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Arms for Adonis: Blood and Love in Lebanon
Sarah Lane, abandoning her French lover for the brilliant Lebanese sunshine, believes that the day will belong to her alone. But when a street bomb hurls her into the arms of a dangerously handsome Syrian colonel, she finds herself trapped once again.
200 pages, Paperback
First published January 4, 1960
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8 people want to read
About the author
Charlotte Jay
28 books11 followersCharlotte Jay was the pseudonym adopted by Australian mystery writer and novelist, Geraldine Halls. One of the best and most singular authors of the suspense era, she wrote only nine crime books, but their unorthodoxy secured her a high place in Mystery Hall of Fame.
Jay was born as Geraldine Mary Jay in Melville in Adelaide, South Australia on December 17, 1919. She attended Girton School (now Pembroke School) and the University of Adelaide, and worked as a shorthand typist in Australia and England, and as a court stenographer in New Guinea, 1942-1950.
She married Albert Halls, an Oriental specialist, who worked with the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Albert Halls has dealt in Oriental antiques in England and Australia. Marrying Albert enabled her to travel to many exotic locations in which she later included in her future books. Only her first novel, The Knife is Feminine, is set in Australia. The other books are set in Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, England, Lebanon, India, Papua New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands.
After a long career in writing Halls died on the 27 October 1996, in her home town of Adelaide.
Her book Beat Not the Bones won the then newly created Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers' Association of America for Best Novel of the Year in 1954.
Jay was born as Geraldine Mary Jay in Melville in Adelaide, South Australia on December 17, 1919. She attended Girton School (now Pembroke School) and the University of Adelaide, and worked as a shorthand typist in Australia and England, and as a court stenographer in New Guinea, 1942-1950.
She married Albert Halls, an Oriental specialist, who worked with the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Albert Halls has dealt in Oriental antiques in England and Australia. Marrying Albert enabled her to travel to many exotic locations in which she later included in her future books. Only her first novel, The Knife is Feminine, is set in Australia. The other books are set in Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, England, Lebanon, India, Papua New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands.
After a long career in writing Halls died on the 27 October 1996, in her home town of Adelaide.
Her book Beat Not the Bones won the then newly created Edgar Allan Poe Award of the Mystery Writers' Association of America for Best Novel of the Year in 1954.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 2, 2012
I have read three novels by Charlotte Jay a.k.a. Geraldine Halls before this one, and I enjoyed this one the absolute least. I am afraid that, for me, large parts of the book were just boring. There were a lot of characters introduced, and for many of them, lengthy amounts of background given. There are also a lot of places where Jay goes on for a couple pages at a time explaining what’s going on politically and all the characters’ political views, which just seemed to stall and delay the action. I don’t know why, but I was just bored to tears by most of that. I had to keep going back to the beginning of paragraphs because I would realize I didn’t know what I was reading, and I didn’t much care about the shadowy political figures whom we never actually see.
To me, the whole book seemed like a lot of fuss for nothing. I was really disappointed in the ending. There’s a revolution that lasts about five minutes, and then everybody’s okay, and everyone who gets arrested for revolting gets released, and everyone’s free to do it all over again. And then there’s the weird happily-ever-after, or at least for now, although we have Sarah’s promise to Nadea early in the book that the next man she chooses to get into a relationship with, she is going to marry, no matter what. To me, that doesn’t seem like a very good idea, but I don’t really care. I didn’t like Sarah’s character very much by the end of the novel. Really, her character seems to go from three- to two-dimensional pretty soon after the beginning of the novel. She starts out interesting, as a white Christian woman living in this foreign, partly-Muslim country in the 1960s, but it all goes downhill from there. She mostly just goes along with everything that happens to her, and doesn’t really react. She lets things happen around and to her. Aside from initiating the trip to Chakra, she doesn’t do much. Her feeling of floating along, when she is being carried along by the two men who rescue her from Ain Houssaine is extremely apt; that’s basically what she does throughout the whole novel, starting with the bombing at the Suk.
One interesting aspect of the novel is that it portrays the political situation in the Middle East, which seems to have changed very little in the past 50 years. Beirut is still a very European sort of town, with everyone continuing with their everyday lives and enjoying themselves as much as possible, even with things being blown up and shot around them. The Jewish Israelis and Palestinians are still fighting over the same land, and all the Muslim countries hate Israel. The metaphor of revolution being a big ball that cannot be stopped, but only rolled into a different country continues to be applicable, with all the revolutions that have occurred in the past couple years, and the horrible violence going on in Syria right now.
