‘Nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses, let alone publish it,’ the writer Hanif Kureishi told a journalist in 2009. Salman Rushdie’s notorious novel, like Kureishi’s figure of speech, is indeed looking like a relic of a bygone time. When it was published 31 years ago, the global furore was unprecedented. There were protests, book-burnings and riots. Iran’s leader Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Rushdie, a bounty was placed on his head, and there were murders, attempted and successful, of supporters, publishers and translators. The author spent years in hiding.
Three decades later, the novel remains in print, widely available, and the author walks about a largely free man. But if the skirmish over The Satanic Verses was won, a larger battle might have been lost. Who now would dare to write a provocative fiction exploring the origins of Islam? The social and political aspects of the Rushdie affair obscured one of the key ideas at stake: can someone from a Muslim background take material from the life of the prophet Muhammad to compose an innovative, irreverent and resolutely godless work of fiction?
A car stops on a hilltop. A man gets out. He walks a few paces and stands at the ridge. The desert valley stretches to Scissors Crossing, where tiny armies of migrants and drug mules once slipped through box canyons in summer swelter and winter frost. They don’t come so much anymore, but when the man sees them he thinks of night whispers and lost things.
He scans south toward Mexico and then to the Santa Ana Mountains. Clouds clamp the horizon; snow glints in the distant north. The meth labs are pretty much gone, the tweakers too. But drugs, like seasons, run in cycles. The land is what grabs you, though, the way it scrunches and wrinkles and spreads out ancient and flat. Full of stories and violent souls that slither through the books of Don Winslow, a parish kid from Rhode Island who never took to the stink of the fish factory and became one of the country’s best crime novelists.
In rehab they tell you: We recommend strongly that you stay away from bars and restaurants and the wine trade. We recommend strongly that you look for another job. I have no formal education. I’ve been working in kitchens since I was 16 years old. I have a wine company. I also make wine. And my whole existence in raising my family is based on the act of selling food and wine. I know nothing else. My rehab knew the reality: The fact is, I’m going back to the restaurant. I understand your recommendations. I may fail. But all I know is the restaurant business.
Ultimately, Where Reasons End is a tremendous act of empathy. Despite Li’s own warning to herself that a parent should never write about a child, she has channeled something powerful and true here. Her empathy and courage are what make the book work. Anyone who has ever wished they could talk again to someone who is gone will find solace in these pages.
What lingers in the memory is less the food itself than the warm descriptions of the people who cook it. Gumbo is an inherently social dish; it is rarely made for fewer than a dozen diners, and even more rarely, in your correspondent’s experience, prepared without a crowd. It will include whatever ingredients the chef can defend adding.
As with the best fictional detectives, it is the intellectual challenge of the job that motivates her, despite the often gruesome nature of her work: “Every complicated puzzle solved is a source of immense satisfaction.” This is a fascinating scientific memoir of a life dedicated to uncovering the truth behind some of the most shocking crimes. And a book that will be essential reading for every aspiring crime writer.