Tangier

William Bayer writes quite beautifully. His sentences flow as does his story, not in a straight line but in a series of curves and switchbacks that are seldom predictable [with two major exceptions]. Bayer knows Tangier --the Tangier of a few decades ago when he lived there with his [also brilliantly accomplished] cook-booking writing wife and within but perhaps not a real part of the Ex-pat community. We get to discover it in glimpses while we wind the narrow streets around hidden corners of the city and the plot. It is an endlessly interesting journey absorbing the history as well as the smells and looks and feel of Tangier. We experience the heat and the dryness as description and metaphor. The characters are often well drawn; there are a few exceptions. He creates an intimate portrait of a inward-looking, yet constantly changing community of privilege within a community of huge poverty, mainly by viewing its goings-on through various of its members' observations. Telling stories [or refusing to do so] about sex - who is having it in what form with whom and telling who else - is one of the main manners of exposition Bayer uses to create the action and the background and its endless back stories of the novel. His treatment of homosexuality would hardly be considered enlightened today, abut it is less dated than one might think. How the various characters practice and judge sexual behavior, and the distinctions each makes between sex for money, power or influence and consensual, sex - whether romantic or not - provides much of what we learn about them individually and as a community. It is a novel packed with striking images of contrasts unseen by its inhabitants. We can laugh, smirk, censure and sigh. Too bad summer is over in my hemisphere for it sure is an excellent beach read.

Tangier was an interesting read because I was in Tangier when I read it. It was enjoyable to read a section and then go out and explore the areas of the city. My only wish was that it was more of a spy detective novel.

I read this book (actually listened to it) because I love reading fictional novels about exotic locales. Bayer is no James Michener (my favourite for this type of novel) but he certainly captures the essence of this North African cosmopolitan city. Unfortunately, Tangier is not as exotic as one would like to believe. It is seeping with rot and would get my vote for a modern Sodom. Blaming much of the homosexual prevelance there on British ex-pats, Tangier is a city torn between historic importance and decaying irrelevance.The main characters are a mixture of Moroccan and British but the narrator is a Moroccan policeman. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this novel is how, through this main character, Bayer allows us to understand the mentality of not only native Moroccans but Arabs, Muslims, homosexuals, infidels, etc. from the point of view of an Arab. I enjoyed that insight.This book is neither uplifting or moralistic, and I'm not sure I would have gotten through the large written volume. But the audio book is more than palpable. The afterword discussion with the author himself is enlightening and insightful also. Bayer and his partner lived in Tangier for six years while writing this and other works and "lived the plot" as he puts it. Most of the characters are based on real people which makes the whole thing even more remarkable.