Waiting for rescue : a novel
Honig, Lucy
Adult Fiction HONIG

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From Publishers' Weekly:

Honig's latest reads like a treatise on the failures of international aid masquerading as fiction. Insufferable narrator Erika, a writing instructor at a Boston university, tells us of Ibrahim, a bright young student from Abu Dhabi dying of cancer whose brother-in-law is a victim of ethnic profiling (which might be moving if it wasn't so expected); of university office politics; and of research programs that look on while AIDS victims get sicker and families get poorer. A contrived subplot, reinforcing that fear is all around us, relates the story of Erika's high school biology teacher, who hacked a prostitute to death. As it turns out, his son, Toby, just happens to work in Erika's department, and while Erika's empathy knows no bounds for the poor and oppressed, she is a bully who cannot stop herself from tormenting bubbly Toby, who asks little more of her than that she sample his wife's baked goods. Erika's unchallenged self-righteousness is off-putting and nearly impossible to get past. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved