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 What you get here is great storytelling, a diverse collection of interesting characters, Leonard’s trademark prose which is idiomatic and innovatory and honey-flowing (by which I mean very readable, euphoria-inducing, addictive almost; all of these at once). Who else can tell a story by letting you know how he’s telling a story?
Reviewed by P.P.O. Kane
Djibouti
By Elmore Leonard
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, February 2011
ISBN-13 Number: 9780297856726
All Elmore Leonard’s novels are westerns – it’s just a fact – and so the subtitle of this one – ‘a middle east western on water’ – is a teensy-weensy bit redundant.
Since the US government has seen fit to offer a reward for various terrorists’ heads, Leonard is able to get that good old fugitive/bounty hunter/vigilante/frontier law trope up and running once more. And he writes this kind of stuff better than anyone.
Djibouti is a novel about Somali pirates and an al Qaeda plot to use an oil tanker as a fire bomb when it docks into an American port. But mainly it is about a man who loves a woman and surrenders to her (this guy’s called Xavier) and another one who takes a different path; Jama is and remains a killer and a user, and he’s a pretty good one at that.
This concern with love and openness and commitment and acceptance of vulnerability (and their opposites) has been a staple of Leonard’s work for a while now, maybe since the start. And, again, he writes this kind of stuff better than anyone. He also writes terrific women characters and Dara and Helene here are at least on a par with the great Jackie Brown. Another Leonard staple is his wonder at why women like or even love men, how come they put up with or even have affection for us sorry bastards. No, I don’t know why either.
What you get here is great storytelling, a diverse collection of interesting characters, Leonard’s trademark prose which is idiomatic and innovatory and honey-flowing (by which I mean very readable, euphoria-inducing, addictive almost; all of these at once). Who else can tell a story by letting you know how he’s telling a story?
Djibouti is an incendiary read.
About the reviewer: P.P.O. Kane lives and works in Manchester, England. He welcomes responses to his reviews and you can reach him at ludic@europe.com
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