Searching for truth

Anil’s Ghost, Michael Ondaatje

Anil Tissera, the focal character in Michael Ondaatje’s award-winning novel Anil’s Ghost, is a Sri Lanka born, Western educated forensic anthropologist returning to her homeland after years of living and working abraod. As the representative of a human rights organisation invited by the Sri Lankan government, under pressure from the West, to investigate allegations of organised campaigns of disappearance and murder, Anil has seven weeks in which to uncover as much as she can of the truth of these charges. Working with her is the government’s appointed liaison, Sri Lankan archaeologist Sarath Diyasena – someone who may or may not share her desire to reveal the truth, or her belief that there is a truth to be revelaed.

Anil knows that seven weeks is not enough time to conduct a full investigation, to build a clear picture of the patterns of violence, to establish a clear case. But she clings to an axiom passed down to her from her teachers: “One village can speak for many villages. One victim can speak for many victims.” Anil finds the trail that will lead to her one victim in a shard of bone found among the remains from Sarath’s most recent excavation, a shard that is impossibly new, hidden among other bone fragments dating from the Sixth century.

As Anil, with Sarath’s help, painstakingly traces this shard of bone back to a name of a man who has disappeared, so does Ondaatje – Sri Lankan born, educated, and settled in the West, like his central character – slowly uncover through the lives and memories of Anil, Sarath, the people in their own pasts and the people they encounter during their search, the multiple and complex layers of meaning in Sri Lanka’s tragic, war-torn present and its rich traditions and history. Running through the many strands woven into this novel are repeating themes of truth, discovery, memory, deception, concealment, and identity.

This is a moving, complex narrative that speaks powerfully of the horrors and survivals of a specific time and place as well as the vulnerability and fragility of identity and the human condition.

Urban fantasy: the Hunter's Kiss series

The Iron Hunt, Marjorie Liu

I'm picky about my urban fantasy. First of all, I tend to prefer what I think of as first wave (such as Diana Paxson's Brisingamen, Emma Bull's The War of the Oaks, R. A. MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon) and second wave urban fantasy (Lackey's Diana Tregarde, SERRAted Edge and Bedlam's Bard series, Tanya Huff's Victory Nelson and Keeper series) to the overwhelming flood of BTVS-influenced urban fantasy that I think of as third wave urban fantasy.

The Iron Hunt is squarely within the parameters of third wave urban fantasy, but it is not exactly a typical third wave urban fantasy, and its protagonist, Maxine Kiss, is not exactly a typical third wave urban fantasy heroine.

Yes, there’s the trope of the Chosen One who gains her powers only when the previous Chosen One dies – made more emotionally fraught here by making the role of Chosen One - in this case, the Hunter – hereditary, passed from mother to daughter down through the millenia.

And there is a somewhat overcomplicated and yet at the same time familiar back story about an ancient war between evil powers – in this case, demons – and the forces of good who manage to lock away the evil, at least for a while, and then create guardians to defend humanity against demons whose influence can still extend beyond their confines, in the shape of humans possessed and turned into zombies.

And of course, the seals are weakening and something resembling Armageddon or Ragnarok hovers on the horizon and unexpected allies begin to gather around Maxine, who may be the last Hunter and who is naturally special, different in some way from Hunters who have gone before.

But despite the elements of the formula, there are also some striking new twists and interesting questions that remain unanswered at the end of this, the first volume of a series. It’s enough that I’ll be looking for the next volume.

Modest Reflections on Life

Learning to Drive, Katha Pollitt

For some time now I've been reading and enjoying Pollitt's collections of (mostly) short articles and essays on political issues in America - she's an insightful analyst with solid feminist and progressive chops, and she's also very witty.

In Learning to Drive, Pollitt turns her analytical skills, her feminist and progressive sensibilities and her razor wit to a series of longer narratives on issues and events in her own life that are both highly (and sometimes poignantly, often hilariously) personal and at the same time, if not universal, certainly profoundly familiar - to at the very least this 50-something feminist and activist who hasn't always had the easiest time of incorporating political insight into the workings of her own life.

Learning to Drive is a collection of insights and experiences about just that - learning to drive our own lives, live the independence we have argued is ours in theory.

And it made me laugh, not so much at Pollitt's predicaments but at the memories of my own.