies, code names, Arab terrorists, and technological revelation consistent with the thriller genre. But unlike most thriller novels, it does not have a larger than life superhero/heroine, it does not require leaps of faith, and the plot does not terminate in the ridiculous or sublime. This well written novel is both character and plot driven. For the first time in about fifty reviews that I've submitted, I just read the other customer reviews before finishing mine. Interesting. It appears that those who have tired of the thriller genre, which is gravitating towards formulaic ridiculousness before blissful ending, rate this puppy four or five stars, whereas fans of the genre, nauseated by literary aspects, upchuck two or three. And there is one reader who finds the melding of genre and literary a blasphemous sacrilege, as ignominious as interracial marriage. I've two observations for the undecided. Many with an MFA in writing soak their stories in sensory detail, use pages to describe their settings with perfumed words, interrupt dialogue with a symphony of gestures. Janette Turner Hospital is not one of those. Her writing snaps, crackles and pops; it is explicit and purposeful. She tells a story. On the other hand, Ms. Hospital loaded this one with classical references. The quotations preceding sections are not a bother; read them or skip them. It's the stuff within the story, the analogies and metaphors drawn from the multitude of literature that I've not read that embarrassed me. So I looked them up. Daedalus and Icarus, Scipio and Polybius are from Greek mythology, as is Odysseus and the sorceress Circe. "Bloweth where it listeth" is from the bible (Jon iii 8). Yorick's skull is from Hamlet. Iseult, who fell in love with Tristan, is medieval legend, but Baal Shem Tov, the legendary rabbi, lived from 1698 to 1760. Oh, the Lorenz discovery refers to Edward Lorenz's Chaos Theory about the weather. The four horsemen of death ride in from Apocalypse. Shiva is an Indian god. Kalidasa wrote Cloud Messenger, an Indian love poem. Decameron is the first work of Tuscan literature, which Boccaccio wrote during the plague about the plague. Notwithstanding, it's a five star read.

This latest by Ms. Hospital may not be as good as OYSTER, but it certainly compares well with any of the works of her contemporaries. Obviously influenced by the events of September 11, 2001-- as well as other cases of international terrorism-- the author has written an intriguing tale of espionage that will keep you reading. An Air France flight 64 was highjacked in September 1987. The hijackers let the 40 children leave the plane but all the adults on the flight perished-- or did they? Ms. Hospital introduces a number of characters, all of them connected in some way with the doomed flight and thus connected to each other: the surviving children, other relatives, friends, professionals et al. The time sequence begins in 2000, 13 years after the hijacking, and goes back and forth to before the 1987 date. I kept thinking, while reading this page-turner, that the writer had the movies in mind when she wrote this-- and that is not a criticism of the novel. I had difficulty casting the movie although surely Harrison Ford should have some role, if he is not too old to play Lowell Hawthorne. Ashley Judd might work as the character Lou, since they are both Southerners. If it's well directed and has the right actors, the movie will be a winner. Ms. Hospital writes about thorny subjects: how far a democratic nation (U. S.) will go or what measures its goverment will take in order to destroy an enemy terrorist cell? Or how much "collateral damage" is too much? But she writes of hopeful themes as well: in spite of the universality of governmental coverups, that the truth will endure. And finally "the dead never stop telling us stories"-- and in a moving scene near the end of the novel as they sit in a cemetery, the character Lou tells another character Samantha that "the dead never leave us." Ms. Hospital divides her novel into eight books. Each section begins with pertinent quotations from other writers: Shakespeare, Camus, Lewis Carroll, Daniel Defoe et al. With the exception of an ending that I found a tad contrived and really not necessary, this novel is as good as a psychological thriller gets.

A serious and emotional novel, with intelligent narrative. This is the thinking person's spy novel. It's realistic and exciting, but also packs a strong emotional punch. Events in this novel sweep like a machette through the characters' lives and unforgivingly shatter their worlds. Less than 15 pages into the novel I started to weep, I think more from shock at how much this novel was able to engage me so immediately.

