Review of the Ambassador's Wife
When: Fri., Aug. 7, 6:30 p.m.
Price: free
jennifersteil.net
Jennifer Steil received widespread praise for The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, a memoir about living as a journalist in Yemen — many critics said the book’s careful storytelling was novelistic in scope. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that her debut novel The Ambassador’s Wife, released late last month through Random House, is already such a hit. It’s a beautifully written story of a woman’s life in the fictional Middle Eastern country Mazrooq. As well as being the wife of an ambassador, protagonist Miranda is also an artist, and descriptions of her artistic life signal Steil as a masterful storyteller from the book’s first pages — she compares drawing to playing with a Ouija board, wondering how much control the artist wields and how much comes from some other, more mysterious place. The plot complicates when Miranda is brutally kidnapped, turning the sumptuous fish-out-of-water setting into something far more sinister. Steil will discuss her book, which is on the short list of Parnassus’ staff recommendations, tonight. LAURA HUTSON