New York Times Book Review // Feast Days by Ian MacKenzie
My review of Ian MacKenzie’s novel Feast Days ran in the New York Times Book Review on Sunday May 8. In wrote, in part:
“In 1995, an American newspaper editor in Budapest told me I could differentiate between economic migrants and expatriates by the kinds of parties they — or, more correctly, we — attended. That obnoxious comment came back to me while reading ‘Feast Days.’ The willful us-versus-them otherness in which these Americans participate threatens to blind them to the shared humanity that binds banker and revolutionary, policeman and protester. MacKenzie makes clear what Emma might not always see: that her life stands in stark contrast to those of both newly arrived Haitians and impoverished Brazilians. Expatriate novels often reveal far more about their characters’ homelands than they do about their presumably exotic destinations. ‘Feast Days’ does likewise.”
The entire review is here.