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Ten years on from her last novel, Edna O'Brien reminds us why she is thought to be one of the great Irish writers of this and any generation. When a wanted war criminal from the Balkans, masquerading as a faith healer, settles in a small west coast Irish village, the community are in thrall. One woman, Fidelma McBride, falls under his spell and in this astonishing novel, Edna O'Brien charts the consequences of that fatal attraction. The Little Red Chairs is a story about love, the artifice of evil, and the terrible necessity of accountability in our shattered, damaged world. A narrative which dares to travel deep into the darkness has produced a book of enormous emotional intelligence and courage. Written with a fierce lyricism and sensibility, The Little Red Chairs dares to suggest there is a way back to redemption and hope when great evil is done. Almost six decades on from her debut, Edna O'Brien has produced what may be her masterpiece in the novel form.… (more)
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The Little Red Chairs is not a fun easy read (although it has its moments of humor). The story revolves around a charismatic foreigner who arrives in the small Irish town of Cloonoila to set up practice as an alternative healer. The townsfolk are wary of him at first, but when he alleviates a woman's arthritic pain, others begin to visit Dr. Vlad's office. As much as his mystical abilities, his stories, his philosophical conversations, his knowledge of the natural world, and his grounding in the arts all draw them in--one woman in particular, Fidelma, a young wife who desperately longs for a child. As the novel develops, it becomes more Fidelma's story than Vlad's. It's a story of faith, love, betrayal, secrets, brutality, kindness, revenge, perseverance, and, above all, hope.
If you've read anything about this book, you know that the character of Dr. Vlad is presumed to be based in part on war criminal Radovan Karadzic. The book is prefaced by a short paragraph explaining its title
On the 6th of April 2012, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the start of the siege or Sarjevo by Bosnian Serb forces, 11, 541 red chairs were laid out in rows along the eight hundred metres of the Sarajevo high street. One chair for every Sarajevan killed during the 1,425 days of siege. Six hundred and forty-three small chairs represented the children killed by snipers and the heavy artillery fired from the surrounding mountains.
O'Brien could have taken the easy path and made this a simple tale of Evil (with a capital E) comes to town. Instead, she gives us the more complicated story of Fidelma as a means of showing us precisely how a man like Vlad (or Karadzik) gains people's trust, how it affects the lives it leaves in its wake, and how this one woman comes to terms with what has happened and learns to rejoin the world of the living and (hopefully) the good.
I don't want to give away any more plot details; suffice it to say that this is a totally absorbing read, at times horrifying, at other times frustrating, or maddening, and sometimes even hopeful. I hear from others who are longtime fans of O'Brien that this book is nothing like her others--which is probably why a number of them, their expectations shattered, disliked it. But for me, it's a definite 5-star read. It has been awhile since I've actually felt like I was experiencing a character's emotions and mental states, and even though these were not always pleasant, I was completely wrapped up in Fidelma's progress. That, to me, is the sign of an effective writer. As for comments about the book's three parts seeming disjointed, well, not for me. Everything isn't wrapped up in a happy little knot at the end, and Fidelma's emotions are wide-ranging and often ambiguous. But isn't that really the way life is? There are indeed meaningful connections between the parts of the story and the people in it, but O'Brien wisely leads her reader along, giving him or her the task of finding those connections instead of spelling them out. In other words, The Little Red Chairs is a book that asks you to think, asks you to feel, asks you to intuit. And its an exhilarating task indeed.
Quite the harrowing book this is. Fidelma McBride, who lives with her husband Jack in a quiet town, Cloonoila, in western Ireland, meets a newcomer who has moved there from an Eastern European country. He's a healer, a shaman, an herbalist, a naturalist. He
One day, she discovers coarse graffiti painted on the sidewalk fronting her former boutique, which now is Dr. Vlad's clinic. She races off to find him, and when she does, he's angry, hostile to her but also cautionary. His car's been vandalized: tires cut, windows smashed. They run to the clinic.
Where Wolves Fuck. He loomed over it, stared at it, then knelt and smelt it, as if he might guess the perpetrators.
'It's someone who knows us,' she said.
'You must deny everything, Fidelma.'
'I can't...I live here.'
'I thought I could trust you to be discreet,' he said with a cold contemptuousness.
'I am discreet,' she said far too loudly, hating the hysteria in her voice, in her being, in her headscarf, in all of her.
...'Nothing happened ... no broken window ... no graffiti ... no rendezvous . . . nothing .. . ne ... ne . . . ništa'
'But we're ...'
'Start forgetting ... Fidelma.'
'Forgetting what?'
'Everything . . .' He was wiping his hands in a gesture of wiping her out. No more letters. No communication. No tears. She is a grown-up lady, she can look after herself.
Then he was gone. Gone to where she would not find him. So this child, this wolf-child, was hers and hers alone to give birth to. Oh Jesus and Mary, she said... Start forgetting Fidelma. No rendezvous. No letters. No communication. Ništa.
And Vlad disappears. Gone from his clinic, gone from town. Vanished. About ten weeks later, he returns to take part in a poetry reading at the foot of Ben Bulben, an iconic mountain, something he promised to do. Everyone attending boards a bus, with Vlad settling into the seat behind the driver and losing himself in paperwork, editing. Further back sits Fidelma.
…[She] wondered if, after his poetry reading, she would manage a word with him alone. She craved it. She knew that there was to be no further communication and she accepted it, but she hoped, if only for the child's sake, he would be there, at the rim of her existence. She had not yet told Jack. How to tell him. What to tell him. When to tell him. These were the questions that assailed her hour after hour, as she faked good cheer at home…
She doesn't get the chance. The bus is flagged down by police, his passport is inspected. He's told, " 'I'm afraid we have to ask you to come to the station with us.' "
'I'm afraid it's impossible because we are heading for a poetry recital,' he answered, quite nonchalant.
'That will not be possible sir ... we are arresting you,' the second, more senior guard said.
'My dear fellow, you must be mad ... arresting me ... you are chasing shadows,' Vlad said, still in total command of himself.
'You have been living under a false name,' one said, and his colleague, who was not quite so bristling, said that they were just doing what they had been instructed to do, as he held up the arrest warrant for him to see.
Those remaining on the bus, which is everyone but Vlad, are dumbfounded.
The last image they had was of his tall figure, unbowed but humiliated, starting down the steps of the bus and just as the sun had soaked into the young ash leaves, it now rasped on the bracelets of metal that bound his wrists.
It happened so quickly, so 'low key' as they said, that they were well nigh lost for words. The fact that he had co-operated and hadn't tried to escape was surely a sign that it couldn't be too serious. Yet the mood had changed, everyone felt uneasy and the driver was sweating and cursing his bad luck. A day wasted. Fidelma regretted that she had jumped up and was touched for the first time with a fatalistic terror.
When they return home, they all watch televised news.
On the television [some] spoke of him as the warrior poet, who had always had a mystical conviction of his role in history. He had risen from being an obscure doctor to the global notoriety that he had always craved and was now on his way to the Tribunal in The Hague, to be indicted for crimes that included genocide, ethnic cleansing, massacres, tortures, detaining people in camps and displacing hundreds of thousands.
He's the "Beast of Bosnia," the leader of Serb forces that slaughtered thousands of Bosnians—men, women, and children— and that laid seige to Sarajevo. (Has no one heard of Vlad the Impaler? Read the WikiPedia entry here.) Jack knows now. So when three uncouth "bruisers" knock at the McBrides' door, Jack has no objection to their taking her away.
Oh, there's more. For Fidelma the ordeal is just beginning. Battered by the bruisers and left for dead, she's rescued and hospitalized. Rejected by her husband, she finds sanctuary with nuns. She goes to England, London, and struggles to find a place to stay, a job, and restoration of her psychological and spiritual well-being. And she seeks one final confrontation with Vlad.
A harrowing book yes, but well worth reading. I give it both thumbs up.
Clearly, this was not
A man moves to a quiet village in Ireland, starts a holistic healing business, charms the locals, and is arrested en route to a group poetry reading at Yeats' grave. Turns out, he is one of the orchestrators of the Siege of Sarajevo, and is a horrendous war criminal. He leaves one of the locals, Fidelma, who has cuckolded her husband for him, pregnant. What happens to Fidelma next is an echo of Sarajevo's progress- violence, grief, justice, and, hopefully someday, healing.
This story has a bit of a personal edge for me. I worked with a pharmacy technician who moved her family to the US from the former Yugoslavia, to escape the violence and to prevent her son's mandatory military service. She was a pharmacist there, and her husband was a pediatric dentist. In Iowa, he was an orderly at a nursing home. Their licenses did not transfer to the US. But her children are safe, and doing very well for themselves. Her story is not uncommon- I've worked with many from the former Yugoslavia who came to Iowa, giving up their lives there to be safe. The stories they all have told are horrific, and the men responsible for the atrocities there are monsters.
The man this book is based upon, Radovan Karadzic, was sentenced to 40 years of prison for genocide on March 26, 2016- 3 days before this book was released in the US.
The book is thought provoking. At times it is very laboured and frustrating as one tries to understand the storyline. At times you can feel the different characters pain, their search for a home and their desire to be treated as human beings. It is here that O Brien's writing is most powerful and effective. Most characters in the book are living in exile, well away from their homeland and trying to set roots where they are not wanted. Is it for a better life..... it seems not! Will they be ethnically cleansed at some stage in the future..... What is nationality? What is normal? What is being happy? Most of the people in this book are broken and it would seem irreparably so.
