Two Nights in Lisbon

Book Reviews

May 31

Two Nights in Lisbon
By: Chris Pravone

I don’t think you want to read this.

This one was marketed as a “sophisticated international thriller” about an American woman, Ariel, whose husband is kidnapped in Lisbon while on a business trip. Ariel realizes she knows so little about her husband’s life and past and now has to seek help from the person she hates the most.

It sounded interesting.

But wow. Ariel is the worst.

“Ariel has a hard time overlooking the dislikable parts of people…”

This is the understatement of the year.

She is cynical about everyone and everything.

It was hard to tell what was inserted as an aspect of Ariel’s character or the author’s own beliefs on the state and functioning of the world, but either way, it was over-the-top.

Just Wow.

I know this section is long but I have included this large body of evidence in this review to prove to you how vast and deep these themes go in this book.

But first, keep it all in light of this ironic and comical statement as you go:

“One of the ways that Ariel has been extra-cautious in her life has been talking to her son about men. She never wanted to sound too negative, too hostile. She doesn’t want George to grow up thinking that his mother hates all men…”

Here we go, everyone. Buckle up.

Here you will find the “sparkling prose and razor-sharp insights” that Goodreads proclaims:

“Chivalry can be just another form of hostility. Chivalry can be the weapon itself.”

“As if the mere fact that something is traditional makes it admirable, or defensible. The same exact justification has been used for pretty much all the injustice in the history of the world.”

“She has plenty of firsthand experience with the insidious, corrosive effects of fetishizing tradition.”

“She returns her gaze to Moniz, who’s also what she’d expect to find in a police station, the standard off-the-rack model of cop— mid-forties, thinning hair compensated for with bushy mustache, a bulky frame with twenty extra pounds that sit in the front of his belly, distended in a bulge at the beltline, the way some men carry their middle age and their beer, as if six months pregnant.”

“Ariel doesn’t like this, appealing to the woman, it feels so feeble, so reductionist.”

“American culture, American commerce, American lies, everywhere.”

“Persephone was behind the register, engrossed in a postapocalyptic fantasy novel, a genre that was somehow related to her oft-mentioned studies in grad school, that golden moment when everything was still possible, when her future looked so bright. But Persephone was beginning to suspect that it had been a false glow on the horizon, not the rising sun of a bright new day, just the remnants of a dying bonfire of oversold, overpriced, undervalued educational achievements that turn out to be almost meaningless on the job market, after twenty straight years of full-time schooling interspersed with hourly jobs in retail, folding shirts, punching buttons on cash registers.”

“…a square-jawed man wearing a golf shirt under a fleece vest breast-emblazoned with Excalibur Capital, a crimson HBS baseball cap, and a big gleaming wristwatch, making sure everyone could see in one glance who he was— mega-successful finance bro.”

“drenching everything in his toxic masculinity.”

“In the past few years, this steroidal type of truck had become the most popular vehicle in town. It seems like every aggressive tailgater, every obnoxious cut-offer, every impatient red-light jumper is now behind the wheel of one of these monsters, looming up behind her, headlights in her eyes, menacing everyone on the road with their suspension lifts and oversize wheels and aftermarket mufflers, their Power Stroke stenciling on the side.”

“Everything about this vehicle looked like a schoolyard bully, even the bumper stickers— the glowering visage of the New England Patriots, the implicit challenge of BLUE LIVES MATTER, the bizarre armed eagle of the NRA.”

“He was a so-called patriot, you knew it because he said so, it was even his favorite football team.”

“Ariel has been surprised by the broad prevalence of Brazilian people, and the influence of Brazilian culture, here in Lisbon, exhibiting a sort of reverse colonialism that she found heartwarming, and hopeful.”

“Men often try to reframe temper as hysteria, to recast righteousness as overreaction, as hypersensitivity, as irrationality.”

“It’s the tone that a man uses when he thinks he’s being the reasonable one. A tone that transcends generations, cultures, languages. The universal tone of condescension.”

“At least one in ten married women have been raped by their husbands.”

“Of everything that Ariel resented about her mom— there was plenty— this was perhaps the ultimate: that Ariel might have internalized something malignant from her mother’s spinelessness, her unwillingness to tell men anything that they did not want to hear.”

“Jerry embraced all the clichés of the struggling small-town single-shingle barrister, complete with failed marriage, irresponsible nutrition, and functional alcoholism.”

“One of the many manipulations available to men like him, created by men like him for the benefit of men like him, the tax structure and capital gains and mortgage-interest deductions, marriage and religion and capitalism and so-called representative democracy, all constructed so men like him could be not only the players but the house as well, everything about the game fixed in their favor, with not only backup schemes but also backups to the backups, and no way for them to lose, not at this game they invented called America.”

“Detective Carolina Santos looks around the wood-paneled walls hung with gilt-framed oil paintings: a hunting scene, a whaling boat in action, farmers tending an orchard. All pictures of men in the process of exploiting the earth. She sighs at the obviousness of it.”

“Shawn Jefferson put no trust whatsoever in any organization that gave white men guns and permission to use them.”

“… there’s a large segment of the male population whose first instinct, always, is to assign blame to someone else— whoever happens to be nearest, or femalest.”

“Ariel had assumed that Santos would be a natural ally, despite plenty of evidence that not all women believed in female solidarity, or agreed on what it might mean. Ariel was reminded of this every Election Day.”

Are you tired of it yet?

Exactly.

So why would you read this book?

Other Comments/Questions

Trigger warning: This book is significantly based around sexual assault that Ariel experienced, including rape.
I couldn’t decide if the Lisbon police were good at their jobs or if they were the police version of the bandits on Home Alone.
I learned that a ‘kleptocrat’ is a ruler who uses political power to steal his or her country's resources and I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I’m pretty sure Ariel views every single political leader this way.
After 40% of the book I still had no concept of what her husband was like so at that point I wasn’t really sure if I cared that he was kidnapped.
She calls her employee, who is named Persephone, by the nickname ‘P.’ Seems less than ideal.
Ariel says that ‘a large part of being an actor was being hyperobservant.’ Is this true? It doesn’t seem true.
They have no qualms with throwing their phones in the trash. It gives me anxiety just thinking about that.
The author has them text in this format- “WHERE R U?’- which is a pet peeve of mine. It’s harder to type in all caps and use one letter abbreviations than just typing out the word.
I had most of the things figured out early on.
There was a lot of swearing. (66 f-words, 27 s-words)

Conclusion

If you could stomach the laundry list of eye-rolling quotes above, then sure, maybe you should try this one.

But if you find the constant negativity and cynicism annoying like I did, pass on this one. The plot was interesting but had terrible execution.

I’ve never read this author before so I have no idea if this type of commentary within his books is common or not, but I probably won’t be reading any more of his books.

**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

This book released May 24, 2022. If you want to go against your better judgment and purchase this book, feel free to use my affiliate link below.