There comes a moment in every relationship when it dawns on us that our beloved isn't really a swirl of miraculous cosmic love dust sent by divine powers for the sole purpose of making us dizzy with delight; we come to see that s/he's just another person...someone who burps, passes wind, tells a lie here and there, and has flaws and foibles that we failed to notice at the first blush of captivation. All along, on the sidelines, people have been whispering to each other, "I wonder what she sees in him?" And now comes the time when we must ask that question for ourselves. This is probably the point at which we discover whether or not the relationship has any buttress. I think, in many cases, this kind of realization about the significant other can be brought on by observation of—or social experience or interaction with—other possible mates and lovers. We observe others in action, and their behavior opens our eyes to the things our partners are not; or, conversely, we observe the faults in our partners, first, and they cause us to actively seek out new companions. The person caught in an affair is always pulled in two directions, living in a state of conflict and confusion about what he really wants (otherwise, he would simply abandon the primary relationship). Having some familiarity with a couple of the great novels of our time that entirely examine this subject from a distinctly male perspective, Graham Greene's The End of the Affair and Bernard Malamud's Dubin's Lives, it was an interesting shift for me to experience N.S. Köenings' début novel, in which we are told of Sarie, the protagonist:

Here we receive a very strong female point of view on the issue of marital infidelity, as well as an acute dissection of the processes by which love and marriage disintegrate and change. On the second page of the book, Sarie is said to be "slow to see the obvious". The remark has a double meaning. Ostensibly, it's about her witnessing a terrible accident, but it also refers to her inability (up until now) to deal adequately with the staleness of her marriage.

A preliminary page sets the time and place of The Blue Taxi: Vunjamguu, East Africa, 1970s. It's obvious, then, that such a mise-en-scene is going to be dealing with issues of Colonialism—either straightforwardly or in the background—and that it has fantastic possibilities as a geo-cultural document and a catalogue of a faraway land, its societies, and its people. But, mostly, this is a novel about the human heart, and we can consider it as such, here. I'm just going to point out a few observations the principals make about themselves and others, because I think this is mainly intended to be a story about individuals, not countries and movements. (Thisisn't to say that the book can't be profitably enjoyed on those other levels; it certainly can be. Reading this novel alongside a work of scholarship such as Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism, for example, would be a fascinating intellectual undertaking.)

In making his films, Alfred Hitchcock used to refer to what he called the "macguffin", meaning an incident that kick-starts the plot and then fades into irrelevance as the story progresses. The Blue Taxi employs what we might call a half- or semi-macguffin involving a young local boy, Tahir, who gets hit by a bus and loses his leg.

A white woman, Sarie Turner, and her daughter, Agatha, witness the horror and spend the next several days wondering about the boy. Finally, overpowered by curiosity, they visit his home—despite being warned that the boy's father, nicknamed Mad Majid, is a crazy man. Sarie and Majid begin an affair, which constitutes the main action of the tale; the bus accident thus serves as the catalyst for their meeting. Although I say "action", there's very little action, as such—a fact that really speaks to the author's ability to practice the craft of writing. Köenings has an MFA in creative writing. This is always a good clue about an author because it shows that, at least in part, they acknowledge that there are some things about writing that can be studied and taught. Yet, at the same time, it's obvious that the author is drawing on deeply felt personal experience as inspiration—something that can't be taught. It has to be lived through. Consider the following exchange between Köenings and myself:

Each of the three principal characters have their expectations and beliefs about life seriously changed and challenged in the unfolding of the narrative, which is what I would say is the single most important thing to watch for in Köenings' novel. As briefly touched on earlier, readers will also keep in mind the rich backdrop of an East African country making the transition from colony to independent state. The third big thing to seek, here, is the author's lush, lavish, wild and inventive use of language and prose. She writes with an indulgence that is its own justification, that exists for its own sake; and, in my opinion, too few novelists strive for this. It's a great pleasure to see.

