Music of the Ghosts by Vaddey Ratner Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“In the absence of sight, when all is dark around you, it takes a deep-seated faith that others will answer your appeal, that their humanity will rise to meet your lifted hand, your raised hope, and in that brief moment, you cross the otherwise arbitrary divide between death and life.”- Music of the Ghosts, Vaddey Ratner

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, immerses herself in 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 with great trepidation. 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 things restored, a lyrical hymn to the power of forgiveness, Music of the Ghosts is an unforgettable journey through the embattled geography of the heart and its hidden chambers where love can be reborn.

Like many people I imagine, I periodically make the effort to read internationally, to get out of the Eurocentric world my books usually inhabit. I picked up Ratner's Music of the Ghosts because it intrigued me in this respect; I'd never read a book about Cambodia and in fact it was one of those countries I was only vaguely aware of until now. I knew where it was on the map, and I recognized the name Pol Pot, but the country never really had reason to enter my mind. Until now.

The best thing about Music of the Ghosts is how artfully it's written. There's a lyricism to her words, a beauty to her sentences that frequently mesmerized me while reading. This is especially apparent in the Old Musician chapters, and those chapters, as well as his character, were my favorite parts of the book. Those pretty words made the book go down easy, something that is especially admirable since books about foreign events and politics the average Westerner knows almost nothing about are usually dense and confusing and even a little slow.

In that respect, she reminds me of Khaled Hosseini, another author who writes about a country with an often confusing past and makes it easily accessible to a layperson with no background knowledge in Middle Eastern history. I do admit, though, I was a bit more confused while reading her works, and the story itself is not as intriguing as the stories in Hosseini's work. I'd imagine someone would be least interested to pick this up than The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns, for instance.

One of the most comment complaints is that this book is slow. I admit, it is a little bit slow and I was bored in some parts, but the reason I didn't find this novel as slow as I would have is because last month, I attempted to read a book called My Last Lament and could not get even half-way through it before putting it down. When I think of slow books, I think of that one, or The Night Circus, a book that really tested my patience and ultimately proved that, no, I don't have the stamina to get through a plotless, description heavy, slow-moving novel. This is not a slow book by those standards, though I suppose that if one does not have the patience to get through sometimes jarring time leaps, or how long it took for Ratner to get to the point of the book, one should not read this novel.

There's so much going on in this book that it feels much longer than 300-something pages. It seems like it should be a 400 page book. I didn't really mind this; in fact I was enjoying to some extent the disjointed, dream like feeling the narration gave me. Of course, I thought some parts were fairly superfluous, like we really didn't need a love interest for Suteera, though the scenes with Lai and the physician were some of my favorites in the book and indeed, my favorite chapter was not an Old Musician chapter but instead the one in the wildlife sanctuary because the little boy tour guide cracked me up. There was a charm to that chapter I loved, and was sad when it was over.

Despite the subject matter, the book felt quiet to me. There was a peace to the way it was written, a calmness that made even the horrific torture parts feel dreamlike and I was surprised by how unbothered I was by them. Not a criticism or a complement, just an observation.

I'd recommend this book for a specific audience, but I can't think of what that audience would be. This is a beautiful, tranquil book without a doubt, but not one that would necessarily appeal to everyone. All I know is, I found it quietly moving and, while not necessarily one of my new favorite novels, one I'm happy I read nonetheless.

8.5 out of 10