Trailer Park Tuesday: The Confusion of Languages by Siobhan Fallon

Two women, a city boiling with heat and hate, and a simple misunderstanding: these are the driving forces at work in Siobhan Fallon’s novel The Confusion of Languages. The story follows two military spouses, Cassie and Margaret, who join their husbands in their new duty location: Amman, Jordan. As anyone who has traveled to Countries Other Than America can tell you, foreign culture can sometimes be a shock. Fallon (an American living in the Middle East with her Army officer husband) plunges us into that unfamiliar way of life with the ease and authority of someone who has walked in her characters’ shoes. The sights, sounds and smells of Jordanian streets rise off these pages like they were loaded with special effects for our senses. Beyond those rich, sensual details, The Confusion of Languages moves forward at a waste-no-time pace, sparked by a traffic fender bender that quickly spirals into a grave situation involving both Cassie and Margaret and tests the limits of their new friendship. The book’s trailer, created by Fallon herself, gives a sense of that frenetic, jangling, jarring pace of life in a foreign country. The video basically consists of three elements: a jazzy Middle Eastern song, a slide show of images taken around Jordan, and excerpts from praise for the book (including a blurb from yours truly). That’s really all Confusion needs for this short video. Those three pieces—song, pictures, words—work together to make this a terrific trailer for an outstanding book.


Trailer Park Tuesday is a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.