MEMORIES OF A PURE SPRING

Vietnamese dissent author Huong (Novel Without a Name, 1995, etc.) continues her criticisms of Communist Party injustices by focusing on her country’s performing artists. In a complex and initially confusing divided narrative, Huong explores the interrupted careers and embattled marriage of eminent composer Hoang Hung and his (younger) wife Suong, a peasant girl from the mountains of central Vietnam whose innate musical ability earns her fame as “the nightingale with the crystal voice.' The opening chapters focus on Suong’s recuperation from a failed suicide attempt, as observed by her teenaged brother Vinh (who openly despises Hung, from whom Suong had been estranged). Then Huong presents a series of flashbacks within flashbacks, to Suong’s early life and her decision to leave home and become a singer; her experiences with Hung among a troupe of performers compelled to offer celebrations of their country’s revolution; Hung’s subsequent sufferings in prison (where he’s sent because, in his words, “I just happened to be on a beach the night that a bunch of boat people were fleeing this country”); and his bitter reunion afterward with Suong, who can't forgive either her husband’s or her own infidelity and weakness. Memories . . . climaxes with savage irony when, five years after war’s end, Huong is (technically) repatriated'too late to save him from his own harsh self-judgment. The story has power'but, in this translation, at least, Huong never uses one highly charged verb or adjective when half a dozen will serve as well. Her penchant for melodramatic overstatement obscures her tale’s evident truthfulness and blunts its impact as political commentary. All honor to Huong’s courage and persistence. One accepts her as an authoritative witness, while wishing she were a better novelist.