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NewCenturyReading.com -- December 12, 2004 --by
Amy C. Rea -- Timely, yet timeless... an eye-opening book for
readers far removed from [the Middle East], who only see it through
news accounts or on TV... She never takes the easy answer nor allows
her characters to fall into stereotypes. These are people who have
become the adults they are because of what they experienced both as
children and as adults. In a brief and touching scene, we see how
Caddie became so self-reliant and detached:
“She remembers the hard bread on her tongue, the heat of gathered
bodies, and Grandma Jos leaning close, smelling of Ivory soap and
talcum and mint tea...
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iVillage recommendation, December 2004 -- The
Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton --
The Basics: As a foreign correspondent for an American
newspaper covering the mayhem in Israel, Caddie Blair has to
constantly justify her existence. Why is she putting herself in
harm's way? Why does she chase after ambulances and bombs when most
people head in the other direction for safety? After she's ambushed
in Lebanon on her way to interview a terrorist...
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Rocky Mountain News, Dec. 27, 2004 -- The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton
-- Hamilton's novel is a compelling look at the emotional challenges
and psychological extremes of covering a war with a shifting front
line, as well as a convincing story of love and self-discovery. ...
A former war correspondent in the Middle East and Moscow, Hamilton
writes with the passion of someone who has witnessed firsthand the
religious and cultural complexities of the Palestinian-Israeli
conflict...
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San Diego Union-Tribune, December 5, 2004 --
The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton
-- In
The Distance Between Us, Masha Hamilton's searing novel set amid the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Caddie is a journalist drawn to explosive
violence like a moth to a flamethrower. She keeps getting singed from the
heat, but it cauterizes her flayed emotions. The book opens like a thriller:
A hired car packed with journalists en route to an interview with an
elusive Lebanese crime king...
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The Denver Post -- Sunday, November 07, 2004 --
By Steve Weinberg -- The Distance Between Us by Masha
Hamilton -- Excerpt from article review -- Hamilton knows the
geographic beauty and the unending blood feuds of the Middle East.
She knows it as a journalist (for The Associated Press and the Los
Angeles Times), she knows it as a resident - the sights, sounds,
smells of life and death seem to fill her every pore. In her
previous novel, "Staircase of a Thousand Steps," Hamilton paints a
word picture of an impoverished Arab world largely from the
perspective of Jordanian women. In "The Distance Between Us," her
second novel, Hamilton tells the horrifying yet touching saga of the
Middle East through the mind of Caddie Blair...
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MostlyFiction.com -- November 7, 2004 -- by
Jana Kraus -- THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US is an extraordinarily
powerful, beautifully crafted novel. Masha Hamilton's prose is, at
times, luminescent and lyrical, and at others, spare and almost
brutal in its honesty.She paints here a poignant portrait of a woman
facing a major crossroad in her life which will change her forever.
This novel is more a sensitive psycholocal study than a book with an
action driven plot. Catherine (Caddie) Blair is an American
journalist stationed in Jerusalem who has been covering the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years. She prizes her professional
detachment and shies away from anything that smacks of
sentimentality. It is important to keep...
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Christian Science Monitor -- November 02, 2004 --
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US by Masha Hamilton -- Unbridled Books,
279 pp., $24.95 -- The real cost of witnessing war for readers
back home -- The murder of a friend kills a reporter's objectivity
in the Middle East -- By Ron Charles -- When foreign
correspondents pass through our Boston newsroom, they radiate a kind
of Old World glamour. For us Walter Mittys who confront nothing more
dangerous than a jammed photocopier, the experiences of intrepid
reporters working in the world's hot spots are the stuff of
daydreams. But I also want to yell out, "Why on earth...
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Library Journal - October 2004 -- Hamilton, Masha.
The Distance Between Us -- Unbridled. Nov. 2004. c.304p. ISBN
1-932961-02-X. $24.95 -- Caddie Blair is a war correspondent in the
Middle East whose life is tragically changed in a single second. En
route to a high-level interview, she and her lover, Marcus, are
caught in an ambush; he catches a bullet and dies beside her.
Suddenly, the immunity that Caddie had built up to gunfire, tanks,
and corpses evaporates. Faced with survivor's guilt and the loss of
her journalistic detachment, Caddie must develop new defense
mechanisms to endure the violent world she has called home for
years...
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Publishers Weekly - Starred Review -- October 25,
2004 -- The Distance Between Us, Masha Hamilton -- Unbridled
Books (www.unbridledbooks.com), $24.95 (304p) ISBN 1-932961-02-X --
A foreign correspondent’s facade of emotional invincibility is
shattered by the death of a colleague in journalist Hamilton’s
sharply etched, emotionally ferocious second novel (after Staircase
of a Thousand Steps). Thirty-two-year-old Caddie Blair swears by
“measured closeness and a dose of dulled feelings,” but everything
changes after a stunning ambush on the way to an interview with a
Lebanese crime king leaves her lover, news photographer Marcus
Lancour, dead...
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Jerusalem Post -- October 19, 2004 -- The
Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton -- I approached this novel,
written by a veteran Middle East reporter and set in Israel during
the intifada, with some trepidation, expecting yet another critique
of Israel's moral stance. But Masha Hamilton's The Distance Between
Us does not take sides. Her subject is grief and the desire for
revenge, as experienced by a journalist whose colleague is killed.
Seasoned, disheveled and tough, Caddie Blair is a war correspondent
covering Israel during...
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Booklist - October 2004 -- Hamilton, Masha.-- The
Distance Between Us. -- Nov. 2004. 304p. Unbridled, $24.95
(1-932961-02-X). -- By Marta Segal -- War correspondent Caddie Blair
loves the excitement and energy of her post in Jerusalem. On her way
to an interview in Lebanon, Caddie and her colleagues are ambushed.
Her lover and photographer is killed. The surprising event leaves
Caddie wondering if she is somehow responsible for the tragedy. The
arrival of a mysterious Russian émigré, Goronsky, leaves Caddie more
unhinged...
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Midwest Book Review - August 2004 --
The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton -- ISBN 1-932961-02-X, 304 pages at 24.95 hardcover
-- Unnbridled Books -- Masha
Hamilton's prose has been described as graceful, luminous, and elegant. I
will add beguiling to that list. It seems appropriate that she now teaches
at the acclaimed Gotham Writers Workshop. Her past profession as journalist
in trouble spots around the world lends credence to this second book. The
Distance Between Us is believable, the characters multi-faceted, and the
plot engaging from first page to last.
Catherine"Caddie"Blair is a war correspondent covering Jerusalem. In that
part of the world, even the most peaceful inhabitants can be driven to
extremes of revenge...
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