BOOKS: The Forgiven

I picked up The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne because I was looking for books about Morocco in anticipation of our upcoming trip, and this was highly recommended. It stood out from some of the other obvious choices because it wasn’t set in Tangier. Now that I’ve finished it, I have mixed feelings about it, and I don’t think it was a great choice for getting excited about a trip to Morocco. Most of the novel takes place in a renovated ksour (fortified Berber village) on the edge of the Sahara, at a party thrown by a decadent gay couple. The premise is interesting enough: while driving to the party, a British couple accidentally hits and kills a young Berber fossil seller, then toss his corpse in the back of their car and head on their way. The book is most interesting when we get flashbacks of the young man’s life, and in the ultimate encounter between the British doctor and the father of the young man he killed, and in the way it makes you ponder the morality of the characters’ actions. My biggest problem was that I disliked all of the main characters, and had little investment in what became of them, other than curiosity to see how the plot unfolded. And the general representation of Europeans and Americans visiting Morocco was so grotesquely decadent and imperialist that it made me cringe in embarrassment as a soon-to-be tourist. But the good parts (the ones away from the party) and the unexpected ending, worthy of an O. Henry story, made me not regret finishing this harsh morality play.