The Only Café

Starred review from August 28, 2017
In this smart, tough novel, veteran journalist and author MacIntyre, whose novel The Bishop’s Man won Canada’s Scotiabank Giller Prize, turns his sharp eye to a piece of history that he covered as a CBC reporter: the Lebanese civil war, and specifically, a 1982 massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The story follows a young Canadian man named Cyril Cormier who’s trying to find himself while struggling through a break-up with his girlfriend, starting a new job as an intern at a major news network, and trying to understand the mysterious life and death of his father. Pierre Cormier came to Canada as a refugee from Lebanon in 1983, changed his name, married Cyril’s mother, became a successful Toronto lawyer, and never talked about his experience in the war. The story is partially told from his perspective, as long-blocked memories resurface. After Pierre’s death, his family is surprised by his written request that they remember him in a roast at an obscure café and invite a person named Ari, whom none of them know. It sets Cyril off on a quest to find Ari and to learn who his father really was. This intrigue leads readers into a provocative literary page-turner that offers piercing glimpses of how people survive and are destroyed by war.