City of Secrets [is] a little jewel, wonderfully sparse, moody and uneasy, reminiscent of the delicious, frayed-collar noir of le Carré’s The Spy Who Came In From the Cold ... You can smell the squally desert wind that bends the cypress trees on the Jerusalem hills but never brings the rain. City of Secrets makes for great summer reading.
...[a] biting, bruising, achingly sad historical novel...City of Secrets is, by inclination and design, quiet and finite, but its impact is deceptively large because O’Nan (“West of Sunset,” “Emily, Alone”) has something that can’t be taught to a writer — and can indeed be unlearned by talented writers: the gift of authenticity. You’ll rarely catch O’Nan being an author. You’ll simply feel his story rolling past you, in the manner of an old Peugeot.
As in any good mystery, the third-person narrator knows more than he lets on; much is hinted and suggested, little is spelled out. The style is spare but pictorial. O’Nan’s historical and topographical research is impressive — the streets, monuments, city gates, even the swallows and the desert wind, the khamsin, are meticulously named. It’s a fine piece of storytelling. I have to say, however, that I did not fully buy Brand as a young Latvian.
Sometimes feeling a little lost is a good thing. I confess that through much of my reading of Stewart O’Nan’s new novel, City of Secrets, that’s how I felt: a bit lost, but also quite content. I did not completely understand the setting and events of the book, but I felt confident in Mr. O’Nan’s words, always clear and illuminating about the human condition.
This slim, relevant novel, O'Nan's 16th, may be one of his best. Its strength lies in his ability, as always, to take us inside the minds and souls of characters, real or imagined...Through Brand's powerful story, we are forced to feel the weight of the sorrow of generations. O'Nan, writing of the past as he evokes the present, reminds us terrorism is as old as it is new.
Centered on one survivor of the camps, Brand, a man who’s stateless and romantically adrift, it evokes austere postwar existentialist literature. And in its no-nonsense portraits of femme fatales and double-crossers, it could pass at times for a Raymond Chandler novel...What O’Nan is counting on — and rightly so — is that this will all feel alive and current for readers regardless.
...no one is safe in City of Secrets, Stewart O’Nan’s biting, bruising, achingly sad historical novel ... City of Secrets is, by inclination and design, quiet and finite, but its impact is deceptively large because O’Nan has something that can’t be taught to a writer — and can indeed be unlearned by talented writers: the gift of authenticity. You’ll rarely catch O’Nan being an author. You’ll simply feel his story rolling past you ... The beauty of City of Secrets is that it insists on Brand’s ordinariness without ever erasing his complications.
Prolific, versatile, and ridiculously talented, O’Nan is no stranger to historical fiction; previous novels include a World War II homefront story (A World Away) and West of Sunset, a brilliant take on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s troubled final years. Now, with this slim but complex book, O’Nan takes a clear-eyed and unsentimental look at an astonishing slice of history — one that is strikingly echoed by the heartbreaking events still unfolding in the Middle East.
The writing, like the plot, is stripped back and muted in a way that parallels Brand’s alienation. At times reading the book can leave the reader feeling like Brand, blindfolded and in the back of a car, driving who knows where. We don’t know what’s coming, we can’t see the characters and plots beyond this one, and that experience helps give the novel meaning...City of Secrets is a short, slow burn of a novel that, in a way, affects the reader more like a short story. It pulls you in just in time to make you care, then quickly sends you back out to the world a little bit wiser.
