Huh… I never thought of Doug not making it. More likely it is as Poornima says, that Doug made it in and out without consequence, again.

The ending is quite interesting because there is a lot to wonder about. Not just Doug’s involvement with Umm Qasr, but with his dreams and sightings of Nate.

I get the feeling that I liked the book a lot more than Kirstin did but less than Judi. I didn’t think anybody soured as the action went along–I just thought it all made more sense (you could see where everyone was coming from). Even if people are nasty, as long as I can understand where they’re coming from, I’m okay with it.

Judi, you’re right about Charlotte — at times I felt like she was giving voice to my thoughts!!

Poornima

Are you still thinking of writing a review, Judi? It would be great to read more detail about your thoughts on this complex novel.

“There were documents a computer in the offices of the oil depot at Umm Qasr and someone wanted them secured.”

Now that I’m at the end again, I realize that one motivation for re-reading was to make sense of this ending! My guess is that the papers might have something to do with Prince Abdul-Aziz Hafar’s visit to New York during the private bailout of Union Atlantic. Maybe, it was to make sure that the Iraqi involvement in our banking system remained unknown?

What do you think?

I think this will become one of my top reads for the year. I like the book a lot.. I like how Haslett has chronicled the times. I don’t like much about our current state so I guess I don’t expect to like the people that have made the decisions to get us here. So for me it is neither here nor there that I like these characters. But I do feel for them. And I do find the story compelling… even the second time. There are so many thoughts and observations that are so spot on. I will say that I do seem to have more sympathy for the characters on the second read than I did on the first. Especially Charlotte. I see just how off-center she is. But I also see her as a metaphor for the liberals/democrats.

But you ask if the conclusion meets with my approval.. and that I don’t have an answer for yet. I mean I don’t like that Doug has an out but I do find it credible – why wouldn’t he have a way out? What I’m still struggling with the meaning of his last dreams involving both Nate and his mother — and thus I’m reading their whole relationship much more closely this second time. But let me finish the second read and I’ll answer this question again. If I get real ambitious I’ll write a review.

So, what did you decide in the end? I’m dying to know whether you continued to like it as much or whether your views of the characters changed (soured?) and whether the conclusion met with your approval….

After all the news headlines, I imagined it would be very easy to hate Doug Fanning and I very often did. But I do believe that at the end, he comes across as a person with his own motivations. Sure those motivations are greed and avarice but he definitely didn’t come across as caricature–not to me.