THE DISAPPEARED by Kim Echlin (Hamish Hamilton), 235 pages, $29 cloth. Rating: NNNN
The Disappeared is a terribly sad book, but it really couldn’t be any other way.
[rssbreak]
Anne begins an affair with Cambodian musician Serey while she’s still in high school in Montreal. He’s loving and passionate, but there seems to be a hole inside him that Anne can’t quite fathom, and he’s not giving her much information about the life he left.
When he decides to return to Cambodia after the fall of Pol Pot, Anne is devastated, until she believes she’s seen his image on TV and decides to find him.
Echlin’s pristine prose – there’s a poet in there somewhere – evokes the pull of eros as Anne searches for the man she loves in one of the world’s most dangerous places. But Echlin is equally skilled at portraying the effects of trauma on the human spirit.
Small kindnesses take on huge significance. Strangers reveal the intimate details of Pol Pot’s terror and the toll it’s taken on them. And a visit to a museum containing the bones of the dead has a powerful impact on Anne.
This is the second book I’ve read in the last month that’s been dissed by critics complaining of language that’s too heightened. Like Anne Michaels’s The Winter Vault, The Disappeared does go to poetic lengths in order to come to grips with events too terrible to contemplate calmly.
While some argue that artists ought to steer clear of monumental tragedies like the Holocaust, the cynical displacement of entire populations or, in Echlin’s case, Pol Pot’s killing fields, I say thank you to writers who seek to open our eyes and minds.
Echlin reads Tuesday (April 28) with Giles Blunt and Sherri Vanderveen at Commensal.
See Readings.
Write Books at susanc@nowtoronto.com.
