I've begun working through a stack of books sharing in common the theme of personal secrets which lead to or conceal political disturbances, with violent repercussions.

Peter Carey's His Illegal Self traces the path of a little boy born to radicals in 1965, but "rescued" by his grandmother who wishes to raise him respectably. When he's seven, his mother shows up, takes him back, and leads him into the revolutionary maelstrom of her life.

My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru is about a man who also participated in that era's movements but left the struggle and thirty years later has a chance encounter that awakens buried memories and feelings of failure.

Surveillance by Jonathan Raban and A Person of Interest by Susan Choi both begin with explosions, but the first book explores a society that is swept into a culture of fear and suspicion; and the second focuses on a professor whose office neighbors that of a mail-bomb recipient, and whose social withdrawal and emotional introversion puts him on the list of suspects.

Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist shortlisted for The Man Booker Prize this past round and is narrated by a Princeton-educated Pakistani immigrant to the United States whose values and perspective are questioned after September 11th, as he himself is also led to reexamine them. Briefly, it does not make the United States look particularly good; but it is also a worthy exploration of the development of one human's psyche.

So these are the books that I'm beginning or trying to finish, and I expect to give more in depth accounts of this theme next week, but I will conclude today with an assessment and praise of Valerie Martin's extremely compelling, most recent book, Trespass.

Like a seed planted at the beginning of the book, one small interaction develops and grows in a multitude of directions, with a multitude of repercussions. The reader becomes aware over time that it is not only this one relationship under the lens of microscopic examination, but all of the tangled webs of interaction.

Chloe is the mother of a young man who has fallen in love with a fellow student from Croatia. In her awkward maternal way, she is jealous, supportive, competitive, embracing, but most of all suspicious of this new woman in her young son's life. As middle-class liberal, she judges herself for not being more accepting of this child of a war, who has lost her own mother and has grown up with such a different outlook on the world from her own. It is apparent that Salome is NOT going to be the daughter that Chloe wished to find in a daughter-in-law, nor does Salome appear to want Chloe to be the mother that she lost when her family fled to the United States.

Through the course of the novel, we are introduced to Salome's family history, and begin to learn who her mother was, what her family's war-torn experience and flight entailed, learning more than Salome knows herself, but implying through the mentioning that perhaps Salome nonetheless carries more in her blood heritage and her emotions than her self-knowledge allows.

In addition, another trespasser and interloper that Chloe encounters complicates her interactions with Salome - a Basque poacher in the woods behind the family property appears repeatedly at stress-filled moments. With these uncontrollable human interactions heightening the dramatic tension, taking the reader in unexpected directions, Trespass is extremely adept at recreating the complicated relationships that can emerge in spite of efforts to shield oneself from the emotional vicissitudes and violent conflicts of life - in a rural village in Croatia, the mountains of the separatist Basque region, or a wooded retreat in upstate New York.

I'll fill more in on the others later, so until then Valerie Martin's Trespass is $25.00 (0385523424, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) and we may still have a few autographed copies.

- Andrew Getman