Book Review: The White Mary by Kira Salak (without spoilers)

I don’t know if I can write this book review without spoilers. I am fairly bursting with ideas and things I want to say about this brilliant, brilliant first novel by travel/nature journalist Kira Salak. But all of those ideas have to do with advanced plot, character progression, choices – especially a particular one made by a certain character at the end of the novel that I have VERY STRONG feelings about – and, well, then there’s that ending.

Also, there’s this growing idea that I had last night that the protagonist – war journalist Marika Vecera – is our modern version of Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett. It’s quite intriguing, actually, but I’m afraid the discussion would be awfully spoilerific for those of you who haven’t read The White Mary. And while I do sometimes enjoy prattling on in order to hear (read?) the sound of my own voice, the point of my book reviews is to convince you to pick a book up (or not) and to go read it straight away (or not).  If I tell you everything that happens, your reading experience just won’t be the same.

And you should go read this book. At least, you should if you love writing. If you love strong, nuanced characters who smack of authenticity – despite being from different gender and cultural pools. If you love setting: Salak was called “the gutsiest woman adventurer of our day” by Book Magazine and not just for the sweeping motions she sets her characters to acting out. Salak is a real-life travel journalist for National Geographic Adventure magazine. She was the first known woman from a developed country to cross Papa New Guinea. This woman knows what she’s writing about and you can feel that in the setting of her novel.  If you love plot – or even if you love philosophical books that center more around intellectual debates. Salak somehow balances this book between adventurous plot and the roaring philosophical turmoil we debate with friends and ourselves about relationships, loss, religion, and the possibility (and cost) of redemption. Characters, plot, setting…what more could you ask for?

Passion? White Mary has it – and not in a bodice-ripping sense either. I mean in a ‘call your sister as soon as you’re through reading because ohmygod that was intense!’ sort of reading experience. While I was reading The White Mary, I was living for my lunch hours when I could curl up with my book, to find out what happened next. I spent my afternoons pondering what I would do in similar situations and marveling over how realistic everything seemed, from the far-fetched adventure that sets the novel in motion to the absolute pitch-perfect ending that was both down-to-the-toes satisfying and left me aching for something different. (Even though I knew that any other course of action would have been the first time the characters lost their incredible fidelity to self that they employed all the way through.) Clearly Salak cared about her novel and believed in every scene she created…except for one point where I think Salak lost her voice for just one scene, which I think is obviously because it was the only point she disagreed with the actions of her characters. But I’m not allowed to talk about that yet, am I? Ahem. As I was saying, such intensity in a novel can only come across if it flows directly from the author’s fingers.

So go. Go read The White Mary. Find out why the dedicated young war journalist Marika Vecera abandons everything – her first serious relationship, her next overseas reporting assignment, and the biography she’s writing about the recently deceased war correspondent whom she idolized – in order to trek through the life-threatening jungle of Papa New Guinea to investigate claims that the man she idolized is not really dead. Go explore the novel…and then come back here and talk. There’s so much I want to discuss.

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Tags: book review, contemporary fiction, literature, reading