Astonishingly here's a new novel, The Alphabet of Vietnam by Jonathan Chamberlain (2011, Hong Kong, 292 pages, US$13.95), from Blacksmith Books, a savvy publisher that usually handles only non-fiction. Definitely, all of its best books fit into the non-fiction category.
At a second glance, it's obvious why The Alphabet of Vietnam, full of post-war angst, made its way into print. Earlier, Chamberlain wrote three other Blacksmith books (a memorable one, Wordjazz For Stevie; a popular one, King Hui: The Man Who Owned All the Opium in Hong Kong; and an informative one, Chinese Gods), all non-fiction. So the publisher hoped this proven author could excel again, despite switching genres.
The world has a surplus of outstanding novels about troubled souls struggling with the Vietnam War's aftermath. Worse, The Alphabet of Vietnam ranks as ordinary, not outstanding. So it looks likely to go little noticed on crowded bookshop shelves.
Words like “deranged”, “twisted” and “warped” spring to mind about the characters. Their post-Vietnam torments intensify as millions of TV screens show American soldiers again flexing their muscles and going wrong, this time in the Middle East.
“We still haven't learned from Vietnam. You send soldiers to fight meaningless, vicious, enemy dehumanizing wars and they come back home, they bring the war back with them. And the grand violence of our policy makers gets transmuted into little parcels – small individually wrapped little packets – of hate and rage and brutality.”
Joe, a guilt-ridden war-vet, commits suicide, sliced in two by a rumbling train. Then his small-town-dwelling brother Jack receives a package with the dead man's diaries and notebooks.
“Have you figured it out? A man kills another man and he fries as they shove 20,000 volts through the bastard. Another man sends 60,000 guys to their death in Nam, and he's a fucking hero. He's a great man. Lyndon B Bloody Johnson. How does that make sense? Can governments do what the fuck they like: kill, rape and pillage and all that crap but we have to toe the line? Why for Chrissakes?”
Before dying, Joe scribbled an urgent request. He wants Jack to go to an isolated cabin deep in the Appalachians and save a pregnant woman held captive by Wash, another sick ex-soldier.
Readers will need a steely tolerance for rape and senseless murder. Aptly, the book cover shows grisly markings akin to bloodstains.
“Get what I'm saying kid brother?... I done things that I know would just disgust you. But I ain't got any regrets. Everyone's the enemy so everything you do is justified. That's right brother, let your mind dream up horrors. I dare say you couldn't dream up something so horrible I haven't done it. That's the truth.”
A potent sense of evil makes readers squirm and never relents. Uneasy in its presence, some readers will start this book, but lack the nerve and resolve to finish it.
“Are we to blame for our own fundamental nature? If I'm born bad is that my fault? If I'm made bad is that my fault? Who should the man blame for his evil thoughts? Who should I blame for the urge that is in me to hurt and go on hurting? To do things that disgust even myself?”
Does one man's guilt transfer to others? “It is Joe's guilt. I know that even the Bible consoles me. I am not my brother's keeper. I know. But still.... And once I reach that point my mind empties again and a silent wind blows through it and I sense a vast void inside me.”
At times, Chamberlain flirts with transforming parts of the book into a love story. But it's tough to relax, much less to sense heartfelt tenderness, when surrounded by dripping blood.
More complex than necessary, the plot takes Jack to Vietnam trying to better understand his brother’s atrocities. He wants.... “The truth. The reality. The basic building blocks to understanding. The alphabet.... The alphabet of Vietnam.”
Some of what Jack discovers surprises him. More of it distresses him. “That is the past. Everyone here lives in the present, this present Vietnam which is struggling still to recover from the stupidities of the past.”
Raised in Ireland and Hong Kong, Chamberlain graduated from Sussex University before returning to Hong Kong and working as a teacher and writer. Now he's a prolific full-time author living in Brighton, England.
Perusing The Alphabet of Vietnam from A to Z makes an earlier comment reverberate: “Definitely, all of the best Blacksmith books fit into the non-fiction category.” Chamberlain has written several of those books, but this novel falls short of such lofty status.
Approval rating: 54 per cent.
For more information: www.blacksmithbooks.com
(May 2, 2011)
ARCHIVES |
Proven author Jonathan Chamberlain
switches gears in a big way.
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