Don't miss this debut novel. If you love a character driven narrative, literally, you will adore this novel. I could not put this book down - compulsively readable - one of the best books I read this year.

I wanted to love this book because it was recommended by Elizabeth Strout in an email I received and I love Elizabeth Strout. I enjoyed reading the novel while I was reading it, but when I reflect on the story, I'm not sure it was worth my time or that the story-within-a-story plot worked well in this case. Very little actually happens in the book. A man is kidnapped in Pakistan and spends the book talking with one of his captors, an American woman. He gives her information about his life and his recently deceased daughter. She weaves that information, along with what she found online and learned through a phone call with the kidnapped man's mother, into a pretty weird story about the life the captive man's deceased daughter might have had if she had not been killed a few months earlier. I'm all for a good story-within-a-story plot (a la "The Blind Assassin"), but this one fell short. Too much of the book was speculation, so the "real" parts and characters were not fleshed out. I couldn't relate to the captive man much at all because I didn't know him. The big reveal at the end about the captive man didn't impact me. I cared about the story being told within the story more, but less than I would have if it had been the book itself because I knew it wasn't "real". I didn't really get to know any of the characters, aside from the fictional versions of potential futures for the main character and his dead daughter. The American captor seems to weave her younger, partially fictionalized self into one of the stories as well. Then there is the bizarre sex stuff which was also mostly not "real". The book is a bit of a mess to be honest. I gave it three stars because I liked the writing.

I did not finish this book as I did not engage with the story or the characters.

In "All That's Left to Tell," novelist Daniel Lowe presents a father (Marc) and daughter (Claire) who are separated by miles, time and possibly death. Marc, a low-level American executive, is being held captive in Pakistan. A mysterious woman visits him and encourages him to talk about his life in the States, at first prodding for information that seems to have a purpose (getting a ransom for him) and then embarking on a wild tangent in which she imagines the life his recently murdered daughter might have led had she lived. Meanwhile, in other chapters, an older Claire picks up a hitchhiker who tells her an ostensibly made-up story about the life her father might have led during a long period in which they didn't speak to each other. The storytelling is gripping, even moving, but the novel ends without resolving many nagging ambiguities.

I am thoroughly impressed that an author can deliver so many stories through just two narrators, Marc and Josephine. It was easy to read, easy to follow the threads, and it left me completely flummoxed, even more so the epilogue. So many questions are left unanswered but life is like that. Claire in trying to wrestle with her loss of memory says of what she knows and has experienced so far "It's like waking to a life someone dreamed for you. Maybe, at some point, that's partly true for everyone." All we know is that Claire didn't die, or did she? Thanks NetGalley for letting me read this.

A Captive Audience: on Daniel Lowe’s ‘All That’s Left to Tell’

In the vein of Sheherazade’s 'One Thousand and One Nights', Daneil Lowe’s debut novel is structured as a series of nested stories being told to delay impending death.

Marc, a mid-level Pepsi executive is being held for ransom in contemporary Karachi, Pakistan. One of his captors, Josephine (who happens to be fluent in English) encourages Marc to reveal stories about his past. In particular, Marc relates increasingly fantastic tales about his long-lost (and possibly deceased) daughter, Claire. The stories eventually diverge in several directions, engaging a variety of unreliable narrators. Truth is blurred. Did Marc’s wife leave him? Is his daughter really dead? Will ransom be paid? Will Marc survive to find tranquil retirement at a lakeside cabin back in America someday? Did none of this happen and Marc exists in delirium because of captivity?

'All That’s Left to Tell' is ultimately about the power of story itself to spin beauty from grief and to transcend fear with imagination’s raw ingredients.

Although political elements are downplayed, I wanted more. But a captive doesn’t have choices. Josephine insists, “You have no idea who I am, who we are, and what our motives may be.” I find the book most engaging in the “real-time” chapters focused on Marc’s captivity. “He had come to the country for the wrong reasons and stayed for worse ones.”

While following this puzzle box of stories-within-stories was challenging, I applaud the author for an intricately well-crafted premise and for the ambiguity around Marc’s ultimate fate.

All That's Left to Tell by Daniel Lowe is a novel about telling stories set in a disturbing framework.

American Marc Laurent is a midlevel Pepsi executive who is taken hostage in Pakistan. Every night his hands are tied behind his back and he is blindfolded when a woman who tells him to call her Josephine visits the room where he is kept. She wants to know who will pay a ransom for his release. When it becomes clear that Marc is estranged from everyone he knows in the USA, she begins to demand that he tell her stories about his life, focusing on his daughter Claire, who at age 19 was murdered a month ago and Marc did not return to the USA for her funeral.

As Marc slowly reveals stories from his past, Josephine weaves tales about a future Claire at 34 years old. This Claire survived the attack, is married and has a daughter. She is traveling to Michigan to see her estranged father who is dying. On the way Claire picks up a hitchhiker named Genevieve, who makes up stories for Claire about Marc’s life after he divorced her mother.

This is a beautifully written novel that consists of a story made up of stories within stories that share common connections. The line between reality and story-telling blurs and what is real and what is fiction becomes unclear. The truth of Marc's situation may be less rewarding than the stories. The stories themselves become more real, more compelling, than reality. The stories are what develop the characters, real or imagined. The plot is the story telling - or the plots within the stories. It's all very consciously self-referential; I kept picturing an ouroboros while reading.

