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Mar 28, 2009

Sandra rated it:

Ahhh...another book set in a warm climate. Marika is a war journalist who after being kidnapped (and escaping) decides to write a book about another war journalist (Robert Lewis). It is believed that he committed suicide. Robert's sister shows Marika a letter written by a missionary who believes that he saw Robert alive and in Papua New Guinea. Marika travels to New Guinea to find the journalist.
I liked the adventure parts of this book. It was interesting to read about her travels acros More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2008

Lauren rated it:

I read this book in anticipation for a lecture by the author at National Geographic later this month. I am familiar with Salak's nonfiction work about her own travels and experiences, and her first novel had many of the same elements that draw readers into the story.

Marika Vecera is a well-known war correspondent: she takes the dangerous and scary jobs in war-torn developing countries and has had more than one near-death experience. She starts a serious relationship and soon after More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2011

Amy rated it:

I am listening to this as an audiobook, and while the narrator is not helping any, I don't know if I am going to make it through this on its own merits. I should like this story. I like the idea of this story. When the story is focused on the search for Robert Lewis, I do like the story. But...Marika, the main character, is not likable to me, so I am not interested in her motivations. Her love interest, Seb, is a preachy, sanctimonious, new-agey bore. I admit it (somewhat guiltily), I read More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 23, 2008

Cyanne rated it:

This one was worth it for the descriptions of life and travel in PNG, but the writing and overall story wasn't all that.

At one point the main character is held hostage in Congo, but then her transition back to the States leaves a little something to be desired. I am sure that Kira Salak (author) knows what she is talking about, but I wasn't really convinced that the main character was a emotionally bankrupt as we were suppose to believe.

The story line is interesting, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Mar 13, 2011

Wisteria rated it:

The White Mary,[return][return][return]Marika Vecera is a determined, dedicated journalist who chooses to live life with little baggage. She lives in a sparsely decorated apartment with minimal material comforts. Cherished tokens from her travels serve as windows to her past. She has no permanent male companion and likes it that way. No attachment. She can pick up and leave to follow a story at any moment. [return][return]She wanted to write, she freelanced and sold her stories, always risking More...

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Jan 22, 2009

Bryn rated it:

This is one of those books that is both deeply satisfying, yet oddly disappointing. It's clear from the depth of detail that Kira Salak knows Papua New Guinea, its landscape, its people, and its dangers. The parts of the novel that follow journalist Marika Vecera through the PNG jungles in search of her journalistic idol are compelling. The terrain is rough, many of the people hostile to a white woman, and she's tracking a man who is supposed to be dead of suicide.

Alas, the othe More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 27, 2008

Becky rated it:

This book suffers from the author failing to heed the cardinal rule of writing: show, don't tell. For example, we're told about the protagonist's murdered father and insane mother. We are never shown these people alive and relating to the protagonist. We're just supposed to swallow the scenario whole, and it doesn't work. The book's third-person-omniscient point of view doesn't help matters. At some point, we're inside the head of nearly every character in the book, being told what they think a More...

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Dec 27, 2011

Kasia rated it:

The main reason why I chose to read this book was the fact that I have just finished watching the last season of Lost which has rapidly turned into one of my favorite shows of all time and I needed a quick jungle fix to prolong the euphoria. Rather than just being a good read, "The White Mary" surpassed my expectations and was one of the best books I have ever read, I feel so lucky that I decided to read this!

Intense, addictive and at some passages almost unreadable but in a More...

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Nov 14, 2011

Renee rated it:

Before reading this book, I highly recommend you look up the author’s website. She is the first female to travel through Papua New Guinea solo and extendedly to almost all continents and not as a tourist- her photographs are amazing, and I could have spent hours on her website if I had more time.

This book follows Marika Vecera, a free lance correspondent to the world's most remote and terrifying places, including war-torn Congo and the interior of Papua New Guinea.

When her More...

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Oct 06, 2011

Kasia rated it:

The main reason why I chose to read this book was the fact that I have just finished watching the last season of Lost which has rapidly turned into one of my favorite shows of all time and I needed a quick jungle fix to prolong the euphoria. Rather than just being a good read, "The White Mary" surpassed my expectations and was one of the best books I have ever read, I feel so lucky that I decided to read this!

Intense, addictive and at some passages almost unreadable but in a More...

