31 Hours by Masha Hamilton

Reviewed by Scott Bowen

ISBN: 978-1-932961-83-6
Unbridled Books, 2009

Author of three previous novels, including the critically acclaimed The Camel Bookmobile, and a journalist whose recent assignments were in Russia, the Middle East and Africa, Masha Hamilton bears experience that imbues her latest novel with an indomitable force of characterization.

Jonas, a young, impressionable American in his early 20s, feels that the world has drifted morally astray. Through a series of acquaintances—from Deirdre the IRA militant, to Harold the Buddhist, and finally Masoud, a young Muslim turned fundamentalist by the death of his brother, Jonas concludes that the only way to confront a society of perpetual war and injustice is through a single moment of reckoning. Jonas “tried to imagine himself as light and love, sacred, devoted, exploding.”

Told through multiple points of view, these 31 hours explore the lives of several characters including Vic, Jonas’s lover and childhood friend; Sonny, a homeless semi-clairvoyant; and Mara, Vic’s little sister. These lives, lithe with personal struggle, twist until they converge on the subway where Jonas, strapped with ball-bearings and explosives, marches toward an uncertain fate. Meanwhile, Jonas’s mother Carol frantically searches for him throughout New York City, tearing herself apart, wondering where in her parenting she’d gone wrong.

Hamilton’s talent lies in her rendering of each character—flawlessly stitching nuance into their flesh: “The cop didn’t speak, but his expression changed from a man sucking on a lemon slice to one with honey on his tongue.” And:

He shook it, and sprayed some [mint-scented gel] on his right ankle, spreading it upward until his leg turned white—almost gleaming under the insistent light—and he wondered how it would feel to be made of snow, and to reflect brightness, and to fear nothing but the sun.

There are occasions, however, when these characters are swept up in a narrative swell that threatens to sap the tension of the moment at the price of expansive back story that offers little significance: “He [Sonny] didn’t like Benny. The Wheelchair Robber, he was nicknamed. Benny gave folks like Sonny a bad name…”

This piece of exposition, which seems intended to elicit an empathetic view of Sonny’s career as a beggar, compared with Benny’s as a homeless thief, continues for an entire page and concludes with two men sharing a spot on the street.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of Hamilton’s newest novel is in what is, at first glance, a dubious portrayal of Jonas, the dedicated suicide bomber. The procession of characterization becomes clear as we follow Jonas and learn that he isn’t a mindless automaton, bent on fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur’an and “killing the infidel wherever you find them.” On the contrary, Jonas is a young man tormented by a boundless empathy and curiosity that brings him to the point of seeing death not as an end, but a vehicle by which he can change the world around him. At times, Hamilton portrays Jonas clearly and tragically in this light:

He [Jonas] hoped matter would not heal seamlessly. He wanted, after all this, nothing short of the collapse of Rome. His mother, and his father, and Vic, and his own memory deserved that much. The world deserved that much. Things had to change. If they didn’t change this time, there would simply be more bloodletting. Next year, or a decade from now. It wouldn’t stop until it stopped.

With 31 Hours, Hamilton dislodges the stereotype of a “terrorist” and instead examines the mind and soul of someone who might feel compelled to take his own life, and those of others, to ring the alarm of society’s consciousness. The author’s stark, dynamic voice strikes the reader with the panic and anguish of a mother who’s lost a son, a young woman who’s lost her best friend, and a vibrant young man whose only wish is to change the world for the better. Now, when we switch on our televisions, cushioned by two oceans from the rest of the world, to the announcement of yet another suicide bomber attack “over there,” we cannot help but see a face—a story—that brought so many to the cusp of an unfortunate fate.

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Scott Bowen currently resides in eastern North Carolina. He occupies his time writing both novel-length and short fiction concerning a prophet of his own design, playing house husband, and taking a stab at Native American crafts. He is currently working on his B.A. degree in English at East Carolina University.

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