Safe Conduct - Hardcover

Benedict, Elizabeth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374253412 ISBN 13: 9780374253417

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1993

Synopsis

En route to Istanbul to finish a film, filmmaker Kate Lurie and her new husband, Eli MacKenzie, find their journey hampered by the appearance of Lida, a stunning Russian with whom Eli had an affair fifteen years earlier.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Benedict's uneven third novel (Slow Dancing, 1985; The Beginner's Book of Dreams, 1988) is about letting go emotionally and two very different women--one who can, and one who finds it all but impossible. Narrator Kate Lurie, product of an unhappy marriage and scarred further by her experiences with men, is already ``bitter as bark'' by the time she's 30. A documentary filmmaker, she finds it easier to record than participate; the camera is her defense, ``[her] safe conduct through war zones.'' Small wonder, then, that when Kate meets Mac, during a shoot in 1980 at the Vietnam Memorial, and he turns out to be a wonderful lover, she doesn't think it'll last. But it does, and a year later they're married in New York. Mac is an older guy (late 50s) who works for the State Department--an optimist (despite a failed first marriage and the devastating loss of son Sam in a traffic accident), sentimental, and scrupulously honest. He's told Kate every detail of his affair with Lida, a passionate young Russian, while he was on a hush-hush assignment in 1974 in Leningrad. Now, 17 years later, Mac and Kate are on a stopover in Brussels when Lida reappears, a Westerner married to a Frenchman, and an old flame burning bright as ever. Her reunion with Mac gives Kate the worst moments of her life, fearing for her marriage while envying the other woman her heart, her soul, her headlong abandon. Benedict crosscuts between 1974 Leningrad and 1991 Brussels. Leningrad, with Lida the star of the show, makes for fine, confident storytelling; but in order to inject suspense into the Brussels scenes, Benedict naughtily misdirects the reader. Add to this the undercharacterized Mac and the glibness of Kate's premature bitterness, and you're left with half a loaf. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

A woman's fear of her husband's former lover, and her terror that his reawakened passion could destroy their marriage, drives this urgent but carefully controlled novel by the author of The Beginner's Book of Dreams . Kate Lurie is a documentary photographer whose films concern "people who have suffered enormous losses." She is newly married to Eli MacKenzie, who is still grieving over the death of his son. Kate herself was for a long time afraid to enter into a binding relationship; now she feels Mac's pulse while he sleeps, sure that "something so wonderful could not last through the night." Mac has told her about his torrid three-week affair with luscious Lida in St. Petersburg, where he was sent by the State Department in 1971. But Kate is unprepared for the shock of an encounter with Lida, who, 15 years after she and Mac had parted, confronts the couple in Brussels and boldly tempts Mac to be unfaithful. Benedict subtly contrasts the distrust and paranoia of the Cold War, when Mac and Lida met, with Kate's jealousy and growing panic. Kate's voice is electric with suspicion and dread as she recounts the incidents that bring her marriage to crisis. But there is a basic lack of credibility in Mac's self-indulgent behavior, and the secret Lida reveals comes as no surprise; in addition, other events seem schematic and predictable. Benedict nicely evokes her settings, however: St. Petersburg's phantasmagorical White Nights provide the background for Mac and Lida's romance; the later lover's triangle is played out in rainy Brussels. And her spare narrative reflects the tension of a frightened woman witnessing what may be the destruction of her happiness.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0374253412
• ISBN 13: 9780374253417
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 230