Review | Book review: Girl in Green, thriller set in war-torn Iraq, leaves indelible mark
Derek B. Miller’s book draws parallels between the current crisis in Syria and the first Gulf war
By Derek B. Miller
Faber and Faber
The Girl in Green is the follow-up to Derek B. Miller’s chilly award-winning thriller, Norwegian by Night. The action begins in Iraq, at the end of the first Gulf war, in 1991. Bored American soldiers witness a supposedly defeated Saddam Hussein viciously suppress anyone (especially Kurds and Shias) who might launch a revolution against him. When one of Saddam’s colonels murders a young girl wearing a green dress, two Westerners are transformed by the atrocity: an American soldier, Arwood Hobbes, and a British journalist, Thomas Benton. Two decades later, Hobbes glimpses a second girl in green during a news broadcast of refugees under mortar attack in Syria. He returns with Benton to find a region fractured into bitter sectarian factions, weary and resigned aid workers, and an entire generation being decimated or cast adrift. The exciting, elegantly constructed narrative employs repeated motifs, scenes and characters to draw parallels between the current crisis in Syria and the first Gulf war. If the coincidences are occasionally a little too contrived, the overall effect is powerful and sobering. The charismatic, provocative Hobbes is a fine creation: fearless, driven and passionate. The show is almost stolen by the girl in green, who finally finds her voice and expresses the devastation laying waste to her homeland.
