Home »
A funny, educational and entertaining series
Book Review
By Derryll White
Cotterill, Colin (2006). Disco for the Departed.
– from the resumé of Dr. Siri Paiboun: “1976 – Kidnapped by the Party and appointed national coroner. (I often weep at the thought of the great honour bestowed upon me.”
This is the third novel in Colin Cotterill’s series featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun, reluctant Laotian coroner, disheartened communist and enlightened shaman. This is not a high tech crime fighting novel but a paean to the fallibilities of man and the sad aftermaths of idealistic revolution.
Cotterill is very good at tongue-in-cheek description, shredding the U.S. intervention in Southeast Asia without casting any direct accusations. He is funny, but in a sardonic manner that pushes the reader to think. What was the purpose of the American intervention?
With the victory of the Pathet Lao the revolutionaries were forced into governing, in much the same fashion as, recently, the NDP in Alberta. No experience, lots of ideals and an absolute need to convince the people of their governing capabilities. And so, sadly, Cotterill charts a slow dissolution into petty power politics and empty promises.
The author is very good at rescuing the humour from the chaos but in the end the reader cannot help but hope for some peace and justice for the poor, war-shocked Laotian people. And still, after the fighting, daily casualties come into the hospital and morgue from the gifts of death left in the fields and on the paths by foreign airplanes.
Cotterill develops and uses the shamanic properties Dr. Paiboun has inherited and balances this against the straightforward dogmatism of Communist rhetoric and party thought. Dr. Paiboun accepts another reality to enter the world and belief system of the rice-farming, non-ideological common Laotian. “The Party had taught him that shamanism was one more opiate for a people who would be better off drunk on socialism.” Dr. Paiboun does have a light way of putting social upheaval and revolution in perspective.
All-in-all a delightful book. Cotterill is very hard on the way the Laotian revolution lost its purpose, but incredibly loving of the common people. He takes in the Hmong, the mountain dwellers, and every part of the lower strata of Laotian society. Harsh on the bureaucrats, the author shows them as ill-prepared for power and petty in the extreme while at the same time recognizing the long-serving revolutionary intent to “make life better.”
This is a funny, educational and always entertaining series. I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Disco for the Departed.’
****
Excerpts from the novel:
MARRIAGE – “My ma says a man is never going to be sweeter than he was on the day he proposed to you. She said that’s the best you get. Once you’re deposited in the wife bank he never has to make that effort again.”
BIRTHRIGHT – Ever since Siri had discovered his shaman ancestry a lot of strange things had happened in his life. He worked the nail of his pinky finger around the inside of his mouth, counting off his teeth. It was a habit he had started a few months earlier when he found out he was different. All there – all thirty-three of them. The same number of teeth as old Prince Phetsarat the magician; the same number as the Lord Buddha himself. Siri was in hallowed company.
RE-EDUCATION “Creeps,” she said.
“Just victims of the money culture,” Siri said. “They’ll change. Taking away a man’s comfort strips him down to basics – lets him see what he really is. Suddenly finding himself with nothing can add a dimension. If they survive the cold and the hunger and diseases up here they’ll be more real than they are now, more humble.”
DIPLOMACY – Since Geung had first come to Mahosat, the Americans had rented Laos and most of the people in it. The colonizers’’ money was paying government salaries, bankrolling the military and setting up selected pockets of infrastructure in an attempt to hold back the advancing Reds.
DISLILLUSIONMENT – She had to play the game. Siri taught her what to say to fool the interviewers. He was an expert. He’d been playing communist charades for most of his life. His faith in the system had long since evaporated as he watched a perfectly good doctrine destroyed by personalities. What should have been a tool was being used as a weapon and he felt little pride in his forty-eight year membership of the Party.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
Lotus Books is pleased to sponsor book reviews by Derryll White. If you are interested in a book that Derryll has reviewed you can shop online at http://lotusbooks.ca/, call us at 250-426-3415 or please visit us at 33 10th Ave. S. Cranbrook, and we would be happy to help you find a great read.
