When a cease-fire breaks down, Paternostro balks at traveling to the demilitarized zone where rebel leaders and government representatives will hold a fateful summit conference. Instead she covers the story by watching television.
The down time and the thwarted opportunities force Paternostro to build her story from the inside out, but by chatting with relatives, seeking out old servants and looking up childhood friends she delivers a much more compelling picture of contemporary Colombia and the roots of its problems than she otherwise might have. The feudal power structure in her own home speaks volumes about the country's endemic social conflicts. "My grandparents are coming alive," she reflects at one point, "and so is Colombia."
Paternostro, in probing her dual identity, stews a little too long on occasion. A streak of narcissism runs through the book, starting with the title. Colombia's violence and fractured politics sometimes seem important chiefly because they provide a compelling backdrop for the author's emotional states, analyzed in every shade.
The obsessive eye that turns inward also turns outward, however. It sees acutely the proud, isolated bewilderment of conservative families like her own, the hopeless misery in a country where 97 percent of the arable land is owned by 3 percent of the population, the sheer pointlessness of an insurgency led by guerrillas who are "perhaps the least-liked revolutionaries in history."
Paternostro returns to New York. "I am not sure why - it seems like one never is - but it did not work out between us," she writes. Too bad for her. A gift for the rest of us.
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