This novel certainly
brings to mind Johnny Got His Gun by
Dalton Trumbo which was published 80 years ago.
It is sad that the anti-war message must be repeated.
Eden Malcolm is
wounded in an attack in Iraq during his second deployment. In fact, he is probably “the most wounded man
in the history of war.” He once weighed
220 pounds; now there are only 70 pounds left of him because “they’ve cut all
of him off up to the torso.” He cannot
hear and his vision is impaired; even his mental faculties are not totally
intact.
The narrator is Eden’s
friend, an unnamed man who died in the same attack three years earlier. Death has granted the narrator omniscience so
he can describe events in Eden’s room in a burn center in San Antonio, but he
can also relate events from the past which he didn’t observe when he was
alive. He focuses on relationships,
specifically that between Eden and his wife Mary. We learn about how they met and how things
changed when Eden returned from his first deployment. And then we see how Mary has sat vigil for
three years with her husband. The
narrator also has access to both Mary and Eden’s thoughts.
The novel opens in a
way that explains it is Mary’s story: “I
want you to understand Mary and what she did.
But I don’t know if you will. You’ve
got to wonder if in the end you’d make the same choice, circumstances being
similar, or even the same, God help you.”
Within a few months of Eden’s arrival in the U.S., his remaining family “decided
he should be let go. . . . They said all this to Mary many different times and in
many different ways, always asking her to let go of Eden. Always she said no. After they asked for the last time, they went
home, had a memorial service for their brother and stopped visiting.” Mary’s reasons for continuing her watch and
for refusing to let Eden’s death be expedited are what we come to learn in the
course of the book.
Unfortunately, I didn’t
find her motivations convincing. Because
of her actions before Eden’s second deployment, she feels a great deal of
guilt. She also made a promise to
herself when he left, but none of these fully explain her decisions, especially
at the end when there is little doubt as to Eden’s wishes. She comes across as a selfish person;
certainly, she seems to give little thought to what is best for Eden or for her
daughter. True love, which is unselfish,
seems to have little to do with her actions.
The theme, of course,
is the terrible cost of war. Eden’s
injuries are not described in great detail because the author wants to
emphasize that it is not just Eden who suffers.
Everyone in the novel suffers. Wars
continue beyond the battlefield, in homes and hospitals. There is even mention of how medical
technology may prolong the suffering of victims and their loved ones. People like Eden would have died in previous
conflicts but medical knowledge has advanced so he can be kept alive. Gabe, one of Eden’s nurses who was once an
army medic, thinks about the problem with medical advancements: “he’d watched the minutes he bought for his
friends turn into sentences of too many hours, days and months. Soon he learned it wasn’t too little time
that was the enemy but too much. For in
the end, it was time that turned all his friends’ fractures to breaks. And for his friends, the moments from their
saving to their ends became a list of torments caused by him.”
There are some medical
details that I didn’t find convincing.
For example, “One of the doctors remarked that emotional trauma to the
mother often led to certain recessive genes becoming dominant [in a child].” Is this true?
Likewise, a nurse explains “how sometimes a stroke can reawaken parts of
the brain that might have been traumatized before.” Is this true?
This is a short but
powerful novel. It is not an easy read
but serves as a reminder of the realities of war. The title has many meanings; one is that until
we abolish warfare, we will always be waiting for paradise.
No comments:
Post a Comment