A book review of Madeleine Thien's Dogs at the Perimeter I wrote for Schema Magazine (for the blog post, click on this link):
I've been a fan of Madeleine Thien ever since I read her short story collection Simple Recipes
that was published a decade ago. I've always remembered her style of
writing to be on the sparser side of the spectrum, and now having read
her third book of fiction, Dogs at the Perimeter, I'm beginning
to realize that this may be a strategy on her part, a way of packing in
the greatest amount of pain that a reader can absorb from the page.
Thien's fourth attempt, Dogs at the Perimeter, is a first in
Asian Canadian letters. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been
a novel written on the Cambodian refugee experience in Canada. Though I
suppose Kim Echlin did publish The Disappeared some years back, but from what I understand, Echlin's novel privileges the perspective of a Euro-Canadian protagonist.
Adopted by a Euro-Canadian couple as a child, the main character in
Thien's novel, Janie, is the only surviving Cambodian refugee in her
family. Despite having everyone and everything she once knew and loved
in Phnom Penh taken away from her by the Khmer Rouge, she manages to
adjust, growing up and making a good life for herself as a neurological
scientist in current day Montreal. But when we're introduced to Janie,
we get a sense that her world is falling apart. Much like her patients
who have lost certain memories and body functioning and skills due to
brain damage, Janie can barely hold onto the present moment. Unlike
Janie's patients, however, her brain is still intact.
What triggers the dissolution of her world is the sudden
disappearance of her close friend and colleague, Dr. Hiroji Matsui.
With no explanation whatsoever, Hiroji walks out of the brain research
centre and never comes back. But what leaves Janie reeling is more the
reason for his vanishing act than his actual disappearance: just before
he disappears, Hiroji was looking into the national archives in Cambodia
for information on his long lost brother, James, who had been taken
captive as a Red Cross volunteer by the Khmer Rouge some 40 years back.
On the heels of Hiroji's unexplained absence, it is his search that
floods Janie's world with her childhood recollections of the past, a
past that has always haunted her, a past that she had managed to let go
until now.
I love that about this novel. Though we are given the story of how a
US proxy war and resulting civil war and genocide forever impacted the
lives of Cambodian families like Janie's, we are also given a glimpse
into how this history touched the lives of another family who had
already fled their homeland once due to another imperial conflict,
namely the US bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima that put a devastating
end to the Pacific War. Thien's novel suggests that we are all
profoundly connected to one another. What brings us together is the
haunting memory and experience of war, loss, displacement, and emotional
upheaval.
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book review. Show all posts
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Book Review | Vincent Lam's The Headmaster's Wager
A book review of Vincent Lam's The Headmaster's Wager I wrote for Schema Magazine (for the blog post, click on this link):
When I received my review copy of Vincent Lam's epic tome, The Headmaster's Wager, I immediately dropped everything important in my life to read it—it cost me the better part of an afternoon. You can say that I've been waiting my whole life for a Sino-Vietnamese epic of this kind to be written. I was extremely excited that a talented Sino-Vietnamese author has finally written this story, one who has been enjoying great success in the mainstream publishing industry (Lam won the Giller in 2006 for his debut short story collection Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures). And in the telling this story, Lam holds nothing back.
Lam takes on the challenge of narrating a historical epic of an elite overseas Chinese community who lived and prospered throughout the successive waves of colonization in Vietnam. And talk about colonial turnovers to the nth degree: for the longest time the Chinese were in charge, then the French, then the Japanese, and then, the story we're most familiar with, the Americans. Fictional treatments of the Vietnam War, if not told from the Vietnamese point of view, have mostly been told from the American side. The Headmaster's Wager takes us through all the historical developments that lead up to the Vietnam War from the perspective of Percival Chen, a Chinese headmaster of Saigon's most prestigious English language academy, and the view isn't flattering.
