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Buy it now from Giovanni's Room or from our Amazon.com store - The Third Buddha  

On the surface, the disaster of 9/11 is as far from Afghanistan dramatically as it is geographically, but in his latest novel The Third Buddha, Jameson Currier draws them close with intertwining yet parallel stories, crossover characters and his most richly detailed writing yet.

The 9/11 story concerns Ted, a student who drops out of law school to search for his gay brother, Philip (Pup), presumed dead after the collapse of the Twin Towers. Also gay, though not yet out, Ted discovers much about his brother, including his boyfriends and an entire life he’d always sensed but Pup kept quiet around their family. The Afghanistan story revolves around broadcast journalist Jim MacTiernan and his lover and partner behind the camera Ari Sarghello. On assignment, a jeep they are riding in hits a land mine, killing the other passengers. Dazed and injured, Ari wanders away suffering from amnesia while Jim is rescued, refusing to leave Afghanistan until he finds Ari again. Meanwhile, Ari is taken in by an Afghan family and lives as a native while he tries to recover his memory.

Yes, the plot is complicated. However, Currier never lets the threads drop or the interest flag. Once you’re inside the story, the twists and turns are easily followed, and a fair number of these characters are in both stories—Ari and Pup, for example, had an affair before Ari hooked up with Jim. Both stories are equally compelling. Ted’s coming out in Chelsea is both heartwarming and heartbreaking, especially his on again/off again thing with the self-loathing Rico, who lost his sister in the Twin Towers.

Currier neatly draws parallel portraits of Ted and Ari, both of whom live the lives of others until they regain footing on more solid ground. Ted tries to emulate his brother’s gay life, including having a fling with one of Pup’s old fuckbuddies, while Ari attempts to become part of his Afghan family living in the mountain caves outside of Bamiyan. He feels a responsibility to those who saved him, even to the extent of working at an archeological dig to get money to give to them. Both Ted and Ari explore the boundaries of these borrowed lives, using what they’ve learned when they find their own paths—Ted to a normal, grief-free gay life and Ari to his career and home with Jim.

Currier’s characters are marvelous here, and he has a terrific eye for telling details that do so much to set scenes. His post 9/11 New York City is jittery and tentative, much like Ted’s relationship to the seedy Rico, and his Afghanistan is hot, ominous and damaged by war, occupation and predators. The landscape here is almost a third major character in this story, shifting and changing on the surface while its cultural bedrock remains stubbornly stable.