Albert Camus wrote, "There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise." "Due Preparations For The Plague" centers on an incident as terrible as a war or plague, and as surprising, for hundreds of people. A terrorist group, The Black Death, hijacked Air France Flight 64 to New York in September, 1987. During the five day period of negotiations between the terrorists and various governments' officials, the children on the plane were released and held in safety, waiting for the inevitable outcome, and longing for their parents' safe return. The reunion never took place and all remaining passengers met a horrific death. Thanks to the miracle of TV, the children were exposed to it all in living color. Needless to say, they were scarred for life by the events of this period, as they would have been marked by the scars of a terrible plague or a war.Many of these surviving children have stayed in touch with each other over the years, seeking emotional support and comfort. They maintain a website on which they request information concerning the doomed flight, even though much of the information is classified. They all suffer psychological traumas and an obsession with the tragedy. Two of the survivors in particular, Samantha and Lowell, attempt to piece together the events leading up to the hijacking. As they do so, many of the key passengers' stories are revealed. Espionage, politics, betrayal, and love affairs all play their part in the convoluted web of Flight 64 and its demise. It is a web that links together, forever, the passengers and their families.Janette Turner Hospital explores a terrorist incident, government cover-ups, the moral implications of collateral damage when weighed against "the good of the nation," and the dangers involved when choosing the lesser of many evils. The novel is filled with believable clandestine plots and double-crosses. The narrative spirals back and forward in time, disorienting the reader, as the characters are disoriented, weaving past and present together in the search for the truth.Ms. Turner Hospital illustrates her storyline with highly effective historical and literary allusions, quoting Daniel Defoe, Albert Camus, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, the Book of Job, Boccaccio, and Shakespeare, among others. She is a writer of consummate craft and writes with a lyrical style and intensity that bring acts of terrible cruelty, as well as those of great love and courage, to the reader's doorstep. She asks how one prepares for death. And how does one live with survival?"Due Preparations For The Plague" is an extraordinary psychological thriller...and more. One of the characters muses at the novel's end, "How do we ready ourselves for what might happen tomorrow? What possible preparations can be made?" In the days, months and years following September 11, 2001, this entire theme is horrifyingly relevant.JANA

I was unprepared for the impact of this riveting novel, defined by psychological tensions and a complicated plot, which presents a deceptively simple story. A number of young children are released from a hijacked Air France flight, although their parents meet a horrible death at the hands of terrorists, the children's lives forever tainted by what they have witnessed. But there is a subplot that implicates the government, notably the CIA, in the manipulation of information that led to the deaths of those on the flight. Over the years, the surviving children keep in close contact, desperately seeking emotional connections. They create a web site, where they request any information regarding the Air France hijacking incident.Of the surviving children, Samantha is the most driven, unable to cease her relentless quest for answers. None of the children have attained normalcy, the devastation of early trauma marking each facet of their lives. Samantha has been phoning Lowell continuously, in search of yet another detail, as he lost his mother in the tragedy, but was not on the plane. Lowell, an ineffectual husband and father, tormented by nightmares, is the son of a suspected CIA operative in charge of Operation Black Death, code-named Salamander. Lowell is unaware of his father's part in the government cover-up, having spent years believing himself a disappointment to an emotionally distant father. But when Lowell receives a package from his father, recently killed in a car accident, the contents change his perspective and raise serious questions of personal responsibility.When Lowell finally contacts Samantha, he is in a panic, afraid he is pursued because of the material now in his possession. Unsure whether they are paranoid about the surveillance, Samantha and Lowell secretly meet to review Lowell's contraband, faced with a difficult decision, balancing the explosive information and their desire for survival. There are a number of inexplicable coincidences, people who have known each other in distant places and circumstances brought together on the fateful flight. Both Sam and Lowell discover that some of their relatives are associated with the puzzle, although only tangentially. Due Preparations for the Plague is a bold examination of an incident of terrorism and the subsequent obfuscation of facts by the CIA. The unacknowledged, clandestine operations of a government engaged in a different kind of war, deliberately invisible, albeit just as deadly, exists after all, unremarked by most. When evil is perpetrated in pursuit of power, there are those who seek to contain that evil, to balance the potential for destruction. But history is rife with examples of failure. In consorting with the worst of mankind, contamination by association is inevitable, small surrenders that deplete good intentions, until there is only the lesser evil and a decision to sustain collateral damage is made by the few for the many.Yet there is redemption for Sam and Lowell,