Percival is a detestable character. He is a gluttonous, opportunistic, alcoholic womanizer who gets whatever he wants because his hands are lodged deep in the pockets of many corrupt government officials. He's also an unapologetic racist. Though he and his father before him have been lucky enough to escape famine and poverty to live and prosper in Gold Mountain, what they have come to call Vietnam, he steadfastly refuses to 'go native' because he believes the Vietnamese are racially and culturally inferior, an ethnic pride that lands his son into serious political trouble.
In the end, Lam offers up a humanizing portrait of a Chinese patriarch who has struck gold in life only to lose everything to save his son. And just when his misfortunes could not possibly get any lower, Lam's protagonist places everything on the line, on the ultimate wager. After all, this is a story of a compulsive gambler, who after losing everything dear to him, wins the heart of a stunning métisse woman (his half Vietnamese, half French lover) and gains a replacement son. This is, indeed, a story of second chances, but even cats have only nine lives. From his first downfall, you will want to rip through the rest of the novel to find out how Lam's protagonist miraculously manages, yet again, to land back on his feet—and along the way, you'll receive doses of romance, terror, suspense, and sorrow. It's one of those thrilling novels—rare for most historical fiction—that you can't put down, that you won't stop reading, that you must finish in one sitting—I'd bet on it.
When I received my review copy of Vincent Lam's epic tome, The Headmaster's Wager, I immediately dropped everything important in my life to read it—it cost me the better part of an afternoon. You can say that I've been waiting my whole life for a Sino-Vietnamese epic of this kind to be written. I was extremely excited that a talented Sino-Vietnamese author has finally written this story, one who has been enjoying great success in the mainstream publishing industry (Lam won the Giller in 2006 for his debut short story collection Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures). And in the telling this story, Lam holds nothing back.
Lam takes on the challenge of narrating a historical epic of an elite overseas Chinese community who lived and prospered throughout the successive waves of colonization in Vietnam. And talk about colonial turnovers to the nth degree: for the longest time the Chinese were in charge, then the French, then the Japanese, and then, the story we're most familiar with, the Americans. Fictional treatments of the Vietnam War, if not told from the Vietnamese point of view, have mostly been told from the American side. The Headmaster's Wager takes us through all the historical developments that lead up to the Vietnam War from the perspective of Percival Chen, a Chinese headmaster of Saigon's most prestigious English language academy, and the view isn't flattering.
Percival is a detestable character. He is a gluttonous, opportunistic, alcoholic womanizer who gets whatever he wants because his hands are lodged deep in the pockets of many corrupt government officials. He's also an unapologetic racist. Though he and his father before him have been lucky enough to escape famine and poverty to live and prosper in Gold Mountain, what they have come to call Vietnam, he steadfastly refuses to 'go native' because he believes the Vietnamese are racially and culturally inferior, an ethnic pride that lands his son into serious political trouble.
In the end, Lam offers up a humanizing portrait of a Chinese patriarch who has struck gold in life only to lose everything to save his son. And just when his misfortunes could not possibly get any lower, Lam's protagonist places everything on the line, on the ultimate wager. After all, this is a story of a compulsive gambler, who after losing everything dear to him, wins the heart of a stunning métisse woman (his half Vietnamese, half French lover) and gains a replacement son. This is, indeed, a story of second chances, but even cats have only nine lives. From his first downfall, you will want to rip through the rest of the novel to find out how Lam's protagonist miraculously manages, yet again, to land back on his feet—and along the way, you'll receive doses of romance, terror, suspense, and sorrow. It's one of those thrilling novels—rare for most historical fiction—that you can't put down, that you won't stop reading, that you must finish in one sitting—I'd bet on it.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Book Review | Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
Book review of Amy Chua's controversial memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother that I wrote for Schema Magazine (for the blog post, click on this link):
The paperback version of Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
was released at the start of 2012. To review a book like this after all
the hype and controversy has died down was a challenging but intriguing
exercise. What had sparked the initial excitement over Chua's memoir
last year, thus guaranteeing that it would be a bestseller and receive
excessive media coverage and attention online, was a carefully packaged
excerpt, "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior," published in the Wall
Street Journal just days before the book release.
