July 1, 2019
The struggles of a Cambodian farming family. Each chapter of Lightman's novel focuses on a different member of a single Cambodian family at different times in their history. The mother, Ryna, is obsessed with bringing to justice a man she recognizes as her father's killer from the Khmer Rouge era. Second daughter Nita seems to have lucked out when her parents marry her to a rich man while the eldest daughter, Thida, is sent to work in a factory and the youngest daughter, Sreypov, dreams of finishing her education. Kamal, the only son, suffers from unrequited love for a beautiful city girl, and Pich, the father, is quite literally haunted. The title refers to Ryna's advice to her daughters to keep the "three flames" or virtues for women: not revealing family secrets, honoring one's parents, and serving one's husband. Novelist Lightman (In Praise of Wasting Time, 2018, etc.) is the founder of the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with women in Cambodia. While he clearly understands the many obstacles impoverished Cambodian women must overcome if they're going to live more fulfilling lives, the book's focus on a different kind of social problem in each section makes the characters feel more like symbols than individuals whose unique quirks and personality traits will drive the story forward. Almost unrelentingly grim, but there are moments of unexpected grace that provide the characters, and readers, with hope.
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July 29, 2019
Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams) portrays a Cambodian family’s conflicts with precision in this affecting novel told from the perspectives of six characters. In 2012, Ryna, a mother who has struggled with her father’s death during the Khmer Rouge regime, feels her hesitant impulse for revenge crumble after seeing her father’s now elderly murderer 33 years later. Ryna and her husband Pich’s middle daughter, Nita, has her dreams of finishing school scuttled by her father’s insistence she marry wealthy, inattentive Mr. Noth. In a moving story, Kamal, Ryna and Pich’s only son, attempts to talk to his crush Sophea despite rumors she is a prostitute. The oldest daughter, Thida, moves to Phnom Penh to work in a garment factory to support her family after several bad harvests but is taken to a brothel by a cousin, who claims her father sold her. Lightman avoids voyeuristic exploitation in the ensuing tragedies. A bicycle-stealing, teenaged Pich, dodging conscription in 1973, is visited by his grandmother’s ghost before his scheme collapses. The youngest daughter, pensive Sreypov, finally cracks through her father’s authoritarian rule by marshalling family support for her refusal of an arranged marriage. Lightman infuses Cambodian culture naturally among his considered dissections of pain. Readers will be moved by this collection’s navigation of deeply personal heartaches and lingering implications of war. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman-Schneider Literary Agents.
September 1, 2019
Novelist and physicist Lightman has traveled twice yearly since 2003 to Cambodia to work with his Harpswell Foundation which empowers women leaders in Cambodia and Southeast Asia. In his first novel in seven years, Lightman's opening dedication directly spotlights Harpswell's strong and courageous young women, some of whose stories have inspired his intimate examination of a Cambodian family's post-Khmer Rouge lives, driven by survival, redeemed by resilience. Each of six chapters, named for each family member, is paired with a pivotal year. Mother Ryna in 2012 confronts her father's murderer. In 2009, teenage, pregnant eldest daughter Nita plots to escape her much older husband. Marriage eludes only son Kamal in 2013. In 2008, middle daughter Thida is forced to become a debt equalizer. Father Pich, a young man in 1973, earns rejection from his parents. In 2015, youngest daughter Sreypov refuses a future constrained by the three flames: never air family problems, never forget parental sacrifices, always serve the husband. After four decades of submission, defiance just might break the family's cycle of desperation and humiliation.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)