PARNA SANYAL, Special to The Gazette
The Disappeared
By Kim Echlin
The Disappeared, Kim Echlin's novel set during and after the Cambodian genocide, seems less a work of art than an artistic mission.
The book is dedicated to "the woman in the market," a Cambodian stranger who told Echlin that she had lost all her family during Pol Pot's regime, adding quietly: "I just thought you should know."
The opening quote ("Tell others") is from Vann Nath, a painter who survived the genocide. In effect, this novel is a serious attempt to "tell others" about the "unwitnessed life."
The story begins with 16-year-old Anne Greves's passion for a young Cambodian musician named Serey. The lovers hang out in Montreal bars, talk, sing, make love, cook, climb up the mountain, defy her disapproving academic father, and make plans to live together.
Serey's secret burden rarely finds expression: Sent to seek refuge and study in Canada by his parents, he has not heard from them since the borders of Cambodia closed four years earlier. One day, the light-as-air love comes crashing down. The borders reopen and Serey, promising to keep in close contact with Anne, returns home. Anne
never hears from him again. Unable to forget him, she flies to Cambodia 10 years later to find him.
The love story is framed on a mythic scale. Anne, narrating the story as a middle-age woman, declares: "You were my crucifixion, my torture and rebirth." But there is nothing mythic about either Anne or Serey. Both are well-mannered, well-adjusted and entirely ordinary. The character of Serey is not much developed beyond a charming stranger with a tragic past. The reader must simply accept the fact of Anne's immortal devotion, which she expresses throughout in a somewhat strained manner: "But I could not leave you, and I could not forget, and I did not know what to do, and always I loved you beyond love."
What does ring true here is Echlin's portrait of human courage and suffering. She renders the numerous Cambodians, who drift through the pages murmuring about those who are "gone," with a vividness and urgency missing from the book's central relationship. In one symbolic passage, Anne describes a girl "with a face that shocked me. She had no eyes and no nose. The centre of her face was a rectangle of shiny skin graft. ... Below the graft her lips were sensual and full and she had a delicate chin and a beautiful neck."
In reflecting on the misery around her, and in suffering her own losses, Anne becomes a rich character: "Why do some people live a comfortable life and others live one that is horror-filled? What part of ourselves do we shave off so we can keep on eating while others starve?"
The real story of The Disappeared, in short, is the author's longing to bear witness to buried lives. In this endeavour, Echlin succeeds, bringing to her work what she calls the "infinite attentiveness that is love."
Kim Echlin speaks at Books & Breakfast on Sunday, May 3, at 10 a.m. at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal Hotel, 1201 René Lévesque Blvd. W. Tickets: $30. Call 514-845-5811.
Aparna Sanyal is a Montreal writer.
The Disappeared
By Kim Echlin
The Disappeared, Kim Echlin's novel set during and after the Cambodian genocide, seems less a work of art than an artistic mission.
The book is dedicated to "the woman in the market," a Cambodian stranger who told Echlin that she had lost all her family during Pol Pot's regime, adding quietly: "I just thought you should know."
The opening quote ("Tell others") is from Vann Nath, a painter who survived the genocide. In effect, this novel is a serious attempt to "tell others" about the "unwitnessed life."
The story begins with 16-year-old Anne Greves's passion for a young Cambodian musician named Serey. The lovers hang out in Montreal bars, talk, sing, make love, cook, climb up the mountain, defy her disapproving academic father, and make plans to live together.
Serey's secret burden rarely finds expression: Sent to seek refuge and study in Canada by his parents, he has not heard from them since the borders of Cambodia closed four years earlier. One day, the light-as-air love comes crashing down. The borders reopen and Serey, promising to keep in close contact with Anne, returns home. Anne
never hears from him again. Unable to forget him, she flies to Cambodia 10 years later to find him.
The love story is framed on a mythic scale. Anne, narrating the story as a middle-age woman, declares: "You were my crucifixion, my torture and rebirth." But there is nothing mythic about either Anne or Serey. Both are well-mannered, well-adjusted and entirely ordinary. The character of Serey is not much developed beyond a charming stranger with a tragic past. The reader must simply accept the fact of Anne's immortal devotion, which she expresses throughout in a somewhat strained manner: "But I could not leave you, and I could not forget, and I did not know what to do, and always I loved you beyond love."
What does ring true here is Echlin's portrait of human courage and suffering. She renders the numerous Cambodians, who drift through the pages murmuring about those who are "gone," with a vividness and urgency missing from the book's central relationship. In one symbolic passage, Anne describes a girl "with a face that shocked me. She had no eyes and no nose. The centre of her face was a rectangle of shiny skin graft. ... Below the graft her lips were sensual and full and she had a delicate chin and a beautiful neck."
In reflecting on the misery around her, and in suffering her own losses, Anne becomes a rich character: "Why do some people live a comfortable life and others live one that is horror-filled? What part of ourselves do we shave off so we can keep on eating while others starve?"
The real story of The Disappeared, in short, is the author's longing to bear witness to buried lives. In this endeavour, Echlin succeeds, bringing to her work what she calls the "infinite attentiveness that is love."
Kim Echlin speaks at Books & Breakfast on Sunday, May 3, at 10 a.m. at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal Hotel, 1201 René Lévesque Blvd. W. Tickets: $30. Call 514-845-5811.
Aparna Sanyal is a Montreal writer.
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