Product Description

Perched above the Indian Ocean and surrounded by lush foliage that blocks out everything but the sea--sweet frangipani, jasmine, and wild orchid--the Hotel Salama is an unlikely place to conduct research. Proud, sharp-tongued, and solitary by disposition, Ingrid Holtz arrives at the hotel in search of her professor, Nick Templeton, to whom she is drawn by interests of a more than academic nature. Templeton is a maverick, as much reviled for his unconventional methods as he is envied for his results. His latest theory has driven him to the island of Pelat, to unravel a legend about an ancient African king said to have brought Islam to the Swahili coast. No one has heard from him in months.

Tangled in a mystery whose clues lurk in the pages of the Koran, and transported into a world where women are possessed by spirit husbands and fresh curses are whispered over tea, Ingrid is forced to realize that there are many things she does not know about this man who inhabits her dreams and haunts her mind. With the help and hindrance of Finn Bergmann, the enigmatic son of the founder of Salama, she begins to uncover a web of alarming incidents. Templeton's research has carried him to the hot core of the island's darkest confrontation. How far will he go in his passion for the truth? What is he willing to do to protect his newfound faith--and where has he gone? Ingrid embarks on a quest that opens her heart and threatens to unravel her mind.

An epic tale of love and faith, An Obvious Enchantment marks the debut of a stunning new literary talent. It is a story about desire--for love, for knowledge, and for God--and about our capacity to ensnare ourselves in the deceptive architecture of our own dreams. Like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, it plunges you from the first page into a sensuous world of seductive characters and duplicitous charm, a world alive with color and atmosphere from which it is hard to emerge without wanting to return.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1121502 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-11
• Released on: 2001-09-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

From Amazon.com
Tucker Malarkey's accomplished first novel follows the trail of a young anthropology researcher as she tries to locate her beloved elderly mentor, who appears to be missing. Ingrid Holtz knows that Professor Templeton has been searching for clues to the existence of an African king who he believes brought monotheism to the Swahili Coast as much as three centuries before the arrival of Islam, paving the way for the quick conversion of the region. She worries that Templeton (a figure not unlike her father) may be losing his mind, or that he has put himself in danger. Although there is a European enclave on the island of Pelat, none of the colonials seem especially helpful to Ingrid. They barely know Templeton, who avoided their hangout at the Salama Hotel bar, and what little they know his student must slowly prize free over afternoon beers. The natives and the Kenyan-born whites are another matter; they know a great deal, she suspects, but she must constantly battle their sexism and their distrust.

One night Ingrid goes to the Salama with notes from Templeton's journals, hoping to attract the assistance of Finn Bergmann, a handsome yet chronically drunk and evasive European-Kenyan, whose father built the Salama Hotel. But Bergmann slinks away, and Ingrid is left writing anguished, talismanic notes on a cocktail napkin: "Templeton, I need you. Please appear."

She let the ink of her pen bleed onto the words until they were illegible, suddenly certain that he was not coming. She finished her whiskey and, when she felt the panic surging back, ordered another. What are you afraid of, Ingrid? Tricks of momentum? Why have you come all this way?

