Ratner tells us in her author's note that "Raami's story is in essence my own." This is a novel about love and survival and the power of stories. Raami is just seven-years-old when the novel begins, when the Khmer Rouge comes to power. The murderous regime over the course of four years was responsible for as many as two million deaths, wiping out about a third of the Cambodian population in their attempts to establish a communist utopia.
The story is described in blurbs as "lyrical." I thought at first too lyrical, bordering on purple, as Ratner paints an idyllic life among mangoes and butterflies and jasmine and the banyan tree, poetry and legends. It wasn't long before I was pulled in though; it occurs to me all that lush imagery isn't without its purpose--and not the one I thought at first. It's not so much that the golden world of her childhood is presented as a contrast to the horrors to come, as that it's a vision that sustains Raami through it. Raami's parents are especially strong characters. And the warmth lingers through much of the novel.
I couldn't help comparing this in my mind to Wiesel's Night, the memoir of his time in Auschwitz when barely in his teens. That wasn't cloaked as this story is in fiction. But the main difference is that this story somehow escapes its bleakness, despite the at times graphic brutality. Hope and faith even to the end shines through. It's not as powerful as Night, and the voice did strike me as a bit too sophisticated for such a young child, but this is still a moving story and very evocative of time and place with characters to care about.
