THE DISAPPEARED; Kim Echlin
Hamish Hamilton, Canada. 2009
Abacus, Great Britain 2009
PB. pp235 ISBN 976-0-349-12240-3 Price £11.99

Mardi Stewart

The Disappeared, set in Montreal and Cambodia, following the devastation left by the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot’s revolution in Pnomh Pen is a tale of love, war, betrayal and truth.

Anne Greves, a motherless sixteen year old schoolgirl living in Montreal with her father, meets Serey, an exiled Cambodian musician, in a Montreal club. The couple vow never to be parted but the idyll is shattered when Serey leaves Anne to return to Cambodia in search of his family. He refuses to take her and in the following decade she hears nothing in spite of repeated attempts to make contact. Resolute in her love, and ignoring her father’s disapproval, Anne travels to Cambodia to find Serey.

This powerful, well-written novel sustains interest throughout. The war in Cambodia, the killing fields and residual devastation of a nation torn apart are echoed in the style of writing. This style is sharply staccato, reminiscent of bullets and pithy reportage while plainly, and often cruelly, telling the story of Anne and Serey. Indirect speech is used to dramatic effect by Anne, the first person narrator, as the full horror of the story unfolds.

The love of Anne for Serey is almost impossibly constant, which could be perceived as over-romanticised in view of the cruelty of the Cambodian revolution. However, it is precisely this dogged constancy of Anne to find her lover, regardless of her own safety, which highlights the horrors of the revolution and lends weight to the novel.

An interesting thread running through the novel is the idea of the ‘untranslatable’ that exists between different cultures. Listening to Khmer music Anne says,’ I pretended to understand but I was on the untranslatable edge.’ It is this untranslatable element that both forces her to follow Serey to Cambodia after a decade and gives her the courage to try to beat the governmental system of Cambodia

Throughout the narrative there is deft depiction of the characters through their eyes. Eye colour, expression, size and mood convey the tone of various scenes as the story unfolds. Examples of this powerful imagery include: ‘ mud dark eyes,’ ‘the eyes smile again,’ ‘ frantic eyes,’ ‘your burning eyes,.’ ‘unseeing eyes,’ ‘his eyes were thin black knives.’ At the end of the book there is a particularly poignant use of this theme.

This novel is lively, heartbreaking, political and soul-searching and will be read both for its beauty and its pain.