Ingrid is left to find her own strange allies on the island, as well as unexpected enemies. Along the way, she must continue to adjust her ideas of what it means to be a woman and alone, surrounded by people who believe in the unseen and who watch her for signs of possession by an evil spirit. The real question is whether Malarkey's heroine is the sheep or the shepherd in her search for the elusive Templeton. Despite a few stock characters and some stiff, unlikely dialogue, An Obvious Enchantment offers suspenseful, escapist reading for a lazy Sunday or a dark and stormy night. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
Religious mysticism, cultural anthropology and contemporary women's issues charge Malarkey's affecting first novel, an uncommon romance charting the restless intellect of an obsessive academic. Cultural anthropologist Ingrid Holtz convinces her university to fund a trip to Kenya's Swahili Coast, ostensibly to search for links between Egypt's monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaten and African Islam. Her ulterior motive is to search for her mentor, 60-year-old mad genius Nick Templeton, who has disappeared on a coastal island while investigating the origins of African Islam. The island of Pelat is itself a mystery: a cat-infested paradise torn between ancient tradition and modern progress since Swede Henrik Bergmann arrived many years before with his young son, Finn, and built the luxury hotel Salama (the Swahili word for peace). When Ingrid reaches the island, Stanley Wicks, an unscrupulous Brit, is erecting a new hotel in the village where devout islanders fled after Salama was built. Finn, raised by a local mystic, must seek middle ground in the battle between ancient mysteries and inevitable change; he keeps a protective eye on Ingrid as she looks for Templeton and finds her way to academic and personal growth. Ingrid and Templeton's research, guided by suspicious locals, barflies at Salama and passages of the Koran, gets foggy, sucking some thrill from the novel's final revelations. But Ingrid is a complex and seductive character who transcends those deficits, and her romance with Finn mostly sidesteps formula. Her preoccupation with truth invests this multifaceted, ambitious debut with a contemporary relevance. 7-city author tour. (Aug.) FYI: Malarkey is senior editor at the quarterly Tin House.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When we first meet archaeology student Ingrid Holtz, she is arguing vehemently with an Egyptian farmer about to plow a field she thinks might hide the remains of a palace, so we know right away that she is a toughie. She's also fearsomely committed to Professor Templeton, her mentor, and when he disappears, she manages to persuade her department to fund what amounts to a search mission. She tracks him to Nairobi and thence to Pelat Island, where she encounters a rafter of dissolute, disillusioned ex-pats and some wily Africans while reencountering Finn Bergmann, with whom she had a sexually charged but sexless exchange in Nairobi. She bangs on doors to try to locate Templeton, then hunkers down and waits. And waits. There are undoubtedly some evocative passages in this debut, but the novel stretches on into tedium as Templeton fails to appear, and one finally ends up exasperated with Ingrid for wasting her time (and ours). When he finally does materialize to explain his odd behavior, it's a letdown. In the end, only the opaque FinnAa white boy gone native, whose father disappeared after building the island's only hotelAseems a truly viable character. Not a requisite purchase.
-ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

---

Customer Reviews

BRILLIANT!
This book is brilliant and beautiful. You really do have to read it, then you will understand-- it's like poetry.

Best I've read in a long time
I read this book over the weekend in one sitting. I could not put it down! I tried to slow down in the last few chapters to make it last longer....

Malarkey's lush settings and superb character description pulled me in so completely. Ingrid was wonderful. And Finn! I think I fell in love with Finn.... The tension between the two characters was sublime. Templeton was a great guy, even if he did [make me mad]. These characters came to life.

Malarkey is a promising author, and I hope to see many more books from her in the future.

Broken Promises
There is the tale and there is the telling of the tale. In the case of "An Obvious Enchantment," Tucker Malarkey displays a remarkable gift for the telling. The tale, however, does not begin to deliver what it promises. Ingrid, a graduate student of anthropology, follows her reluctant, elderly, utterly opaque major professor, Nick Templeton, on a mysterious (and never quite clear) quest to an island off the coast of Kenya. The elusive Templeton leads a shadowy existence throughout most of the story and while the reader waits to discover if Templeton is the true object of Ingrid's affection or merely a father substitute, Ingrid bounces indecisively from one drunken, dysfunctional expatriate to another--from Danny to Finn to Wickes--searching more for her own direction than for Templeton or the mystery of when and how Islam reached the Kenyan Coast. Although promised, there are no meaningul insights into the Koran, Kenya or even anthropology. (There is some pretty good lore on marlin fishing, though I haven't the foggiest what that has to do with the story.)

As an exercise in self-absorption, gauzy description of exotic locales and pointless narrative vignettes and pirouettes, "An Obvious Enchantment" has some appeal, if not enchantment. Ms. Malarkey has much to learn about the craft of telling a tale. We may all hope that she, her agent, her editor and her publisher will become more disciplined and less enchanted before her next work appears.