On the troubled half-island of Haiti, love, power, and poverty collide, as do a tough Florida cop, a beautiful singer, politicians, and the United Nations post-2004 peacekeeping mission.
[T]his book’s depths reside in Mr. Berlinski’s rich portrait of a society, and his cool, probing writing about topics like sex, politics, journalism, race, class, agriculture, language and fear.
[T]oo often Haiti has been a stage for the kabuki performance of our good intentions, as well as a mirror reflecting the vanity of our exceptionalism, and it’s never a bad idea to look toward Haiti for a reality check on who we are in the world. Peacekeeping in that sense, is a welcome bearer of enlightenment and a raw reminder of the limits of empathy.
This is writing of a high order, and Berlinski demonstrates a continuous awareness of those heights—his conventionalities are superior to many writers’ originalities. Still, Peacekeeping like Berlinski’s first novel, is a very traditional book, in conception and form, and it unwittingly advertises the exploratory limits of a certain kind of conventional realism.
