San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
‘Embassy Wife’ is sly satire about life in diplomacy
Reinvention is on every character’s mind in Katie Crouch’s new novel, “Embassy Wife.” Can a zebra undo his stripes, asks the book’s epigram, relaying an Afrikaans proverb. Crouch’s narrative begs a followup to the rhetorical no: Should that stop one from trying?
Set in Windhoek, Namibia, during America’s recent “s—hole” diplomacy era, “Embassy Wife” circles around three couples whose children attend the International School in the country’s capital city: Amanda Evans has reluctantly left Los Gatos and her highpowered tech position to follow her flunky academic husband who somehow managed to land a Fulbright. (Turns out his bestseller author buddy secretly wrote the application.) Now Amanda, an orphan who prizes family above all, fears that under the stark African light she’s becoming “allergic to her husband,” Crouch writes.
Amanda’s selfappointed guide to her new world is Persephone Wilder, a career “trailer” — trailing spouse — who is mirroring her diplomat husband’s rising star by claiming leadership positions in the school’s PTA. Except organizing cosmopolitan buffets isn’t exactly her strong suit. Complicating Amanda’s tutelage is her daughter’s friendship with the daughter of Persephone’s nemesis, beautiful and imperious Mila Shilongo, wife of the Namibian minister of transportation. Mila’s superior airs keep her povertystricken childhood buried, and everyone at a distance, but they also leave her, sadly, painfully lonely. Can she have a real friendship with the unhappy American businesswoman?
Meanwhile, the husbands try to rewire their own lives without fully informing their spouses. As Mila asks her friend from Silicon Valley: With the country’s 11 languages and nine tribes, “How could we not have different versions of what’s true?” Even Namibia is trying to upend the old social order after more than a century of racist colonial rule. But, for characters and country, it’s a bumpy ride.
Crouch’s narrator varies points of view but always with a satirical eye, detailing newcomers’ faux pas at the American ambassador’s house party, illicit personal Amazon Prime orders buried in international courier traffic, and the perils of governmentissue furniture. While remaining a fun, fast farce, the novel touches on issues of racism, corruption, dishonesty and smuggling. Regional details are vivid, from bird calls on the veld to local lingo — et cetera transformed into whatwhatwhat; a commonly understood time difference separates now and nownow.
Crouch teaches creative writing at Dartmouth, though she formerly lived in the Bay Area and taught at San Francisco State. She spent the first part of the Trump administration in Namibia (joining her husband, writer Peter Orner, on his Fulbright, like the Amanda Evans character in “Embassy Wife”). Previous novels (“Girls in Trucks,” “Men and Dogs”) earned acclaim for the same deft, sly voice heard here. Because once you’ve earned your stripes, it’s usually best to keep them.