Loose Lips follows the story of Selena Keller who has just completed a doctorate in Oriental Studies. Living in Manhattan, unemployed, and dismayed by her dull job prospects, on a whim she sends her resume to the CIA. Within weeks she is contacted by a recruiter, who asks her how she would feel about convincing another human being to commit treason.
Despite her checkered life history, she passes the background investigation, the polygraph, and a battery of bizarre CIA aptitude tests and begins duty as a Clandestine Service Trainee. Living undercover as a "government budget analyst", she is suddenly isolated from her family and her past. The loneliness and isolation of life undercover lead Selena into a romantic relationship with her classmate Stan, who cannot put a spy''s habits aside, even in the bedroom. She learns that spies who fall in love with one another enter a wilderness of mirrors, where deception and betrayal are nothing less than professional obligations.
Of Claire Berlinski's marvelous debut novel, Loose Lips - a perfect blend of satire, romance, and suspense featuring a young female CIA operative - book critic Frank Bascombe observed: "It's more than a little obvious that [protagonist] Selena Keller is Claire Berlinski." Despite her assertions to the contrary, Berlinski isn't above poking fun at that notion. In Lion Eyes, a fictional Claire - the author of a novel about love among young CIA trainees - is unsuccessfully dodging a deadly Paris heat wave and her even deadlier ex-boyfriend. When she receives an e-mail from an Iranian admirer who wonders how to obtain a copy of Loose Lips in his native city of Esfahan, Claire wastes no time in replying. Her correspondence with the mysterious stranger, Arsalan - whose name means "the Lion" in Persian - quickly becomes personal, then intimate...then obsessive. As Claire heads to Istanbul to find relief from the heat, her electronic flirtation with Arsalan begins, inevitably, to consume her. The boundary between reality and imagination blurs and then disappears. The Lion, meanwhile, is nurturing his own powerful fantasies about the author. To satisfy their growing passion, they agree to meet, back in Paris, but Claire soon learns that someone is secretly intercepting their communications. Suddenly, Claire's romantic dreams start to dissolve. As events take an unimagined, even dangerous turn, and as life begins menacingly to imitate art, Claire discovers that the Lion is not who she thinks he is.
We think of Europe as the charming continent of windmills and gondolas. But lately, Europe has become the continent of endless strikes and demonstrations, bombs on the trains and subways, radical Islamic cells in every city, and ghettos so hopeless and violent even the police won't enter them. Journalist Claire Berlinski reveals how the death of religious faith has created a hopeless, morally unmoored Europe that clings to dangerous ideologies, why the notion of a united Europe is a fantasy, and what it all means for the United States.
Loose Lips follows the story of Selena Keller who has just completed a doctorate in Oriental Studies. Living in Manhattan, unemployed, and dismayed by her dull job prospects, on a whim she sends her resume to the CIA. Within weeks she is contacted by a recruiter, who asks her how she would feel about convincing another human being to commit treason. Despite her checkered life history, she passes the background investigation, the polygraph, and a battery of bizarre CIA aptitude tests and begins duty as a Clandestine Service Trainee. Living undercover as a "government budget analyst", she is suddenly isolated from her family and her past. The loneliness and isolation of life undercover lead Selena into a romantic relationship with her classmate Stan, who cannot put a spy's habits aside, even in the bedroom. She learns that spies who fall in love with one another enter a wilderness of mirrors, where deception and betrayal are nothing less than professional obligations.
