Gail’s father, Matthew, grew up in Sandakan during the war. On a trip to Amsterdam for her documentary only months before she died, Gail uncovered truths about her parents’ lives that helped her reunite with Ansel. Her distraught husband, Ansel, an AIDS doctor, relives the ten years of their life together, particularly the last year, when his brief affair almost caused the marriage to unravel. Gail, a 39-year-old Vancouver journalist, dies suddenly while working on a documentary about a Canadian prisoner of war in Sandakan, Malaysia, during WWII. Though some readers may quibble about the novel’s thematic similarities to its predecessor, Dogs at the Perimeter is more intimate in its examination of memory, loss, and the intrinsic need to make peace with one’s past.In her first novel, Thien (stories: Simple Recipes, 2002) intertwines a straightforward, though bittersweet, contemporary romance between a doctor and a journalist with the more complicated relationships between the journalist’s Malaysian father and the two women he loved. There is a confidence in Thien’s writing that many more accomplished authors never attain. Her ability to handle a fractured chronology results in seamless and subtle transitions between recollection and introspection. Scenes of sadness, cruelty, and love are carefully measured for full effect without becoming overwhelming.
Thien once again demonstrates a talent for creating vivid, indelible images in language both precise and lyrical. Worst of all is her brother’s transformation from dreamy boy to child soldier, and his subsequent death, for which she feels responsible.Janie’s story is inconceivably tragic, and yet, as a parallel storyline involving Hiroji’s quest to find his missing brother in Cambodia unfolds, she finds, if not closure, then at least acceptance and hopefulness for the future. Helplessly, she watches as her father is taken away and her mother succumbs to illness and starvation. She is haunted by memories of her childhood in Pol Pot’s Cambodia, where she and her family were forced from their home in Phnom Penh as part of the Khmer Rouge’s mass evacuation of city dwellers into the countryside. After losing control and striking her young son, Janie leaves home and takes up residence in Hiroji’s empty apartment, where she attempts to pull herself together.īut Janie cannot escape her demons. The sudden departure of her friend and mentor, Hiroji, has triggered a downward spiral into drinking and depression. Opening in Montreal, the book is narrated by Janie, a fortysomething medical researcher whose life is coming apart at the seams. Madeleine Thien’s 2006 debut novel, Certainty, about a Vancouver radio producer haunted by events in her Asian expat parents’ pasts, garnered high praise and marked her as a writer to watch.
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