Ghosts of Intimacy within the Violent Touch of War - Rated 
"I want to see you now. I want you to come to me."
We Are Now Beginning Our Descent is a well crafted and constructed novel that gets inside the head of Adam Kellas as he is lead by an e-mail and a small memory of Astrid, a former girlfriend, that has "crossed into him."
James Meek paints the love story between Kellas & Astrid against the backdrop of Afghanistan, London and America. Similar in places to the style of George Orwell, James blurs the political into the human story to show floundering love and war, mixed up and acting upon each other.
He does this by cleverly showing us the modern vantage point of war, where F-18 pilots fly over Afghanistan and as they release their bombs, "perceive the human grain making up the fabric of the view," but never land - only reaching out and touching with destruction.
He then forces Kellas to crash land from his orbit as a war reporter in Afghanistan and to reach out and touch Astrid's life. Kellas has built up memories of her that he has fallen in love with and as he is eventually forced to fit the real woman into the fragments of her that live within him.
"You have to make your own lover before you can know her ... But you've got to leave space for the real woman to grow inside."
We then watch to see if his touch is destructive or one of love.
On his way Kellas, in trying to convey what the war in Afghanistan is like, reaches out to his friends in London and brings destruction.
"There was curiosity in that reach, and a kind of regret. In any act of hurting there remained the ghost of intimacy."
And unlike laser guided missiles, Kellas struggles to cope with his feelings, "Your own mind (is) a hard thing to manipulate: it had so many automatic processes."
At the end Meek pulls back out from our intimacy with Kellas and we are left watching him from afar. You feel as Meek has helped us to connect with his character and in doing so connect with the political arena that requires more from us of saying "we care" with no action, no feeling, no connection.
Forced Landing - Rated 
Anyone expecting a great follow up to James Meek's brilliant The People's Act of Love is in for a disappointment. Like his previous novel, this one revolves around war - this time, though, he tells the story of a journalist stationed in Afghanistan, Adam Kellas, who falls in love with hard-to-peg Astrid, another journalist. The novel then traces Adam's search for Astrid in America as his personal and professional life falls apart.
Meek's experience as a Guardian journalist during America's latest invasions seems to have been a large source of inspiration. Like his previous novel, Meek is very good at showing the surreal nature of life under war, and the horrors that can be visited upon someone without any notice, changing their lives forever. What he has failed to do here is create believable characters that can carry the reader through the story. What we get instead is dialogue that either explains plot or sounds artificial and stilted, meant to prove Meek's own views on war, America, or the publishing world, rather than any internal character life. At times, plot is revealed too ackwardly. An example is when Adam makes a discovery about Astrid, towards the end of the novel. Instead of Meek trusting the reader to understand what can easily be shown (and was there before) he feels the need to have his character explain the obvious. It kills what was meant to be meaningful and pivotal to the story.
Strangely, it's hard to completely dislike the novel. There are some very good scenes - like Adam's meeting with his American book agent, his overblown rage at a posh dinner party in London, and the shelling of a Taliban convoy. Hopefully, Meek's only way is up after this novel.
A complex character in a complicated world - Rated 
After the success of The People's Act of Love, expectations for Meek's new novel have been high. In "We Are Beginning Our Descent" Meek demonstrates the best of journalistic and fiction writing as well as some of the weaknesses. Attempting to merge the two styles, his language follows the topic he addresses, thereby losing some of the narrative fluidity and impact. The mostly fast paced story demonstrates his talent for evocative descriptions, whether landscapes, war scenarios or people. Like the author himself, Adam Kellas, the protagonist, is a British correspondent sent to Afghanistan to report the news from there as his audience expects to hear it. It is not necessarily how it is seen on the ground and his frustration with the imposed restrictions is palpable. Meek's experience shines through when he describes, with a mix of irony and empathy, the living conditions of the media contingent hanging out together close to the frontlines. In his downtime Kellas is writing a deliberately provocative political thriller, that he hopes will afford him the means for an easy life in the future. And then he comes across Astrid, a seasoned feature writer from the US who is as aloof as she is beautiful...and an inadvertently provoked action leads to a moral dilemma that will occupy Kellas's mind from then on.
Most of "We are Beginning Our Descent" is written in flashbacks as Kellas ruminates over where he has been and what is in store for him when his plane touches down in New York. The Afghanistan images and the portrayal of the local people he encounters are the most vivid and convey the reality better than many news articles. His character's reflections on his own less than successful life suggest a complex and emotionally charged and restless personality. His relationship to his eclectic circle of friends, in London and in his Scottish home region, is conveyed as essential for his emotional stability. Will it be sufficient to sustain him in the long term? While Meek's well-developed characterization of the diverse personality adds to the breadth of the story, these sections of the book are less powerful than the account from the frontlines. Overall an intriguing and worthwhile read. [Friederike Knabe]
An engrossing failure - Rated 
This new book by Meek simply doesn't work. It contains magnificent passages and should be read - but as a whole it fails. I have no sympathy or interest in either of the main characters, but that was probably intended. It is however draining over the course of the book. The segments in Afghanistan drag: Meek seems to be offloading his own experience as a journalist, piling in 'stuff' and observations that do not amount to sustained story telling. Sure journalists reporting wars are creeps - but who didn't know that? Yes some nice metaphors (there should be!) - but he uses these sections rather crudely to hold back some of the better scenes like the superb dinner party catastrophe. Kelass's expedition to America begins wonderfully - but it ends in a 'revelation' that takes the book in a direction that I can only describe as inconsequential. For me Meek's novel contains two superb minor narratives well worth the price of admission.
I Am Now Beginning To Be A James Meek Groupie - Rated
James Meek's reading in Blackwell's, Edinburgh last night showed his audience that the only thing more exciting than reading his books is listening to him be so articulate about them. We Are Now Beginning Our Descent (one of my favourite title choices in ages) is completely different from The People's Act of Love, but likewise says something original and true about how people operate now, in a war-fatigued, globalised world. It was great to see the range of readers the book has attracted, judging from the other audience members at Meek's gig yesterday - everyone from retired Edinburgh iliterati to young immigrants (and his sister, artist Joanna Kane).
Yet it isn't only a political novel or a war novel - it describes what it's like for a disillusioned man to alienate himself from his friends (spectacularly), become convinced he's in love, allow his emotions to fly him to rural America and then have his expectations thrown for a loop by the strange, complicated woman he elected to fall for. The book asks fascinating questions: how many different ways are there to sell out? When we feel things most strongly, is it because we're deceiving ourselves more than usual? This fairly miserable character, Adam Kellas, has a strange pull on the reader, and it all rings weirdly true.
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