To me, the whole book seemed like a lot of fuss for nothing. I was really disappointed in the ending. There’s a revolution that lasts about five minutes, and then everybody’s okay, and everyone who gets arrested for revolting gets released, and everyone’s free to do it all over again. And then there’s the weird happily-ever-after, or at least for now, although we have Sarah’s promise to Nadea early in the book that the next man she chooses to get into a relationship with, she is going to marry, no matter what. To me, that doesn’t seem like a very good idea, but I don’t really care. I didn’t like Sarah’s character very much by the end of the novel. Really, her character seems to go from three- to two-dimensional pretty soon after the beginning of the novel. She starts out interesting, as a white Christian woman living in this foreign, partly-Muslim country in the 1960s, but it all goes downhill from there. She mostly just goes along with everything that happens to her, and doesn’t really react. She lets things happen around and to her. Aside from initiating the trip to Chakra, she doesn’t do much. Her feeling of floating along, when she is being carried along by the two men who rescue her from Ain Houssaine is extremely apt; that’s basically what she does throughout the whole novel, starting with the bombing at the Suk.
One interesting aspect of the novel is that it portrays the political situation in the Middle East, which seems to have changed very little in the past 50 years. Beirut is still a very European sort of town, with everyone continuing with their everyday lives and enjoying themselves as much as possible, even with things being blown up and shot around them. The Jewish Israelis and Palestinians are still fighting over the same land, and all the Muslim countries hate Israel. The metaphor of revolution being a big ball that cannot be stopped, but only rolled into a different country continues to be applicable, with all the revolutions that have occurred in the past couple years, and the horrible violence going on in Syria right now.
January 31, 2012
I have been promising myself for a few years now to go back to some of the older classic Australian Crime Fiction books and reread them with a view to noting something about them on the website. Mostly because all of these books were read a long time before I started writing my own reviews, and I really need something to check my reactions against if I re-visit them again (which I'm inclined to do every now and then).
Hence ARMS FOR ADONIS, which Wakefield Press published in 1994, with an excellent afterword by Peter Moss and Michael J Tolley. ARMS FOR ADONIS was first published in 1961, and re-reading it again, there are a number of elements to the book which remain fascinating and somehow still topical. I do note that Jay revised / rewrote some aspects of the book for the Wakefield release, and to be honest, I can't remember the orginal details well enough to know what changed / didn't. But there are particular aspects of the book which really make it an interesting read. Originally written in leadup to the "swinging sixties", it was particularly striking how laid back the characters are about their sexual freedom. Another aspect of the book that was subtly but pointedly drawn is the inter-cultural understanding, or more pointedly, lack of understanding. To the point where some of actions of some of the characters were extremely discomforting.
The political aspects of the book are extremely interesting, given the point in the history of Lebanon in which it is set. Jay wrote the book in the 1956, in the time leading up to the Suez Crisis. She was living in Beirut during a year long tour of duty by her husband, a senior UN official. Her admiration for both the country and the people shines through, as does her observations of the erratic nature of local politics.
The major downside to the book for this reader is the overly romantic ending - which, frankly, you can see coming from very early on. Mildly interesting because of the depiction of cross-cultural relationships, but way too "happy ever after" for my taste.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/conte...
Hence ARMS FOR ADONIS, which Wakefield Press published in 1994, with an excellent afterword by Peter Moss and Michael J Tolley. ARMS FOR ADONIS was first published in 1961, and re-reading it again, there are a number of elements to the book which remain fascinating and somehow still topical. I do note that Jay revised / rewrote some aspects of the book for the Wakefield release, and to be honest, I can't remember the orginal details well enough to know what changed / didn't. But there are particular aspects of the book which really make it an interesting read. Originally written in leadup to the "swinging sixties", it was particularly striking how laid back the characters are about their sexual freedom. Another aspect of the book that was subtly but pointedly drawn is the inter-cultural understanding, or more pointedly, lack of understanding. To the point where some of actions of some of the characters were extremely discomforting.
The political aspects of the book are extremely interesting, given the point in the history of Lebanon in which it is set. Jay wrote the book in the 1956, in the time leading up to the Suez Crisis. She was living in Beirut during a year long tour of duty by her husband, a senior UN official. Her admiration for both the country and the people shines through, as does her observations of the erratic nature of local politics.
The major downside to the book for this reader is the overly romantic ending - which, frankly, you can see coming from very early on. Mildly interesting because of the depiction of cross-cultural relationships, but way too "happy ever after" for my taste.
http://www.austcrimefiction.org/conte...
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews