The Only Café: A Novel

Complex, powerful novel. Insight into our time. A pleasure to read.

Well, I'm caught up on Linden MacIntyre's novels again. THE ONLY CAFE is his fifth and I've loved every one of them. MacIntyre is a bestselling author in his native Canada, but not all that famous down here in the USA, although I think his second novel, THE BISHOP'S MAN, made a pretty sizable splash. Patience is always required for MacIntyre's fiction, as he spins some pretty complicated plots, and THE ONLY CAFE is no exception, because it spans decades and a couple generations. Young Cyril Cormier is a very junior reporter for a major Canadian news network in Toronto (think CBC), trying to unravel the secrets of his late father's mysterious life - and death (if he is indeed dead). His father, Pierre, had emigrated from Lebanon to Canada as a very young man, changed his name from Haddad to Cormier, got educated, and became a very successful lawyer with a huge global mining conglomerate. Along the way he divorced Cyril's mother, Aggie, and remarried Lois. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances, when his boat blew up in a tiny harbor off Cape Breton. Declared legally dead after five years, his will contained an odd codicil about a small bar, The Only Café, on the wrong side of Toronto, and a man named only as Ari. So - Cyril is trying to figure all this out as he begins a new job, assigned to research the possible threat posed by a burgeoning population of immigrants from the Middle East. He meets this 'Ari,' and gradually learns of his father's possible involvement with a militia group implicated in the bloody massacre of thousands of people in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982. The story is filled with flashbacks, and shifts alternately between Cyril's and Pierre's stories, and there is much detail and history here about the bloody civil wars in Lebanon, and how Syria and Israel used Beirut as a battleground. You see? Complicated. Patience and close attention to detail are absolutely required. But, accustomed to MacIntyre's work, I was ready, I paid attention, and I was hooked. Here is just a small sample of the kind of attention-grabbing, horrifying, grim detail employed here, this time from Pierre's part of the story, as he remembered the aftermath of the massacre in Beirut - "Now Saturday, weaving through another place of carnage, there is only silence, accentuated by the hum of insects. The dead are everywhere, individuals and groups; families; young men sprawled along a wall where they were executed; old men, throats cut; children, their heads cleaved by blows from axes; the silent curiosity of lifeless faces; small bodies; large bodies; bodies blackened by long hours in the sun; blackened by the swarms of flies; some still bleeding from a recent knife or axe or bullet; babies; women; dogs; horses. Pierre will ask himself repeatedly, sometimes in astonishment: horses? But he remembered horses. Mostly he remembered his indifference, the self-preserving numbness that sets in after normal senses have shut down." Or here, another sample, this time of Cyril's state of mind, as he waits, now in hiding, and afraid for his own life - "It was a Saturday morning. He stared out over the dismal city, rain streaking down the glass balcony door … The weather channel informed him that the temperature was plus two degrees Celsius. There could be sleet. He couldn't watch the news channels anymore. He didn't trust what anyone was telling him … Everything he saw and heard seemed false, fabricated and performed." Interesting how relevant this comment about the news channels seems, especially today. I learned a lot about the wars and turmoil in the Mideast, and how far back it all stretches, decades and generations, all the blood feuds and ethnic and religious hatreds. So I was not really surprised when I read MacIntyre's comment in the Acknowledgements stating, "This work of fiction is based on real events." Indeed. You can Google things like the Sabra and Shatila camps and the massacres of September 1982. They happened. And Linden MacIntyre has brought it all to life in the most dramatic and chilling fashion imaginable. This is a damn good book, filled with difficult truths. My highest recommendation. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

The whole story was complex and dense, and the main character's ongoing quest to find more about his father's hidden life (and death) was well constructed. The author's writing style was also a pleasure to read, however, the ending felt rushed and didn't really do justice to what was an intriguing story.

Linden MacIntyre has written a fascinating page turner in "The Only Cafe." Cyril Cormier's father had a secret life before he arrived in Canada as a refugee. While researching a story in his new job, Cyril uncovers some information that leads him to dig deeper. Cyril learns more as he meets with the mysterious Ari, who his father wanted to invite to his roast. Pick up this book and start learning more about the mysterious life of his father's past. Thank you GoodReads for the book.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Linden MacIntyre, and Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for sharing your hard work with me. This is a very intense read, based on truths buried in rhetoric in a Middle East westerners cannot know nor understand. Linden MacIntyre comes very close to making it real for us. This is a book I would read again after a period of digestion, and would share with my loved ones. Again, thank you.

A great story, with a political/historical twist, from one of Canada's great writers. Condition fine. Delivery fast.

Linden Macintyre always gravitates to the East Coast and even though this novel is based largely in Toronto and deals with events during the war in Lebanon, he manages to get there again. Suits me, he describes it so well you can smell the sea! The novel revolves around "The Only Cafe", a coffee shop in Toronto where Middle-Eastern refugees gravitate and where we discover old ghosts from the wars in the Middle East. The main protagonist, (sorry, forgot the name and too lazy to dig out the book!), starts to frequent the cafe and begins to discover said "old ghosts", one of whom may be a war criminal. A great read from a great writer.

Part way through. Not as smooth reading as Punishment. I may be a bit premature in rating it until I finish. It does nicely interplay actual events with the story.

A very engaging book. Somewhat weak ending however, in my opinion .

3.5 stars. I enjoyed Punishment and The Bishop's Man very much, and was enthused to learn that Linden MacIntyre had a new novel just published. The major focus of the book was the Lebanese Civil war and the massacres which ensued. The story based on historic facts may be confusing to many readers, as it was to me. This may have been deliberate. The events themselves were confusing with numerous factions involved, and with many overt and covert actions and interference by the PLO and Israel among others. Mistrust and shifting alliances within Lebanon is noted, adding to the complicated narrative. In 1982 Pierre came to Canada as a Lebanese refugee. He settled in Cape Breton and later Toronto, finding success as a cooperate lawyer for an mining operation in Indonesia. He was terminated as a scapegoat after some trouble at the mine site. He was in Cape Breton on a boat which exploded, and after some five years a bone fragment and a bracelet surfaces. His son Cyril is interning as a journalist. The reporters are working on a story about the radicalization of youths in mosques and he joins the team. He had been estranged from his father, and is trying to discover Pierre's past in Lebanon. In his father's will is a request for a wake at The Only Cafe, and that Ari, a man unknown to the family is to officiate. Cyril meets the mysterious Ari, possibly a past Israeli agent, who seems to have some complicated ties to Pierre in Lebanon and also in Canada. There is also suspicion that Ari may be involved somehow in connection to the radicalization of Moslem youths in the story being investigated by the reporters. In search for clues about his father's death Cyril returns to Cape Breton. Was his father murdered, and was his death connected to what Cyril is discovering about his father's shaded and secretive past in Lebanon? What does Ari know, if anything? Cyril talks to family, police, CSIS agent, and one of Pierre's old Cape Breton friends in trying to get a picture of his father's past in Lebanon and how he died in Cape Breton. Just who is Ari and what truths is he hiding? It was suggested to Cyril that in investigations establishing a timeline was important. The book was convoluted, moving back and forth from Toronto , Cape Breton and Lebanon and jumping from Cyril's present, to Pierre's past in Lebanon in the 1970's and early 80's, and then to Pierre in Toronto and in Cape Breton just before his death. Rather confusing. Chapter headings would be helpful as it was not always apparent at the beginning of the chapter who the subject was or the time and setting. Cyril's relationship with his ex-girlfriend was a distraction, and I wanted to know more about his friends and colleagues at his workplace. The ending of the book leaves some questions unresolved but this is a fitting conclusion, as some secrets and events from the past can never be fully known in the present.