The trio of characters at the center—the Belgian Sarie, her British husband Gilbert, and the locally born and bred Majid, her lover—could exist in any country at any time. In that sense, the plot is deeply familiar to us all: a woman is bored to tears by her husband and seeks some excitement from an affair. The initial meeting of Sarie and Majid is prepared for by means of a powerful, violent opening scene in which Majid's son, Tahir, loses his leg after being run over by the bus. Sarie and her daughter witness the event. The immediacy of the suffering boy is communicated beautifully: "The sounds his body made, delicate and soft, would have—somehow Sarie and the gaspers sensed that this was so—put further screams to shame." The graphic portrayal of the accident quickly moves into a scene in Mansour House, in another part of the Kikanga neighborhood (Sarie and her family live on Mchanganyiko Street), where we meet Bibi, her son Issa, and his wife Nisreen. Their busybody roles quickly become apparent. Bibi is a neighborhood spy and gossip and, in introducing her, Keonings sharply clashes the old ways of life with the new, the traditional against the modern, by using a simple, everyday object that will seem as common to Western readers as the sea and sky—a telephone: "...there lived a brand new telephone that was eager to be used. Black, still smooth, not yet gummy from the air's thick oil and grime, the thing sat brashly on a table near the balcony; it was cushioned in high style by a yellow doily Bibi's son had asked his wife to purchase, to make certain Bibi understood the phone was there to stay." Five days pass between the day of the accident and the day Sarie first visits Kudra House, where Tahir and his father live. During this time, we become acquainted with Sarie and Gilbert and their marriage:

As the novel plays out its course, we see that this line of thinking is completely delusional. Köenings spoke about the character of Gilbert to me this way:

Majid, however, does have these moorings, in spite of having spent the last nine years mourning his wife and behaving in such a way as to earn his unfortunate sobriquet. After her intial visit to his home, with her daughter, to see how the boy who lost his leg in the accident is doing, Sarie thinks of Majid: "He has a clock that marches! And he writes! He has a girl to bring him up the tea!" She "felt seen, and cared for". When the adultery inevitably comes, we read that "Sarie had had scant experience with romance. And so she mimed the movie actresses she had seen in one or two hot films at the Old Empire Cinema." There's a remarkable scene in which, while Sarie and Majid make love for the first time, the little girl Agatha is on the other side of the door watching the amputee Tahir sleep peacefully. The moment brings pivotal new experiences for everyone and, at its conclusion, Sarie utters the following double entendre to her daughter: "When we get home, your father will no longer be there."

The seeds of Sarie's restlessness are sown early:

The initial meeting between the lovers is presented wholly fromm her point of view, but later Majid reflects:

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As the affair plays out, we meet other characters, as well, who participate in—and comment on—the plot. There's Gilbert's Uncle James in England, who we never meet in person but who is a shaping force of destiny; a Greek named Kazansthakis, known as the Frosty King, because he runs an establishment in town called the Frosty Kreem, which was founded by his grandfather; Hazel Towsom, about whom Gilbert thinks "Didn't she have a way of being there when one just didn't want her?"; and the previously mentioned Bibi, Nisreen and Issa. All these, and others, contribute to the canorousness to be found within these covers.

The Blue Taxi is big, ambitiously big. It shoots for a grand outline in many different ways, and it operates with vigor in every department of the fictive art: the prose is spectacularly inventive; the characters are portrayed with sympathy yet with piercing, even brutal, honesty; important events are prepared for well in advance and in such a way that what they reveal is as lovely a process as watching a flower bloom. But what's really noteworthy is the way Köenings utilizes the principle of unity and variety. The construction of all art requires unity and variety. We expect certain things from a story and, if we don't get them, we tend to be frustrated (unity). At the same time, rote, routine, and too much familiarity tend to be boring, and so a little bit of the unexpected satisfies us, too (variety). That equilibrium is achieved in Köenings book, and with complete success. Every one of us is familiar with tales of infidelity and love triangles and those which show the lives of ordinary people playing out against the backdrop of major historical events. I think the constant possibility of seeing such wonted subjects handled in a fresh and unventured manner is actually part of what fires us up enough to continually explore new vistas. And The Blue Taxi is an almost inexhaustible new vista.