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Jul 26, 2011

Betty-Anne added it

If I didn’t know right from the start that Kira Salak had lived through many of the experiences of her main character Marika Vecera, I would quite likely have guessed. It was evident in Salak’s honest depictions of both the good and the bad of the jungles in Papua New Guinea where the majority of the book is set.

The very richness of the writing in those sections of the book however, makes the other sections (Marika’s reminisces of her life) seem somewhat weaker. These reflections on he More...

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Feb 26, 2011

switterbug (Betsey) rated it:

The arduous journey of journalist Marika Vecera through the jungle, swamps, and mountains of Papua New Guinea to determine the verity of another journalist's (Robert Lewis) suicide forms the basis of this story of survival and redemption. Marika, a Czech immigrant to the US, has a sorrowful past. Her father was the target of a political execution and her mother descended into schizophrenia after his death. Marika was subsequently inspired by the writings of Pulitzer Prize-winning Lewis to become More...

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Dec 30, 2010

Karissa rated it:

I got this book as an advance reader's edition through the amazon Vine program. Not normally the type of book I read, but it sounded interesting.

Kira Salak herself has a very interesting background. If you go to this book on amazon, she has posted some links to photos she took both in the Congo and Papua New Guinea.

The book itself deals with Marika Vecera; a journalist who covers stories in war torn countries. At a talk she meets a psychologist named Seb; who introduces her t More...

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Dec 13, 2009

Elevate Difference rated it:

Marika Vicera is a war reporter who has dedicated herself to telling the stories of oppressed peoples around the world. She is giving a talk at Boston University when she meets a psychology doctoral student named Sebastian Gilman. Seb, as he is known, is in awe of Marika's war reports, which have landed frequently on the covers of major newspapers. Although Marika doesn't think much of the practice of psychology, she is taken with Seb. Marika takes a break from her globe trotting to write a biog More...

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Oct 16, 2009

Julie rated it:

I read this book while backpacking with my family through the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. It was the perfect after-dark lantern-lit companion, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Marika Vecera's adventures while roughing it (so to speak) in the backwoods.

Kira Salak did a fabulous job with this book --- taking the reader through territory and terrain most of us will never get to explore in person. Emotional peaks and plummets keep the plot moving along at a steady pace, an More...

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Aug 18, 2009

Marilynmayer rated it:

I'm always on the lookout for books taking place in Indonesia, and the fact that a good part of this book takes place in Papua New Guinea piqued my interest. (The island of New Guinea, the world's second largest, is divided between West Papua, owned by Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea, an independent nation.) But my simple geographic interest traveled to the heart of the human spirit. The main character, Marika, is a journalist who covers the tragedies of the world. She travels from the Congo More...

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Jun 05, 2009

Bob rated it:

I have never read anything by Sebastian Junger but his back of the cover blurb about this book could not be more accurate or more powerful and so I am pasting it in here:

“One cannot write well about people risking their lives without having done it oneself; suffice it to say that Kira Salak is profoundly convincing on the topic. Salak’s got it: That ability to capture the world in all its beauty and darkness and violence without romanticizing it. This is a book borne of the years tha More...

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Jan 15, 2009

Michelle rated it:

Wow! Jarring, emotional, highly original and brilliant. Deeply questions the psyche of the adventurer in the way only an adventurer can. "It takes one to know one" has never been more applicable.

Amendment: I read the reviews of others after posting my own and believe that many of those that couldn't connect with the protagonist lack a certain understanding of what drives people to put themselves in dangerous situations.

I live in a town populated by extreme ath More...

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Mar 04, 2009

Bethann rated it:

This was an interesting book. I would actually give it 3 1/2 stars if I could. Since it is told from the POV of a journalist, I of course, enjoyed that aspect of it. Salak's descriptions of Rwanda and Iraq and New Guinea were awesome and I plan to use excerpts in my Multicultural Literature class. I think the only part I didn't like was the actual romance, and that may have been because I listened to this on tape and I hated the narrator's voice for the boyfriend. Regardless, I thought their rel More...

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Jul 11, 2010

Rebecca rated it:

The White Mary is more a story about self discovery than it is about a trip to Papua New Guinea. In fact most of the first half of the book has nothing to do with Papua New Guinea. You do get to know Marika and see all of the things that have happened to her and all of the things she has seen (some of them told in horrifying detail) that have led her to this place, both emotionally and physically. Unfortunately I never found her a very sympathetic character. She often seemed more petulant and se More...