As a sampler, Chua's excerpt would lead you to believe that her memoir functions as a parenting handbook on raising stereotypically successful Asian children, a how-to guide on rearing your own Math whizzes and musical prodigies the "Chinese way", but at a heavy cost—the cost of a child's love and happiness, and even a parent's humanity.
It's hard not to read Chua's memoir in this way considering the hype centred around these three aspects: one, the strict authoritarian "Chinese" approach to parenting that demands and expects excellence is superior to the relaxed and liberal blind encouragement model exercised in most "Western" households; two, Chua's extreme "Chinese" commandments barring her daughters from sleepovers, play time, less-than-A grades, and any hobbies (for example TV, computer games, and crafts) and extracurricular activities (such as drama) that would not eventually result in winning a prestigious award; and three, the heartless, Chua disciplining her children and pushing them until their piano and violin pieces are perfected and performed brilliantly.
It's too easy to hate on Chua for her extreme parenting manifesto or for her repeated overgeneralizations about "Western" and "Chinese" families. Chua's memoir is written to provoke; it practically goads you into judging her. In a heavy-handed way, it sets her up as an evil mother figure who will receive her come-uppance, a mother who'll be redeemed by the lessons on work-life balance that she finally learns from her sister's near death experience with leukemia and from her rebellious teenage daughter's violent public outburst. In the end, these moments humble Chua; they balance out the parodied caricature of herself that she has painted to entertain her audience. But is this all that her book amounts to--an entertaining story of a Chinese mother-tyrant who finally softens after a simple epiphany?
Sure. But then there's her class and genealogical anxieties. Chua's worst nightmare is producing soft, entitled children, a third generation "pampered and decadent like the Romans when their empire fell." The third generation, according to Chua, are at risk of losing their grandparents' poor immigrant work ethic and drive to improve their social status. With this exaggerated fear in mind, Chua's memoir is still a worthwhile read: not as an extreme "Chinese" parenting guide-gone-wrong, but as a vexed memoir of a second-generation mother's unapologetic attempts to assimilate and elevate the social status of her family line in America.
As a sampler, Chua's excerpt would lead you to believe that her memoir functions as a parenting handbook on raising stereotypically successful Asian children, a how-to guide on rearing your own Math whizzes and musical prodigies the "Chinese way", but at a heavy cost—the cost of a child's love and happiness, and even a parent's humanity.
It's hard not to read Chua's memoir in this way considering the hype centred around these three aspects: one, the strict authoritarian "Chinese" approach to parenting that demands and expects excellence is superior to the relaxed and liberal blind encouragement model exercised in most "Western" households; two, Chua's extreme "Chinese" commandments barring her daughters from sleepovers, play time, less-than-A grades, and any hobbies (for example TV, computer games, and crafts) and extracurricular activities (such as drama) that would not eventually result in winning a prestigious award; and three, the heartless, Chua disciplining her children and pushing them until their piano and violin pieces are perfected and performed brilliantly.
It's too easy to hate on Chua for her extreme parenting manifesto or for her repeated overgeneralizations about "Western" and "Chinese" families. Chua's memoir is written to provoke; it practically goads you into judging her. In a heavy-handed way, it sets her up as an evil mother figure who will receive her come-uppance, a mother who'll be redeemed by the lessons on work-life balance that she finally learns from her sister's near death experience with leukemia and from her rebellious teenage daughter's violent public outburst. In the end, these moments humble Chua; they balance out the parodied caricature of herself that she has painted to entertain her audience. But is this all that her book amounts to--an entertaining story of a Chinese mother-tyrant who finally softens after a simple epiphany?
Sure. But then there's her class and genealogical anxieties. Chua's worst nightmare is producing soft, entitled children, a third generation "pampered and decadent like the Romans when their empire fell." The third generation, according to Chua, are at risk of losing their grandparents' poor immigrant work ethic and drive to improve their social status. With this exaggerated fear in mind, Chua's memoir is still a worthwhile read: not as an extreme "Chinese" parenting guide-gone-wrong, but as a vexed memoir of a second-generation mother's unapologetic attempts to assimilate and elevate the social status of her family line in America.
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