Really enjoyed readingThe Apologist by Jay Rayner. It's got almost everything a middle-aged, middle-class, career-changing curmudgeon facing a mid-life crisis could want. Plus it is about a restaurant reviewer turned international diplomat, which in a more dramatic and much bigger way, paralleled some of the smaller changes in my own life.
And the theme is at once comical and serious, which I ususally enjoy (sort of like David Lodge novels). Not going to spoil the plot, but here's an excerpt, reflecting a high a level of insight about some of the pitfalls international diplomacy:
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Max Olson, after describing Willy Brandt apologizing in December 1970 at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial, on his knees,
"This is our man, Marc, poster boy for the penitential Engagement crew. There"s not been a gesture like it since."
"Not even Clinton in Kigali in 1996?"
He turned and fixed me with an amused, fatherly grin. "You’ve been doing some reading?"
A little, I said. My office had prepared a few briefing papers for me and I had tried to read as much of them as I could. There had been one on Bill Clinton’s trip to Rwanda, while still president, to apologize for the world’s failure to intervene in the Rwandan genocide.
Max sniffed the air, irritably. "Shall I tell you something about Clinton at Kigali, Marc? Shall I?" He wasn’t lookin for an answer, but I nodded all the same. "You know he was only there for two hours?" I nodded again. "And that he never left the airfield?"
"There were security concerns and…"
"The engines on Air Force One were never turned off," he said, enunciating every syllable, so I didn’t miss the point. "All the time Billy Boy is on the tarmac, wearing his bleeding heart on his sleeve and saying his wise words about the one million dead who aren’ t there to hear him, there are four Rolls-Royce engines back there, all powered up and ready to go." He took a final drag on his cigarette, then dropped it and ground it under the toe of his shoe. "If you go round in the car to say sorry to a neighbour, it is always good to turn off the engine. Just for a minute, at least. Don’t you think?"
I nodded wisely again. "No, Marc," he said, pointing up to the image in front of us, "this is your man." He walked over to me, placed a hand on my shoulder and together we studied the gargantuan picture. "I just wanted Willy Brandt and the heir to his legacy to spend a little time together."