Being Mexican-American, three major themes in this graphic novel really resonated with me: 1.) no matter what Americans may think, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are from two different cultures; 2.) sometimes it's best to curse in Spanish; and 3.) look out for crunchies who romanticize Mexico. They're probably running from something, and hoping beyond all hope that it can be found south of the border. This GN has all the elements of a fine graphic novel: show don't tell, illuminating line drawings, an expressive main character, and FOCUS. Jessica Abel writes about Mexico City through the eyes of her main character rather than through the ink pen of the artist. What we the readers get is a close first-person view of D.F. from the perspective of an American boho expatriate who desperately wants to discover her roots--what she believes will give her strength--by backpacking, couch-surfing, smoking pot, and falling in love in the most romantic and tawdry vecindades of Mexico City. Can you guess what happens next?

Ah, heartbreak of the most dramatic kind, i.e. the kind involving drug-runners, the media, kidnapping, murder, mysoginy, hypocrisy, and a child getting drunk drinking beer on the former lake Tlatelolco. If you read this book get ready for a serious culture clash: Americans face up to your capitalist nature and Mexicans get ready for some brutally honest back alley violence. And listen close: I'm not saying that is a book that exposes seedy truths about Mexican and American culture, but I am saying that it's the naive souls in our societies who suffer the worst crimes, regardless of race, culture, socio-economic status. Jessica Abel does a great job of depicting the worm in the bottom of the tequila bottle and the aftermath...oh, the aftermath.

James Meek is a novelist. He is well known for three other novels but is better known as a journalist writing about the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan and the crisis of the detention centre of Guantanamo Bay. His last book was the critically acclaimed ‘People’s act of love.’

‘We are now beginning our descent’ is familiar territory for Meek for it does describe some of the political machinations at work in Afghanistan. Some wise lines inform the book and the place of neutrality in war as espoused by the central character Adam Kellas: ‘There’s two ways to be a neutral in a war. One is not to know about it, and the other is not to care.’

Adam Kellas is hired by his newspaper to cover the troubled events in Afghanistan post 9/11. All the world seemed to talk of nothing more than the Taliban and their own harsh war against the Northern Alliance. But Kellas is intoxicated by love, in this unknown wilderness, for another journalist called Astrid. This too is a central concern of the novel. Kellas has an old school friend called McGurgan who lives in Scotland with his wife Sophie (an old flame of Kellas) and children. McGurgan is a successful novelist. McGurgan is a wilder character embroiled in simmering domestic turmoil. Kellas cannot make sense of this and he goes to the US to find out if his novel is going to be successful and to link up with Astrid who now lives in America. Part of Kellas’ problem is his inability to read communications and other people’s feelings properly. He is a skilful war correspondent but the rest of his life is deeply unsatisfying. The title of the book is descriptive of his condition as well as airline speak for continuous travel and arriving at the destination. That is what Kellas is doing constantly.

Passages of Meek’s novel are extremely visceral and descriptive of a war correspondent’s life. One feels that it gets close to the bone of the real war zone and its panoply of weaponry, unpredictable attacks and unusually tense, quiet periods. The character of Mohammed the interpreter rings true honestly in the carnage. But sometimes Kellas feels more like a combatant than a correspondent. The pursuit of Astrid to America heaps disappointment upon disappointment and this marks out his lack of self awareness. The American characters are sketched in quickly, but perceptively. Both his publisher’s agent and bus driver Lloyd are resentful of him for his attacks upon America in print. His friend’s wife Sophie berates him for his lack of boldness. We end with Kellas reunited with Astrid at another psychological impasse. Meek proposes that Kellas is unable to change and must always suffer. He cannot hold his friends. I read the book in fits and starts and grew frustrated at Kellas’ impetuosity and moral weakness. Meek has written a book about the disappointment that love brings to the lovers and the Hamlet like inability to make important decisions in any meaningful way.

According to Freud it is possible to be wrecked by success. Of course it is also possible to be wrecked by failure, and Adam Kellas, the main protagonist of Now We Are Beginning Our Descent is wrecked by both simultaneously.

Adam Kellas, like James Meek himself, is a British war journalist who finds himself covering the war in Afghanistan. While stationed there he starts a deliberately provocative and commercial thriller and also encounters another journalist - an American called Astrid - with whom he rapidly becomes fascinated ('A fascination was what came about when a single life wasn't enough to contain the presence of someone else inside him'). For instance he finds himself thinking about the sound she makes, the 'exhalation with voice which came from her involuntarily' as she takes the load of her rucksack on her back.

A year later, back in the UK, he has finished his thriller and has just received the offer of a six-figure sum from a publisher, and yet he is unhappy. The book, after all, is a cynical reaction to the market place after his previous novels, a little like James Meek's works before The People's Act of Love, haven't sold at all. He has written it to make money and to be read, and it compares unfavourably with the masterpiece of his friend which is being lauded everywhere. He quits his job as a journalist and boards a plane and travels first class to New York and during this journey he tells his story, in flashback, to the woman sitting next to him. Gradually various layers of his life are exposed: explosive, dangerous incidents in both Afghanistan and Britain that have caused him to begin his descent. There are two main pivotal moments: an incident in Afghanistan which makes him question his role as disinterested observer (accidentally he becomes involves and feels guilty) and a dinner-party which is jaw-dropping in its vindictiveness. Both of these are causing him to run away, and yet he is also running towards something too.

But this running away is also a sort of slithering downwards - how much so becomes apparent in one of the major twists in the novel when he reaches New York - and once he starts slithering he can't seem to stop. He runs blindly onwards towards what he thinks he wants but having found it discovers it is not what he wanted at all. It sounds desperate, and in some ways it is, but there is a touch of satisfaction which is not just schadenfreude, because it is only by descending that Adam Kellas can learn that no one ever gets exactly what they want. He has to compromise, and his new acquisition turns out to be more valuable because of that.

This is a hugely satisfying novel, cleverly-constructed, one of the best I have read for some time; the characters, dialogue and settings are fascinating and the story gripping. There are so many beautifully-written passages that I have difficulty picking out just one, but I think it is when Meek describes characters that I admire him the most:

He dressed as if he believed he was a younger, fitter man, in a tight black sweater that clung to his sagging torso. He wore Ray-Bans and had eczema. He was always moving, making jerky little movements of his head, shifting from foot to foot, swinging his body from side to side, like a bird waiting for grain to fall.

It is also a book that incidentally tells a lot about the process of writing - or at least how James Meek writes. It is in part a plea for the purity of the creative process and the idea that a writer should above all write for his or herself as the passenger next to Adam Kellas says 'I like to think there are people out there writing books that I can only read by working hard at it even if I never do read them. I like to think there are writers left who don't give a fuck, you know? "Here's my book. You don't like it, you can go fuck yourself , I don't care."'

Until recently I had the same literary agent as James Meek but although she sold James Meek's last work very successfully - it was a multi-national bestseller - she couldn't sell mine at all and consequently I was dropped. It has been hard finding the motivation to continue but when I read that passage I felt that I should. The business of writing demands obstinacy and perseverance as well as talent and clearly James Meek has much of all three.

I have not yet read any of James Meeks's other works but now feel that I must, very soon, in fact I should think that I'd want to read every word that he writes.