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No cheap grace here. We are told this story by a 14–year–old hit man in Columbia. The crafting perfect to the last detail. There's dialogue, but there are no quotation marks. Nothing is so clearly boundaried as that. Not thoughts and words, and for dead certain, not harm and good. The so–young hit man's tone and voice are counterpoints of his daily causing/fearing death. "I come here to feel nothing," he says, to "The streets of headstones." The killer's acts are chilling, while his thoughts are eloquent. The story's ending/beginning is, as they say, breathtaking. Life–taking. Life–making. It is I think what fiction telling Gospel wants to be.
Le's work understands salvation comes at great, not–always–willing but always–chosen, cost. The book is powerful because Le translates theology (mine; I am not saying his) to story, and it is by story best of all that we are taught and sometimes changed. I struggle with the notion of superimposing meaning on the work of artists whose worldview is not Christocentric, as Le has said that his is not. But then there comes the pesky question about authorship. If we posit there is Truth, (with the biggest "T" in town)—which I not only posit but insist upon—and if that Truth is displayed when and where and how God will, I have no problem whatsoever in believing Truth shows up all over. There are steely certain aspects of the Gospel, central tenets of this faith, that can transfuse prose for our instruction and delight. And I do not put transfusions down to happenstance. Like I say, Authorship.
Le's characters in ways both softly subtle and profound betray an understanding that we are not our own gods, that we do enter into new life by dying to ourselves, that the glory that awaits us sometimes lets imagination hint and intimate in dreams that sweeten mortal days. Authorship. Writing as pleasing as this grabs you by the chin and turns your head and makes you look up at the One, so profligate, beneficent, enabling in deft grace. We are no more than sensible, I think, in praising God for art that's beautiful and true the way the writing of Nam Le surely is. And do we denigrate this author—whose writing all but splits the skies—by thanking God for what he has written? I think not. We only nudge, renew the wondering, hardly novel to the maker of such art: whence this? Tyger, Tyger, Burning bright … .
Not all stories in this book are equally strong, though all have earned the right to stand here and contend. And contend each story does, and ably, with our preconceptions and our knee–jerk notions. Each story sets up camp in its own corner of the world, and stands alone, uniquely crafted. Maggie Bromell says a short story is a thing that starts at the beginning and ends at the end, and when the writer gets it right, you can't imagine anything that's missing from before or after. Le gets it right. He is one of those writers who let you know what's going on from the first sentence, then let you feel the satisfying jolt when things make hairpin turns, and leave you at the end having actually completed the telling of the tale.
Le might be mistaken for transparent in his pure and simple lovely prose, his easy storytelling. But not so fast. The reader finishes this book and wants to start again, because, although these people do not come from our hometown, they do come from our family. They may not eat our food, but we have tasted the same things, or surely will. They have things to teach us that story is the way to learn.
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