31 Hours

by Masha Hamilton

Book Overview

A woman in New York awakens knowing, as deeply as a mother's blood can know, that her grown son Jonas is in danger. She has not heard from him in weeks. His girlfriend, Vic, is also in the dark. We... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932961836
• ISBN13: 9781932961836
• Release Date: September 2009
• Publisher: Unbridled Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.3" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Terror within and without in 31 Hours

I think that what I like best about Masha Hamilton's writing is that she takes me places I wouldn't normally go, and opens my eyes to things that I should see. In that sense, her prose is unblinking, simultaneously lyrical and stark. Hamilton takes what is universal--for instance, a mother worrying over her 21-year-old son who she hasn't seen or talked to in awhile--and transforms it, so that the reader feels viscerally what each and every character feels, from a prescient panhandler making his rounds on the subway, to an 11-year-old girl whose parents have split up and whose mother tailspins into depression. Then there is Jonas, the subject of all the worry, a boy-man who wants to change the world, and has been suborned into doing it violently. Hamilton makes even this believable. And that was before I even read my morning newspaper about the recent foiling of a terrorist plot. I know the ending is going to haunt me.

A thriller in every sense of the word

Suicide bombers are a fact of life in the contemporary world. They are rarely political zealots, though they are recruited by such. They are the easily led, the disaffected, the mentally disadvantaged members of what Karl Marx referred to as the lumpen proletariat. The fact that attacks by these individuals, unfortunately led astray, have not been successful in the United States has been the direct and proximate result of the internal security that the chattering classes have demeaned almost from its inception; still, sooner or later, one will succeed here. And it will probably unfold in the manner described in 31 HOURS, Masha Hamilton's brilliantly understated novel. Jonas Meitzner is the prototype useful idiot of 31 HOURS. Hamilton creates a picture of this twenty-something disaffected youth perfectly, without resorting to caricature. One cannot read a paragraph or two about Jonas without immediately recognizing him as one of the many graduate students who one will trip over when walking more than 20 feet in any direction. As the book opens, Jonas's mother, Carol, realizes she hasn't spoken to her son for a while and senses something is wrong. Anyone who is the parent of an emancipated offspring will know this feeling immediately; one either gets it or doesn't, and as painted by Hamilton, it is entirely believable. Carol stews for a bit, and then turns to Vic, Jonas's longtime friend who has recently become his lover. Vic, wrapped up in preparation for her debut as a classical dancer, realizes even before Carol contacts her that she also hasn't seen Jonas lately. It turns out that Jonas has deserted his own apartment for an Islamist safe-house apartment. First attracted to, and then recruited by, Masoud, a Wahabi terrorist, and now cut off from everyone, Jonas is physically and mentally preparing himself for a political statement that will take place on the streets of New York at the end of the novel. He hopes his parents and Vic will understand. Jonas's parents divorced when he was young. His mother is a sculptor, and his father is a failed artist turned successful (or maybe not) gallery owner. Their relationship is slippery and ill-defined, yet somehow still there. At one point, Carol confesses to noticing a change in Jonas over the few months leading up to the events that unfold, yet marked it only in hindsight. Vic has recently moved out of her parents' house, and her father has done the same, abandoning a comfortable home to live in what would have been called at one time (uncharitably but accurately) a slum. She is wrapped up in her career as well, and is able to give only scant attention to Jonas and her younger sister, who is on the cusp of adolescence and probably affected most of all by her parents' separation and her mother's mental decomposition. Vic's life is seemingly solid at the center --- her upcoming performance is sure to be a winner --- but is fraying badly at the edges. She perhaps has the best chance of stopping the fa

Read This Book

31 Hours will haunt you long after you turn the last page. It is wholly original and a powerful reading experience, like none I've had before.

Wonderful!

Equal parts thriller and poetry, this one had me turning pages late into the night.

Provocative story about a missing son will haunt readers

31 Hours by Masha Hamilton is a story that will haunt readers long after the covers are closed. Carol Meitzner wakes up suddenly one night with a mother's intuition that something is incredibly wrong with her twenty-one year old son, Jonas. She hasn't heard from him in over a week, which is unusual for the close pair, but this goes beyond the normal worries of a mother. For the next 31 hours, she will try to find him before something, she doesn't know what, goes irrevocably wrong. While Carol looks for Jonas, he is secreted in a small basement apartment preparing to take an action that will force the entire nation to rethink its violent nature. Hamilton's provocative book is a stunning read. Despite Jonas' terrible intentions, Hamilton has made him sympathetic to readers. He's not a brainwashed automaton or frenzied monster; his intent is clear (at least to him) and while he goes through periods of fear, he never considers backing out or changing his mind. It's Jonas' realism that makes him so frightening; he could be any college student who feels disenfranchised with the United States. Hamilton keeps the suspense drawn so tightly that there were entire chapters where I forgot to breathe, only catching a breath with the blank page at the end of a chapter. Brilliantly written, this is a book that won't let the reader go easily.