The End of Manners
A Novel
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Maria Galante and Imo Glass are on assignment in Afghanistan: outgoing Imo to interview girls who have attempted suicide to avoid forced marriage to older men; and shy, perfectionist Maria to photograph them. But in a culture in which women shroud their faces and suicide is a grave taboo, to photograph these women puts everyone in danger. Before the assignment is over, Maria is forced to decide if it's more important to succeed at her work —and please Imo—or to follow her own moral compass. The End of Manners is a story of friendship and loyalty, of the transformative power of journeying outside oneself into the wider world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Marciano's brisk third novel (after Rules of the Wild and Casa Rossa), an unlikely pair of women are dispatched to war-torn Afghanistan circa 2004 to report a story about young Afghan women attempting suicide rather than entering into arranged marriages. Imo Glass is a flamboyant magazine writer who wants the story no matter what societal taboos she tramples. Maria Galante, an award-winning but emotionally withdrawn photojournalist, has forsaken dangerous assignments to take pictures of fancy food for fancy magazines, until her agent persuades her to take this job. With a fluid mix of gritty irony and palpable fear, Marciano's evocation of landscape and environment brilliantly captures a devastated Kabul, a messy war and the soulless arms dealers and cold-blooded mercenaries drawn to the fractured nation by the lure of money. Equally intense is her compassionate depiction of a culture where taking photos of women is forbidden and religious doctrine dictates the way of life in "a world of a far greater insanity" than Maria, for one, had envisioned. This work of fiction, rooted in harsh reality, tackles moral complexities with powerful self-assurance.
