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Title: Love at the Edge of the Abyss
Review: "A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali" is a sad and haunting novel about two improbable lovers -- a weary Canadian journalist and a young Rwandan barmaid -- who try to claim their ration of happiness in a country riddled with AIDS and teetering on the brink of genocide. The writing is spare, full of menace, and wonderfully evocative of Africa. The description of oversexed and overprivileged expatriates battening on "development" contracts is deadly accurate. The story has a lot of Rwandan history and politics, but it never feels didactic or weighted down with scholarly detail. Overall, the book is a minor gem, and I took off one star only because of occasional scenes where the author overreaches in an effort to achieve grotesque comic or melodramatic effect. (I can't describe the scenes because of Amazon's prudish rules about review content -- but any reader of the book will know what I'm talking about.)
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