Bar Beach Diary

Some boldly, some timidly, the women in Bar Beach Diary take stock of their lives, then break the rules, exposing themselves to unfamiliar settings that challenge them further. Adventures may turn into misadventures, but potential is unleashed. Lives are changed. Sharpe performs magic here. She gives us a witty, stylish collection with plenty of heart, too. A disillusioned young diplomat finds solace on Bar Beach, which turns out to be more dangerous and more seductive than her embassy colleagues imagine. A visiting scholar is kidnapped by rebels in West Bengal. A purse snatching in Seville turns a honeymoon into a nightmare. Transgressive love promises liberation to a Javanese who may be tripped up by her own mortality. Nigeria's vibrant culture tests a successful diplomat's complacency. Hiking in Ladakh taxes a trekker's body and ego, but quitting has its own compensations. A weird baptism in wintery Soviet Moscow ignites repressed creativity. These are rousing good tales in which things are never as simple as they look and certainty is never the case. What Sharpe has done here is to perform a bit of magic: reader-friendly stories proving that post-modernism doesn't have to be obscure or snooty.