Angela Koenig

Angela Koenig’s second novel in her Refractions series, Rendezvous in the Himalaya, is as beautifully written as her first, her debut novel, Rebellion in Ulster.

In Rebellion, set in the 1980s, the British suspect Geraldine (“Jeri”) O’Donnell, an Irish-American lesbian Rhodes scholar at Oxford, is a member of the Irish Republican Army. After they wrongfully imprison and mistreat her, she joins the IRA and becomes a valuable asset.

I said this in my review of Rebellion: “I greatly admire Koenig’s portrayal of Jeri as intelligent, physically attractive, South Boston tough—and tragically conflicted. In all her assignments Jeri questions what the IRA leaders ask her to do. She’s especially reluctant to cause death or serious injury to those on either side who are caught up in the violent struggle but are otherwise innocent.”

In Rendezvous, set in the early 1990s, Jeri has fled Northern Ireland. She’s working to deliver a high-ranking Brit, Louise Bolingbrook, to a meeting with a dissident monk in Tibet. Jeri accordingly needs to fight off the British SAS (Special Air Service), which seeks revenge, as well as the Chinese army.

In Nepal she saves the life of Kelly Corcoran, an American tourist mourning the deaths of her gay brother, his lover and their friend due to AIDS.

The story of Jeri and Kelly is the story of this book.

Jeri knows she can’t let herself fall in love with Kelly. Jeri would be taking an innocent person into her world, where she’s “an outlaw, a fugitive, hunted, constantly in peril.”

Jeri attempts to push Kelly out of her life, but Kelly delightfully pushes back. That’s the conflict at the heart of Rendezvous in the Himalaya.

I’ll let Koenig’s writing speak for itself:

“In the beginning Billy was like a rich dessert , nice in small amounts, but when AIDS arrived with all its desolating reality, Billy’s humor became more like rain in a parched and arid land.”

“Power. Who can take and who can hold,” Tashi said, staring into the fire. “Then those people who win tell any story they want about why a land must be theirs.”… (lisätietoja)

Angela Koenig deals with serious matters in her beautifully written debut novel, Rebellion in Ulster. In the Eighties when Margaret Thatcher ruled Northern Ireland from London, Geraldine (“Jeri”) O’Donnell, an Irish-American lesbian Rhodes scholar at Oxford finds herself held without being charged in a Northern Ireland prison for women.

The authorities suspect she might be a member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, due to the attempt of her Irish cousin, Fiona, and the cousin’s boyfriend to use the car Jeri had rented for a sight-seeing drive to smuggle explosives into Northern Ireland. Fiona hadn’t informed Jeri that the boyfriend secreted the explosives in the car. But if Jeri had known, would she have consented to the smuggling attempt, which ended with the shooting deaths of Fiona and her friend and Jeri’s imprisonment?

The two leaders of the IRA women prisoners attempt to recruit Jeri. They impose their own authority in the prison, in one case brutally punishing a bully prisoner for attempting to maim Jeri. A mysterious older woman, Arkadia O’Malley, who becomes Jeri’s best friend but refuses to be her lover, believes Jeri, an American, has no reason to involve herself in Northern Ireland’s “troubles.” Eventually, though, Jeri, resenting her mistreatment by the British and wishing to give some meaning to her cousin’s death, does join the IRA and soon becomes a valuable asset.

I greatly admire Koenig’s courageous portrayal of Jeri, during her three years in prison and after her sudden release, as intelligent, physically attractive, South Boston tough—and tragically conflicted. In all her assignments Jeri questions what the IRA leaders ask her to do. She’s especially reluctant to cause death or serious injury to those on either side who are caught up in the violent struggle but are otherwise innocent. One person’s remark that “good people always die in a war” fails to answer her questions—as it would my own.

Koenig wisely and vividly depicts all her characters as individuals. They don’t exist merely to advance her plot, which itself is a page-turning wonder, but to add complexity and reality in a world where no simple answers exist.

From the beginning to the end of this novel, Koenig’s writing is exquisite: “Her hair smelled like candlelight and rain, like parchment and cloves.” “She longed to be a strong sword flashing in sunlight, not a stealthy dagger striking in the night.” “A vision of a net that pulsed with currents of light . . . matched the world point for point. Everyone lived at a knotting that fixed one in time and place, yet one place was connected to all other places and nothing was separate.”

And consider this: “She wasn’t innocent. Explanation there might be, but all that mattered was that if she hadn’t brought the bomb, people who were now dead would be alive.”

I’ll never forget the story Angela Koenig told me in Rebellion in Ulster.… (lisätietoja)