The Optimists

Clem Glass, the central character of The Optimists, is a photojournalist who has recently returned home from an assignment in Africa, I guess it's Rwanda, where he witnessed the aftermath of unspeakable atrocities. He discovers that his sister is in the midst of a psychiatric crisis. He opts to care for her when she is released from hospital although the two have not been close in recent years and he is a bit of a basket case himself. Andrew Miller does families well as I discovered in his earlier novel, Oxygen, and I really enjoyed the passages dealing with Clem's extended family. They are an endearingly interesting clan. Both Clem and Clare are suffering from awful fears, hers are psychiatric in nature but Clem understands that they are every bit as terrifying as the nightmare he is living with.
He visits a colleague, Silverman, who has retreated to Toronto and is trying to work things through and to make the world a better place by operating a soup kitchen for refugees. Clem wants to confront the architect of the genocide; he eventually does but gains nothing through the interaction - not satisfaction, not relief of the anguish he endures, certainly not revenge. He's left feeling even more impotent and, I think, guilty. He takes responsibility for a crime he did not commit, hoping for the punishment he feels he deserves for not being able to prevent the slaughter.
Clem doesn't find any easy answers to his dilemma but he is a good man and a moral one and the reader can only hope that he is able to continue living having looked absolute evil in the eye.