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Nov 10, 2009

Dolly rated it:

This is a fascinating story. I received this book as a "First Reads" giveaway win and was anxious to read it. It was a very different story from many I have read recently and to be honest, the brutality, gore, violence and sexual exploitation was a bit graphic for my taste. But due to the nature of the story and the places that Marika and Robert visited, such graphic scenes were so integral to the story. I loved the visual and physical descriptions of her travels through the jungle More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 02, 2009

Lesley rated it:

This book was a very good book in so many ways, but bugged the heck out of me in many other ways. The story, in a nutshell, is of a writer who visits many places on earth where people are tortured, defiled, and dehumanized... a hard read but really opened my eyes to the cruelty of man and the need for human rights intervention. The stories from the Congo, East Timor, and Papua New Guinea are so hard to read and so heartbreaking! I know I am lucky to be born in the land of the free and the home More...

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Sep 27, 2009

Steven rated it:

This novel is mostly crap. It's filled with colonialist fantasies and the dubious tropes of Western travel writing. Salak's biography notes that she is the first woman to traverse Papua New Guinea. This seemingly innocuous line, something we're supposed to admire, encapsulates the arrogance of her enterprise. The line should read, "She is the first known Western woman to traverse Papua New Guinea."

Surely a Guinean woman has traversed the country. And surely we have n More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2012

Katie rated it:

This is the kind of novel that ruins other writing for me. I want every book I read to have this sort of passion, this same intensity, breathed into its characters, its voice and its setting. I usually demand well-written plot from my novels (only occasionally will I fall under the spell of a "thinking" or plotless novel) but this story hovered over that pitch-perfect note, the one that dances between both Plot and Philosophy. And speaking of in-betweens, the ending was both down-to-th More...

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Oct 14, 2009

Leslie rated it:

A quick and engrossing read, but not a stellar novel in terms of character or subtlety. Salak begins and ends the book by spelling out in unnecessary detail exactly what her heroine, Marika, is thinking and experiencing. The first couple pages really put me off as she presents us with a predictable metaphor and goes on to discuss what it represents (I could have figured that out on my own, thanks).

Most of the novel is not so annoyingly explanatory, and on some occasions she does a More...

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Dec 12, 2011

Jesse rated it:

I acquired this book because it dealt with the jungles of Papua New Guinea, which is a place that you don't hear much about (here in the US) and I enjoy stories that take place in out-of-the-ordinary settings. My curiosity was also piqued by the fact that the author, Kira Salak, was actually the first Western woman to traverse the interior of Papua New Guinea, and also because she is an editor for National Geographic. I enjoy gaining new perspectives with what I read, and I figured I would defin More...

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Nov 04, 2009

Venessa rated it:

Could not put this down either, like Cherie!! (Although I liked the beginning better than the ending for some reason.) As a tough war journalist, Marika travels the world over covering atrocities that 95% of the population in the US could not fathom existed, or when confronted with them, put their heads back into the sand to ignore. When she hears that her idol has not committed suicide as widely believed and reported, Marika goes to remote Papua New Guinea in search of him. Her most dangerous j More...

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Sep 11, 2008

Angie rated it:

Some very powerful imagery from this author. The description of the torture committed on Lewis in East Timor was nightmarish, even more so, since it probably really happens.

My favorite character though was Tobo, Marika's guide thru the Papa New Guinea jungle. His musings about the helplessness of the white ones were not only amusing but probably on target!

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 17, 2009

Donna rated it:

Marika travels the world in search of war stories to bring back to her readers. Little does she know the toll it is taking on her and her life. One person stands as a shining example of success for her - Robert Lewis. He is her idol and she has studied him for years. After his unexpected suicide, Marika determines that she will write an autobiography about him. She will even stay home to write. But, there is an unexpected letter that makes her believe that Robert is still alive. Should she searc More...

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Aug 25, 2009

Ti rated it:

Kira writes with a command of the English language that defies the average reader's cognitive ability. That may be the source of some of the distress exhibited by those who either found it to be a "fun adventure read" or the source of nightmares. It takes courage to give the darkness a voice, a face- still greater fortitude to accept what cannot be changed.

Kira displays great courage in rendering her title characters, replete with human flaws, and weaving them into the fabr More...

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