The writing is powerful and masterful - there is no fault to be found there. For some reason I bristled at being played with emotionally as Marc's reality stands in stark juxtaposition with the stories being crafted and so lovingly told. Sometimes it's okay if an author messes with my mind while I'm reading; sometimes it just begins to annoy me and feels like too much manipulation. I'm afraid that this time the set up for the story telling felt too contrived for me and, in view of current events, a bit insensitive and careless. It is clear from the start that Marc, a hostage who is surely going to be executed by these terrorists who are forcing him to tell stories, may find some comfort from the stories being told to him, but I can find no charm in this, no matter how exquisitely written. Yes, people and ideas can live on in stories, but stories don't negate the ugliness behind taking a person hostage to ransom them.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Flatiron Books.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/02/all-thats-left-to-tell.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1917419211

An man is captured and held prisoner in Pakistan, guarded by two men and at first it seems they are trying to ransom him for money. At night though, a woman wearing a hijab, comes in, after Marc is blindfolded unable to see her, only hear his voice. She knows details from his life, how? We never know. On hearing of his daughter's supposed death, she begins to weave together a story, whereby Claire doesn't die but leads an alternate life. So the book rotates between these stories and Marc's time in captivity.

Okay, I think I am missing something here. Well written definitely, understand it enforces the importance of story telling but the story itself, I neither liked, nor disliked it. Quite frankly, I have no idea, or not much, of what this book is supposed to be, what it represents. Incredibly strange, so many things we never learn. Flummoxed. Over my head, perhaps. Don't know. So there you have it, my somewhat non review. Three stars for the writing and the contemplation.

ARC from Netgalley.

Marc Laurent, a PepsiCo employee held in Pakistan by unidentified captors for unknown reasons converses reluctantly with “Josephine,” his interrogator but is not allowed to look at her, prevented by a blindfold and bound hands. She already knows a lot about his life, including his relationship with his ex-wife and the fact that he did not return to the States for the funeral of his murdered nineteen-year-old daughter, Claire. Josephine weaves Marc a future for Claire in which she is married, the mother of a young daughter, and on her way to visit a very ill Marc in the hospital after a fifteen-year estrangement. In the story Claire picks up a hitchhiker, Genevieve, and they, like Marc and Josephine, offer each other stories from their own lives. Genevieve weaves a tale of Marc’s life during the period of estrangement from his daughter.
Remembering, forgetting , telling a story. “Did that happen?” Like Marc, we wonder about Josephine’s stories after the Epilogue provides “all that’s left to tell.”

thank you Netgalley! and thank you Elizabeth Strout for the form letter praising this book. I love her so I checked into this and am so glad I did because I have been (for a while now) in a book rut. Nothing will stick for me. But this one I couldn't put down. It's seriously contending as one of my top books ever. It's a mind-fuck though. Like, story within story within story type of book but you get sucked in and it just works and you follow along until the end, at which point you're like WTF!! but in a really good way. Sigh, so sad it's over.
But, so as not to give much away it's a suspending disbelief in the best of ways, and I say this after having tried to read Nutshell. I'm all for wanting to learn about what a fetus thinks but the voice didn't work for me, too uppity or smug or something.
Anyway, this book is about Claire, the daughter of Marc who is has been captured by some people in Pakistan. He's being held captive and is visited by a woman who talks to him and because- why not?- he talks to her back and from the little bit of information she gets from him she spins this whale of a tale about his daughter, who died a month previously- and whom marc did not go back to America to the funeral and he's now going through all the memories of what led him to come to a point where he wouldn't go to her funeral.
So the stories that this woman who calls her self Josephine - are of Claire as she would be had she lived. And this fictitious Claire lives in California and has a 3 year old daughter and she's not talked to her dad in 15 years but when she learns of him being in a hospital she takes a road trip to see him. Enter Genevieve....
IT just feels so real.. The stories that Josephine tells. And how does she know all this? It got to a point where I couldn't tell what was real and what was made up. But it comes together. And it's not simple nor complicated. It's just really really good.

Marc has been kidnapped in Pakistan. Two men take turns guarding him. Whenever the interrogator comes into the room, Marc is blindfolded. The interrogator is a woman who says he can call her Josephine. At first, Josephine tries to learn how they can collect the ten million dollar ransom. But then she starts to question him about his severed relationship with his daughter, Claire, who recently was murdered. She asks Marc to tell her stories about Claire, which Marc reluctantly and painfully does. Then Josephine starts to tell Marc imaginary stories about Claire’s future if she hadn’t died. In Josephine’s story, Claire is on her way to visit her dying father, who she hasn’t seen in 15 years. She is now married with a child but is traveling alone. She picks up a hitchhiker, Genevieve, who has her own stories to tell. Genevieve tells Claire stories of the life that Marc may have led during her absence.

Marc’s reality is distorted by the blindfold and he finds comfort in hearing the stories of the life Claire went on to live and can almost believe them to be true. Likewise, the reader’s reality is distorted and sometimes it can be difficult to keep in mind which story is “true”. But then again, it really doesn’t matter which story is true. I became completely engulfed in each story. The author moves smoothly from Marc in prison to the imagined Claire on her way to see her dying father to the imagined Marc who has remarried. That may sound a bit complicated but the author writes in such a way that it’s all very clear. I felt like I was dreaming as I read these stories. What power the written word has, even to bring the dead alive again. It was almost as though the power of these stories could re-arrange reality itself.

I couldn’t be more impressed by this author. It’s hard to believe that this is his debut novel though I do see that he’s a writing teacher and that his stories and poems have been published in literary magazines. His is a name to watch out for. This is a literary work of art, unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Most highly recommended.