Book Review: TWO NIGHTS IN LISBON

Title: Two Nights in Lisbon

Author: Chris Pavone
Publisher: MCD
Pages: 450
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 

International thrillers with spies at the centre are all too common. But one affecting a single mother, newly married, while on a trip to another continent where she doesn’t know the local language, promised non-stop action and excitement.

Ariel Pryce wakes up in her hotel room in Lisbon, the morning after a night of passion, to find her new husband, John Wright, gone. Still harbouring doubts about her second marriage to a much younger man, her worries turn to panic.

The local police in Lisbon think it’s too early to consider him missing. The embassy won’t take her seriously. He’s not in any hospital either.

As the day wears on, Ariel is beside herself with worry. And then she learns that her husband has been kidnapped, and that the kidnappers want three million euros as ransom. Ariel doesn’t have so much money. But there is one door she can knock on. A man in the US, over whom she has leverage. He must either pay the ransom or rescue her husband or prepare for destruction as she reveals all.

Will the ploy serve to bring back her husband? Or will she lose him anyway?

 

The book is written in a mix of tenses. The narrative is presented to us at various points through the day. While the bulk of the narrative is set in Lisbon, we also get snippets of Ariel’s life in the US, past and present.

The narrative is divided into five parts: The Disappearance, The Kidnapping, The Ransom, The Escape and The Payoff. The author tosses us from one character to another, giving us the chance to learn their truths and lies, as the search for John gets underway.

Little by little, we learn more about Ariel, her habits, her past. She doesn’t, it appears, know her husband all that well. At the same time, we learn that we too have a lot to learn about her. And we learn those things as the CIA, the embassy and the reporter all tear down the persona she has so carefully put together.

 

Even the minor characters feel real. There’s Kayla Jefferson and Guido Antonucci of the CIA, and Pete Wagstaff, the reporter in Lisbon. Guido is a relic of the past, like his name which might be recycled, freshened up with a sheen of irony.

The writing is sharp and insightful, the metaphors heightening the reading experience. Sentences of uneven length keep us riveted.

Here’s a sample:

As if the mere fact that something is traditional makes it admirable, or defensible. The same exact justification has been used for pretty much all the injustice in the history of the world. We in India are suffering the insidious, corrosive effects of the government’s insistence on fetishizing tradition.

Everybody becomes respectable, sooner or later. Unless they go to jail. Or die.

Sometimes what looks like panic is really rational self-preservation.

You want to believe that there’s only one reality and that we all share it.

The descriptions of people, more judgmental than physical, were my favourite. A platinum-level jackass who sprayed venom like a lawn sprinkler, drenching everything in his toxic masculinity.

A giant pickup is [like a schoolyard bully.

About millennials, Her generation’s default was irony.

These traits that we admire and envy – youth and beauty and privilege – these are not accomplishments.

Fanatic, dogmatic dedication to your community is not what makes anyone a good person.

There’s a delicious sense of irony and plainspeak as when we learn that Ariel’s new baby didn’t come with any instructions, but her electric toothbrush came with a 32-page booklet, and about the lexicon of grievance so popular in the world today.

The description of life, as realized by Ariel, realizing again and again how wrong you used to be.

I reserve my biggest chunk of appreciation for the omniscient narrator who knows such things that women’s faces harden instinctively to dissuade the male gaze. At the end of Part II there was a section on how gaslighting works, written in such crisp prose that it clawed at my heart. The narrator seemingly enters the minds of dogs and kids with equal felicity.

I loved the smattering of Portuguese, rooting the book in Lisbon. The author helps us settle into the locale, giving us a feel of the charms of the city, its buildings and people, the heat of the city, the crazy driving.

I enjoyed this book as much for the story as for the writing. 

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.)