This is a heartbreaking story of Cambodia in the 1970s, horrors that persist two decades later in Canada. A haunting phrase: “Hunger was erasing my being”; reality becomes blurred in such horrible circumstances. Thien was at Blue Metropolis last May in Montreal.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10129122-dogs-at-the-perimeter
Helen Humphreys also wrote Nocturne which I recommended last month. Humphreys is a poet, so this is a short novel (set in 1941 England) with exquisitely chosen words. A lost garden is a metaphor for life and more specifically for love: longing, faith and loss. A beautiful book.
A 10-year-old (Helen) and a 22-year-old (Flora, a cousin of Helen’s dead mother), spend part of the summer of 1945 together. Helen’s father is working at Oak Ridge on bomb development so Flora is a companion/chaperone. Helen is a precocious, petulant, self-absorbed and incredibly manipulative kid, so interesting character and the ending to the book is a surprise.
What David Read 