Asian American Literature Fans

By Stephen Hong Sohn

So, I’ve been reading some books as part of a distance reading group. It’s been very fun! It also gave me a chance to catch up on books I’ve been meaning to review, including Vaddey Ratner’s Music of the Ghosts (Touchstone, 2017). Ratner moves out of the “first publications club,” with this title. Her debut was In the Shadow of the Banyan, which some of my students know I have taught in the past. Let’s let B&N set the scene, as per usual: “Leaving the safety of America, Teera returns to Cambodia for the first time since her harrowing escape as a child refugee. She carries a letter from a man who mysteriously signs himself as “the Old Musician” and claims to have known her father in the Khmer Rouge prison where he disappeared twenty-five years ago. In Phnom Penh, Teera finds a society still in turmoil, where perpetrators and survivors of unfathomable violence live side by side, striving to mend their still beloved country. She meets a young doctor who begins to open her heart, confronts her long-buried memories, and prepares to learn her father’s fate. Meanwhile, the Old Musician, who earns his modest keep playing ceremonial music at a temple, awaits Teera’s visit. He will have to confess the bonds he shared with her parents, the passion with which they all embraced the Khmer Rouge’s illusory promise of a democratic society, and the truth about her father’s end. A love story for things lost and restored, a lyrical hymn to the power of forgiveness, Music of the Ghosts is a “sensitive portrait of the inheritance of survival” (USA TODAY) and a journey through the embattled geography of the heart where love can be reborn.”

This description doesn’t do the best job of giving us a sense of the expansive character-system. Teera returns to Phnom Penh in the wake of her Aunt’s (Amara) death. Amara and Teera were two of the very few to survive from their family, so Amara’s death is particularly jarring, the kind of event that forces Teera to reconsider her heritage and to hazard a trip back to a place that was filled with so much death and destruction. Once Teera arrives there, she sees a society still reverberating from years of conflict and massacre, but there are glimpses of change. Her relationship with Narunn (a doctor who runs a medical clinic) is, in part, a reflection of some progressive movement, a sense of home and new beginnings amid so much death. As for the Old Musician, we begin to get some backstory regarding his life as a former revolutionary. We discover that he once loved Teera’s mother, Channara, and that he must live in the shadow of that unrequited love. Eventually, he will cross paths with Teera’s father, while both are subjected to incredible torture.

Here, I am going to provide the spoiler warning: the novel starts off with Tun, the Old Musician, wanting to confess something to Teera, and to give her something that her father once owned, a set of musical instruments. Reader can likely guess what has happened, but not the circumstances that led to it. The conclusion reveals that the Old Musician was compelled to commit a mercy killing, as Teera’s father was subjected to medical experiments that were slowly killing him. Ratner’s prose is, as always, elegant, sparking though all of the brutalities that are being depicted. For readers of the first novel, they will notice how much Ratner has pushed herself aesthetically. Ratner uses alternating third person perspectives, primarily shifting between Teera and the Old Musician. Complicating matters is Ratner’s decision to use a number of analepses, many of which are based upon traumatic memories and flashbacks. Thus, the shifting perspectives and temporal dynamics sometimes make the novel a bit challenging to stay enmeshed within, especially if you take some pauses in between reading sessions. Ratner’s novel also possesses an intricate political texture: her story seems to resonate best as one attempting to find a bridge between the atrocities committed by revolutionaries and the victims who suffered under the Khmer Rouge. There are no easy answers and no easy source of responsibility,   

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Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Leslie J. Fernandez

If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Leslie J. Fernandez, PhD Student in English, at lfern010@ucr.edu