{"id":1857,"date":"2008-07-22T20:00:38","date_gmt":"2008-07-23T00:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=1857"},"modified":"2008-07-22T20:00:38","modified_gmt":"2008-07-23T00:00:38","slug":"empire-of-lies-by-andrew-klavan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=1857","title":{"rendered":"Empire of Lies, by Andrew Klavan"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just finished reading Empire of Lies<\/a><\/i><\/strong> by Andrew Klavan, and I\u2019m still decompressing.<\/p>\n

I have a hard time imagining how this book can ever succeed commercially. But I sure hope it does.<\/p>\n

As the story begins, the hero\/narrator, Jason Harrow, a journalist turned realtor, is sitting in the back yard of his Midwestern home, watching his children play. He\u2019s thinking about a girl who worked at his office, who\u2019d made a pass at him. He didn\u2019t take her up on it, but he can\u2019t avoid a (purely hormonal) wistful feeling. Shortly thereafter he\u2019s joined by his wife, and it\u2019s obvious that they have an excellent relationship. She trusts him, and he deserves her trust.<\/p>\n

Jason is being entirely honest with the reader. And that\u2019s sort of the point of the whole book. He\u2019s telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, even to his cost.<\/p>\n

From the very beginning, references and turns of phrase warn us that he\u2019s going to go through a terrible test; that he\u2019s going to become famous, and not necessarily in a good way.<\/p>\n

Jason goes inside the house to answer the phone, and (as so often happens in stories of this sort) the caller is a voice from his past. It\u2019s Lauren, the woman he lived with in another life, when he resided in Manhattan, thought he was an intellectual, and was part of a very kinky sex \u201cscene.\u201d Jason is a Christian today. He\u2019s turned his back on all that.<\/p>\n

But when he agrees to go to New York to help Lauren out with a problem with her daughter, he doesn\u2019t tell his wife about it. He has to go anyway, because his mother recently died and he needs to empty out her house. He doesn\u2019t plan to break his marital vows. But his motives aren\u2019t entirely pure, and he can\u2019t bring himself to bring it into the open.<\/p>\n

When he sees Lauren, he\u2019s somewhat relieved to find that she\u2019s changed. He no longer finds her attractive. But she talks him into looking for her daughter Serena, who has disappeared.<\/p>\n

He finds the girl, sick drunk, in a night club and takes her to his mother\u2019s house when he finds that Lauren isn\u2019t at home. The girl is raving, and one of the things she says is, \u201cI didn\u2019t know they were going to kill him.\u201d <\/i><\/p>\n

And that, along with a serendipitous \u201ctrue crime\u201d television report, puts Jason onto the trail of a murder that becomes a conspiracy that becomes a terrorist plot. And he, out of his concern for the girl, is drawn further and further into the puzzle.<\/p>\n

And all the time he\u2019s fighting with himself. He\u2019s fighting his male nature, and the sexual temptations of a man away from home. He\u2019s fighting to live up to his responsibilities as a man, a husband, a father, and a redeemed sinner. He\u2019s fighting to hang onto his faith when the world makes no sense, and God begins to seem distant and cruel.<\/p>\n

And he\u2019s fighting, in a way, for his sanity. Because his mother was insane, and her delusion caused her to see conspiracies everywhere. Jason doesn\u2019t think her condition was hereditary, but how can he be sure? Maybe he\u2019s just seeing things that aren\u2019t there.<\/p>\n

The climax, involving a flamboyant act of terrorism, is over the top and highly cinematic (though there\u2019s not a chance in the world this book will ever be filmed, unless something very unexpected happens suddenly to Hollywood politics). Klavan commits all the political sins in Empire of Lies<\/i>. He affirms Christianity and Christian morality. He affirms western culture American exceptionalism. He affirms the traditional family, parental authority, and traditional sex roles.<\/p>\n

And yet I can\u2019t recommend it unconditionally to all Christian readers. There are many among us who believe that coarse language is never justified under any circumstances. Such people should stay away from Empire of Lies<\/i>. Part of Klavan\u2019s method here is to present his hero \u201cwarts and all.\u201d That involves him being honest about his thoughts (good and bad), his fears and his motivations. Also about what is said. Including the expletives.<\/p>\n

Frankly, I think Klavan goes a bit far in this regard. Jason, although he says he\u2019s living as a Christian now, seems to drop bad words more often than I\u2019ve observed in the Christian community. I think it would have been better for the character arc if he\u2019d started out talking clean, and then gotten increasingly vulgar as the pressure rose. I suppose Klavan gains credibility with secular readers through the \u201chonesty\u201d of profanity, but that seems to me a sort of pandering, and this isn\u2019t a pandering book in other respects.<\/p>\n

There are other flaws, from a Christian perspective. At one point Jason talks about the essential differences between Christian and Islamic culture, and it seemed to me evidence that Klavan\u2019s epistemology is weak.<\/p>\n

But you know what? This isn\u2019t a book of theology. It\u2019s a novel by a relatively new Christian. And this new Christian, in writing this novel, is essentially obeying the call of Christ to \u201csell all you have and follow Me.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Klavan is a bestselling author. Two of his books were turned into major films starring Clint Eastwood and Michael Douglas. He himself has recently begun writing screenplays.<\/p>\n

That will be all over now. With Empire of Lies<\/i>, he’s slapped Hollywood in the face.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also slapped the faces of the liberal news media and the academy, two more institutions that can make or break an author\u2019s career.<\/p>\n

He has dared to tell the truth about those institutions, and you can be sure the institutions won\u2019t forget. For that alone, aside from the other virtues of the book, Klavan deserves our support.<\/p>\n

If you can handle the language, and the intense honesty, I recommend Empire of Lies<\/i> to you with the highest praise.<\/p>\n

[Here\u2019s a future I can imagine. I can see Empire of Lies<\/i> becoming a \u201ccult book.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back when I was in college, there were cult books\u2014books that weren\u2019t on the official syllabuses, but that students read in order to be “sophisticated” and “avant garde” and “transgressive.” Books by Kerouac, and Vonnegut, and dirty books like Candy<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Empire of Lies<\/i> is the ultimate transgressive novel for our time. Any student who reads it in secret will be committing an act of rebellion.<\/p>\n

Read it yourself, if you think it\u2019s your kind of thing. And give it to a college student.]
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I just finished reading Empire of Lies by Andrew Klavan, and I\u2019m still decompressing. I have a hard time imagining how this book can ever succeed commercially. But I sure hope it does. As the story begins, the hero\/narrator, Jason Harrow, a journalist turned realtor, is sitting in the back yard of his Midwestern home, … Continue reading Empire of Lies, by Andrew Klavan<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[183],"class_list":["post-1857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-andrew-klavan"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}