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I’ve wanted to read Anthony Marra’s novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena,
ever since its release garnered so much attention and rave reviews. I thought
it sounded like the kind of book I’d want to discuss, so I was thrilled when it
was my turn to suggest books to my neighborhood book group, and they chose this
one. It was just as good as I expected, a moving novel filled with wonderful
writing and unforgettable characters, about how life and love, hope and healing
can survive even in the most horrific circumstances.
The book opens in 2004 in a small Chechnyan village, as a man
named Akhmed holds the hand of his neighbor, a newly orphaned 8-year old girl
named Havaa, and gently leads her down the street. Havaa’s home was burned to
the ground the day before, her father was taken away by Feds (Russian
soldiers), and all she has left is a blue suitcase. Akhmed knows that she is
still in danger and the soldiers could return at any time, so the two of them
walk miles through the snow from their remote village to a hospital in the
nearest town. The hospital is the only tall building left in town that is still
(mostly) standing, and it is manned entirely by one doctor and one nurse.
Sonja, the young surgeon at the hospital, is living in her
own kind of hell, taking stimulant drugs to stay awake and coping with the
never-ending stream of gun and landmine injuries by keeping herself emotionally
apart from her patients. Sonja, like most people in Chechnya, is missing
someone – her sister Natasha – and is desperate to find out what happened to
her. Akhmed asks if Havaa can stay at the hospital, but Sonja is adamant that
she couldn’t possibly stay there. They work out a deal: Akhmed, who is a
doctor, will help out at the hospital each day if Havaa can sleep there at
night.
With that, the main characters embark on their journey
together. The part of the novel that takes place in the present covers only 5
days, with that meeting in the hospital on the first day. Chapters often move
back and forth through time to explain the background and history of one
character or another. In that way, the whole story slowly comes together, and
often the reader finds that assumptions he made about a certain character are
shattered once he understands how the character got to this point. The novel
shows the complexities that make up a person and how you can’t judge someone
based solely on his current actions without understanding what came before.
What I loved most about this novel is that it is about
connections. It’s one of those stories where disparate characters who seem to
have nothing in common at first turn out to be connected in subtle ways. I
really enjoy novels like this – it’s such a joy to gradually discover those
connections and find the hidden strings tying different people together. It
almost feels like fate when two people whose paths crossed previously (and
often unknowingly) meet again.
Out of the nine people at my book group last night, five of
us rated this novel a 9 or 9.5 out of 10! I wasn’t the only one who felt so
emotionally moved by the story and the writing. Interestingly, three others in
the group only rated the novel a 5 and one person gave it a 7. Some people
didn’t like the setting, during Chechnya’s second war, that included some
horrific scenes of violence and torture. Some had trouble with the jumps in
time (though the author does helpfully provide a year at the start of each
chapter).
Everyone in our group agreed that Marra’s writing is
beautiful and eloquent. Some group members had books filled with tabs because
there were just so many passages that made you stop and read twice. Marra is a
master of the metaphor – I have never read such original metaphors and similes.
Here is one of my favorites:
“She wanted to hold foreign syllables like mints on her
tongue until they dissolved into fluency.”
Everyone in our book group also agreed that we learned a lot
about Chechnya and its history. Most of us couldn’t even find Chechnya on a map
before reading this novel, and the details and history woven into the story
were very enlightening and led us into quite a few discussions of current
events. We all wondered why we didn’t know about the devastation in Chechnya
just ten years ago.
Though the setting of the novel – during a destructive series
of wars – is often horrifying, Marra counters those terrible scenes with a
wonderful sense of humor. Havaa is often the source of the humor, as when she
tries to teach the one-armed guard at the hospital how to juggle. She is still
an eight-year old child, even in the midst of a war. I was going to include
some quotes here that show the humor in the novel, but I don’t want to ruin the
surprise of their discovery for you, as that is an integral part of the joy of
reading this novel.
In case you couldn’t tell by now, I loved this novel. From
its very first pages, I was pulled into the story and quickly came to care
about the characters and their sometimes surprising connections with each
other. I was engrossed in the story and captivated by the wonderful writing. Despite
its setting, it’s a story about how life and love can survive anything, how two
people can find healing and hope in each other, and how we are all
interconnected. The characters felt so real and I was so emotionally moved that
I cried (in a good way) as I read the last page. Then I wanted to flip back to
page 1 and start all over.
379 pages, Hogarth
