the story, photo, or a mention

the story, photo, or a mention -- on the front page. The New York Times, by comparison, provided a front-page photo and a tease to a story inside (though it had no story in Monday's paper of the prowar rally).

Second, the size of the display (particularly the photo) of the much smaller prowar demonstration in Monday's paper should have been reduced for a more balanced presentation of the two demonstrations, something national affairs editor Kenneth Cooper acknowledged last week.

So much for 20/20 hindsight. But from the dozens of readers who contacted the ombudsman, I detected another message for Globe editors: Put the Iraq war back on the front page.

''Please bring the Iraq war coverage to where it belongs," said Debbie Carvlin of Brookline. ''This is something the whole country is experiencing and it's been pushed too much to the side and I don't want us to get complacent about what's happening there."

Domestic stories have dominated much of the news lately -- from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to the vacancies on the Supreme Court.

In addition, the Globe recently relocated its two Baghdad-based staff reporters elsewhere in the region so that they can more broadly cover the Middle East. They still make regular visits to Iraq but much of the Globe's daily reporting now consists of shorter wire service stories.

No woman will have Ben without a proper bachelor’s suit . . . and the tailor refuses to make him one. Back from war with a nameless enemy, he’s just discovered that his mother is dead and that his family home has been reassigned by the state. As if that isn’t enough, he must now find a wife, or he’ll be made a civil servant and given a permanent spot in one of the city’s oppressive factories.

Meanwhile, Meeks, a foreigner who lives in the park and imagines he’s a member of the police, is hunted by the overzealous Brothers of Mercy. Meeks’s survival depends on his peculiar friendship with a police captain—but will that be enough to prevent his execution at the annual Independence Day celebration?

A dark satire rendered with all the slapstick humor of a Buster Keaton film, Julia Holmes’s debut novel evokes the strange charm of a Haruki Murakami novel in a dystopic setting reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Meeks portrays a world at once hilarious and disquieting, in which frustrated revolutionaries and hopeful youths suffer alongside the lost and the condemned, just for a chance at the permanent bliss of marriage and a slice of sugar-frosted Independence Day cake.