Anchor
this in your mind: Silent Lies, a novel by M.L. Malcolm is a masterpiece.
And let's find out why?
Photo: Jacket/cover of "SILENT LIES", by Burtch Hunter Design LLC.
Malcolm in a captivating story-telling style a la Paris-Berlin-Mata Hari 1912 and Charles Boyer told us and wrote the melodramatic story of LEO, a Hungarian boy who lived in a world of suspense, drama, adventures, mesmerizing sequences and avalanches of events of a world that no longer exists...a modern time romantico-existentialistic-adventurer-go getter young man who mingled with the powerful, the rich, the famous, the infamous, the dangerous, characters of the night, adventurers and threatening figures under the fog of Shanghai...a modern Victor Hugo miserable who reinvented himself with style and unusual persona, who on his first, second or third date asks the woman who met: "Delighted to make your acquaintance. Shall we live in Budapest when we get married?" Quite a character...a human face from a different world. Yet, that mystique world did exist some 70 or 80 years ago in Europe. With a magical narrative style, Malcolm brought back to life, this vanished, mysterious, nostalgic world...along with the intrigues, schemes, adventures, conspiracies, dazzling tableaux of real life, passion, love, mysteries and beyond. It is a fascinating story which enrobes so many facets and aspects of the human spirit, the glitzy and esthetically frightening world of the early 20th century...
Photo: Author M.L. Malcolm.
The book is written in a very unorthodox and hypnotically, mesmerizing beautiful style. Part, brief human chronicle, part, melodramatic fresco of events in the life of a man facing the world, alone and crossing the frontiers of odds and challenges in un-chartered territories, part, painfully rejoicing tableaux of human drama which is incomprehensible to those who shop a Wall Mart, part, analysis of a man's social, ethical-political priorities and choices, and part, the biggest image of REAL LIFE!
The cradle, tie, drama, metamorphosis and the stunning magic of the book rotate, evolve and burst around a boy born into an absolute poverty in Hungary, who uses his linguistic abilities to create for himself a new world with a better future, a world with new possibilities, new choices and unknown frontiers. The Hungarian visionary boy is caught up in a series of events which he is unable to control. He leaves Hungary and heads toward Shanghai, hiding a stolen diamond necklace. That necklace could be his new passport to a world of salvation, fortune, or perhaps, fatal destiny!? Malcolm, so admirably in a very intriguing descriptive style ties together all what surrounds the life of this young man. Ernst Hemingway, Emile Zola and Victor Hugo would have loved the narrative style of Malcolm and her human tableaux. For, Malcolm's writing style, compositional structure, narrative sequences, choice of titles for each separate chapter, warmth and substantial depth in the dialogues between LEO and the people, the men and the women he encounters and the delightfully confusing, romantic, fragile, promising and deceitful passages on the road of his life, transport you to an era, to a universe, to suspended moments in time and space, where only giants of the novel like Hugo, Tolstoy, Proust and Zola can forge and throw on the human landscape. Malcolm did just that! Malcolm, despite her relatively new "grand entrance" to the world of novels, would and could rival the best writers and story-tellers of our generation. In addition to the romantic and lyrical aura projected and imbibed by and from the milieus and life stage of Leo, Malcolm succeeded in flirting with the struggles and reconciliations Leo faced, including his own nonreligious Jewish heritage amid the persecution of the Jews in Hungary during and after the first world war and particularly during Nazi Germany. Malcolm, the magician story-teller and writer talked about various events and stories that influenced her and caused major impact on her novel. One of them is the story of her husband's great Aunt Melitta who was an artist. "She used her skill to forge a Siamese (Thai) transit visa for herself and her family, and they escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Shanghai. Melitta and her husband evaded confinement in the Jewish ghetto in Shanghai, because, like Leo, they invented new identities for themselves. They lived in the French Concession for the duration of the war." said M.L. Malcolm.
Photo:
Author M.L. Malcom, the creator of a new literary masterpiece.
Malcolm continues: "Hearing Litty's story began my fascination with Shanghai. I was intrigued by the idea that, for over fifty years, it was the only place in the civilized world where you could just show up, without a passport or visa, and begin a new life. The stories of the people who made--and lost--fortunes there were absolutely captivating. I was particularly interested in the period between the two World Wars, because it was a time of such dramatic societal change all over the Western world. At some point I came across a story about a notorious Shanghai gangster, the head of one of the Chinese Triads (which were like the Mafia families, only worse). He supported Chiang Kai-shek's revolution in rather nefarious ways, and that became the genesis for part of Leo's story. In fact all of the events—the fall of Budapest, the Hungarian counterfeiting scandal, the bombing of Shanghai—actually happened the way I describe them. I just inserted a fictional character." The author was asked this question: "In many ways Leo is not at all heroic. Why did you make him the main character?" and Malcolm replied: "For the same reason Margaret Mitchell made Scarlett O'Hara the heroine of Gone with the Wind. To misquote Faulkner, "sin and redemption" make for the most interesting stories. Leo doesn't have a lot of moral guidance growing up. Most of what he does as an adult is motivated by his desire to protect his wife and daughter. Like Scarlett, Leo is a survivor who has to pay a very high price to learn that deception, especially self-deception, often has unintended consequences." And hear this..."Another interesting parallel is the development of the intelligence community. I discuss the development of the Office of Secret Service, the precursor to the CIA. There was a huge amount of disorganization prior to World War II, which the OSS was created to solve. After the war, Congress split the jurisdiction of the CIA and the FBI in ways that didn't make a whole lot of sense, and here we are, fifty years later, trying to figure out how to do it better." This what Malcolm replied to the question "Do you think there are any lessons to be learned from the historical events you write about?"
SILENT LIES is pure magic. A triumph. A masterpiece. Your new passport to the enchanting, nostalgic, sinfully beautiful and melodramatically frightening world that was tailored-made to figures and characters, heroes and villains, lovers and dreamers, people larger than life who came back from Homer's' Iliad to talk to M.L. Malcolm. Get a copy of the book. Get two copies if you have two good friends.
* Syndicated