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BOSPHORUS Jan 30, 2009
By Vanessa
"McMahon"
BOSPHORUS, by Vanessa K McMahon
A Review
By Harold M. Bergsma, Award winning Author of the trilogy:
One Way to Pakistan, An Oath of Vengeance and The Opium Eaters
Jan.9th , 2009, San Diego
The metaphor of this work of fiction, Bosphorus is apt; a narrow sea or strait between two seas. The author, Vanessa McMahon uses this geographical entity to focus the reader on the narrows that exist in the personal-sexual, the philosophical-religious and the cultural- racial realities of four young college friends whose very differences pulls and pushes their friendships and sexual relationships through stormy straits of belief and tradition.
The names of the characters bespeak their origins and orientations. Abu Hamid, Delphi O'Connor, Sabina Chagas and Jacob Stiller's close friendship and intimate associations in an American collegiate setting tie them with new friendship bonds, yet reveal the difficult problems each will face as they sort out their personal lives and philosophies, their religious views in very different secular and sensual environments. One case in point is Abu Hamid, a Muslim who not only imbibes the Western academic and cultural environment, but tries to swim through the rough sea of a sexual relationship that tugs him emotionally, but not sufficiently to abandon the realities of family choice for his mate in a traditional conservative religious Muslim environment back home which he is unable to abandon. He plays the western game with a traditional eastern rule book.
The author adeptly portrays each of the characters using first person narration for each of their stories. There is no doubt that the author herself has not only delved deeply into the religious and philosophical systems she portrays through her characters, but the reader becomes very aware of the amount of descriptive detail of the various geographical locations where she places her characters. For this reader, it was at times as if a detailed travel diary of the writer was transposed onto her characters, providing rich and insightful historical and cultural information that goes far beyond the normal passage travelers undergo as they move from country to country. Bosphorus, the narrows, thus, for this reader became the metaphor not only for the writer's characters, but for the writer herself whose struggle with cosmological and ethical issues was apparent as she entered into the lives and cultural settings of her characters.
A note about style. This is an unusual first fictional work in that it utilizes what appear to be autobiographical accounts of its characters. The author links her actors well through detailed narrations of their shared incidents and their opposing cultural and ethical systems. This reader was impressed by the ability of the writer to draw a portrait of a microcosm of a secular and highly sexy youth culture microcosm using dialogue and prose that may be unfamiliar to many more senior readers. Thus the book itself plowed through the narrows of age-set perceptions for this reader.
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