THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 6, 1996 TAG: 9610070185
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY MARY ADAMS-LACKEY
LENGTH: 70 lines
THE LAST THING HE WANTED
JOAN DIDION
Alfred A. Knopf. 227 pp. $23.
Writer Joan Didion doesn't so much weave a compelling story as she unravels it. And not until the whole thing is played out can you begin to understand the first thing about The Last Thing He Wanted.
This novel, Didion's first in 12 years, is narrated by a scantily identified female reporter who lays out what happened in 1984 on a small island off the Costa Rican coast after, and because, the story's protagonist, Elena McMahon, appeared on the scene.
Having recently left her exceedingly wealthy husband, Wynn Janklow, and their lavish Los Angeles lifestyle, McMahon lands a job as a reporter for The Washington Post. Then, while on assignment in Los Angeles, she abruptly leaves her job and flies to Miami to visit her father, who, while she is there, becomes seriously ill and unable to consummate what he calls the deal of a lifetime - a million-dollar sale of munitions in Costa Rica.
Had she known more, and better, about her father's dealings, she might not have volunteered to take his place. Had she taken him seriously when he alluded to connections with the Kennedy and King assassinations, she might have spared herself, her ex-husband and their daughter much grief.
But she didn't. Her father's dream deal sours into her nightmare. And she is hooked inexorably into machinations from which there is no retreat. Or escape.
No one meets her at the isolated Costa Rican airfield. Or pays her. She bluffs her way to San Jose. And waits for her Miami contact.
Soon an airline ticket and a new passport with her picture under a new name are slipped under her door. Her real passport vanishes from the hotel's safe. But before disappearing to a safe haven on a small Caribbean island, she causes a minor disruption at the American Embassy's July Fourth celebration. And puts herself in further jeopardy.
The plot isn't really that simple. And the facts aren't quite that clear. Except after the fact.
American Ambassador-at-Large Treat Morrison, for example, should have been paying closer attention when he was visited by senior senatorial aide, Mark Berquist, just prior to Morrison's departure from Washington for Costa Rica and a chance meeting with Elena, now known as Elise Meyer, who by then is assistant manager of an island hotel quietly going to seed.
Although Berquist told Morrison to leave a particular operative in Costa Rica alone, Morrison missed the significance of the request, and it is on this missed clue that what ultimately happens is hinged.
Intrigue rather than suspense drives this novel. International events fuel it as it moves through Los Angeles, Newark, N.J., Las Vegas, Miami, Washington, New York and Costa Rica.
Didion's descriptions of people, places and things are sparse. She gives you a black dress here, a white dress there, blood on white sheets somewhere else and a guy in a ponytail and fatigues. Not much more.
Her characters are as simply sketched as Picasso's line drawings. This works. You can flesh out the rest, because you know all these people - the Salvadorian colonel, the privileged Hollywood high schooler, the elegantly gowned woman at an Oscars party, the handsome young doctor, the cranky old man in the nursing home, the Senate aide. You've seen them on CNN, in the movies and on television talk shows.
Although somewhat skimpy in detail, The Last Thing He Wanted is still a good read as long as you can follow Didion on this circuitous route that leads to an abrupt conclusion. After which remains this question: Who exactly is the woman telling this story? MEMO: Mary Adams-Lackey is a free-lance writer who lives in Virginia
Beach. by CNB