Life and Death Holiday in Sardinia
- Book: Blindsided
- Location: Sardinia (Sardegna)
- Author: Julian Edge
Ralph and Clare arrive in Sardinia late in the day to begin a holiday and, maybe, make some progress on personal and professional projects. There’s confusion at the car rental counter, and after a bit of back and forth with the clerk and the couple behind them in line, they end up taking the last available vehicle – the four of them together – with a plan to sort it all out in the morning. However, the next day, having established a tentative friendship with the other couple – in the manner of improvised camaraderie when one is abroad – the four set off together to share a road trip and bit of an unexpected adventure. However, all is not as it seems, and after a series of increasingly strange events and even stranger revelations, Ralph finds himself caught in the crossfire between cops and terrorists.
The novel is propulsive, a confident and creative tale with a dark, brooding undertone. The plot is compelling, in spite of (or, more likely, because of) the fact that this is just the sort of thing that might happen to anyone as the result of an honest gesture of good will and flexibility – the generous impulse of the moment gone horribly wrong. The characters are engaging, and the exchanges among the four very different people crackle with wit and concealed meaning. The story plunges precipitously toward the final scenes and the central mystery is not resolved until the last page.
The author has done his homework. Sardinia and its ancient civilization of the Nuragi emerge as central characters in the novel. And the tortured history of the Mediterranean, with colonial atrocities and bloody resistance, provides background and motive for what might otherwise seem like gratuitous violence. Like an anthropologist engaged in fieldwork, Edge moves his protagonists from site to site to convey a textured understanding of place and the complexities of history that constitute the background and context of the narrative. The wild beauty of Sardinia, and the brooding monuments of the Nuragi lend atmospheric tensions to the action.
The four principals are equally intriguing and each has his or her time in the spotlight, but it is the narrator Ralph who commands our attention as he struggles to negotiate both his understanding of his relationship to the others and his grasp of the increasingly complex and potentially dangerous events that seem to be unfolding willy-nilly in front of him. He stumbles along, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt except himself, as one surprise follows another, and the reader struggles to keep up. At the end of the book, one can be forgiven for staring silently out the window before re-entering reality.
Blindsided is a novel about the complex process of coming to judgment, of bringing order and partial clarity to the daily confusions of life, love, and commitment. In confronting his own failings, Ralph is also obliged to take a hard look at the forces that have shaped his life and, ultimately, his own sense of self.
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