The Irish section of this book is weaker than the English section. The Belgian section is painful and shows the depth of Fidelma's despair, confusion and the complete loss of her sense of self becomes apparent there even if O Brien tries to wall paper the cracks at the end of the story ..... unsuccessfully, just like the haphazard version of Midsummer's Night Dream.
This book mixes the sublime with the banal and the downright ordinary and for me it fails to have the effect it could.
In March, of 2016, Radovan Karadzik was sentenced to 40 years in prison for crimes against humanity by the United Nations Court in The Hague. He led the siege of Sarajevo, beginning in 1992 and continuing until 1995, in which
The author has placed Karadzik in the person of a character named Dr. Vladimir Dragan, also known as Vuk, which means wolf and is a fearsome name. The novel is an account of the time in which he supposedly eluded arrest in the fictional town of Cloonoila, in Ireland. Disguised as a healer and sex therapist, sometimes playfully called Dr. Vlad, he was intelligent, understood human nature and was quite likeable. He carried about him an air of mystery and mysticism and exhibited an unusual knowledge of many things, like the qualities of certain plants and vegetables to benefit health and a knowledge of psychiatry which helped him analyze the needs of the people. His beautiful head of white hair and his full beard, coupled with his soft-spoken presence, made him attractive to the women. One woman, Fidelma, was especially drawn to him. She confided to him, in one of their conversations, that she dearly wanted a child. The story of their relationship and its aftermath was a difficult part of the story to read, but it is used to explain, graphically, how violent and brutal the war experience was for the ordinary citizens of Sarajevo.
Myths and legends and poetry embellish the tale. Although it takes place in the present time, there is a feeling of the past pervading the story and the location of the events is often hazy. It took me awhile to figure out that part of it was in Ireland and part in England. Perhaps it was because of the allusions to Dracula and Transylvania, and a bit of the occult, that I was distracted and believed it was taking place in European countries with a more fabled history.
I found the story interesting mostly in its lyrical and descriptive presentation which was sometimes mesmerizing, owing also to the exceptional narration on the audio by Juliet Stevenson. I felt as if I was in the actual countryside observing the scenes. From some scenes, I actually wanted to avert my eyes. It was through the experiences related by many of the witnesses and victims, as they exposed the violence and brutality that had been inflicted upon them and their families during the siege, that the story truly plays out and Dragan’s (Karadzik’s) arrogant and cruel personality is imagined and presented.
At times, the number of characters was overwhelming, and at other times, the story did not knit as well together as possible, leaving odd threads hanging about, making it a bit disjointed. Still, it prompted me to do research on the beast in the book, and for that the author deserves much credit. Shining a light on a piece of history that is not known well enough is a worthy effort, even if it is in fictional form. When it is based on a true historic event which touched so many thousands of people, it deserves attention.
O’Brien begins her novel in a sweet, simple, and pleasing way. but one day, a mysterious stranger appeared. She writes of, “the visitor’s card, with the name Dr. Vladimir Dragan, in black lettering, plus a host of degrees after it. Further down, [it] read Healer and Sex Therapist” (9). At first the townspeople were suspicious, but after a few women found relief for arthritis and other ailments of age, he became an accepted member of the community. Finally, his true identity is revealed, and Dragan is arrested.
Part Two of the novel deals with the trial and the suffering recounted under Dragan. Although his real identity was never revealed, many victims of his regime came forward to testify. The actual man arrested and tried was Radovan Karadžić, and he fits many of the descriptions of Dragan. I could not find any evidence that Karadžić ever visited Ireland. Part Three actually details the trial at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. When the prisoner is brought into the courtroom to confront the accused, O’Brien Writes, “When Vlad entered the trial chamber, she shook uncontrollably, as if he was someone come back from the dead. Inconceivable that he was still alive, or had not descended into madness or infirmity. But there he was, in a smart suit, a nondescript tie, courteous, disarming, still in possession of those insatiate powers that made him so feared. His guard stood stock still behind him, girt around his waist a belt with a set of keys and a revolver and he seemed curiously roused as he gazed about. From the corner of her eye, Fidelma saw how the four women seized the moment. It was as if a sudden energy possessed them, an urgency, as they stared unequivocally into that trial chamber, making their abhorrence known. He did not look out at the court and as he sat, one of his team, a young woman, crossed and whispered something to him, to which he gave a slight, affirmative smile” (259).
While part one did have an air of suspense, it did not compare to the horror stories some of the victims described in the final chapter. As we must never forget the perpetrators of Holocaust, slavery, and all instances of genocide, we must add the “Beast of Bosnia” to the list. 5 stars.
--Jim, 5/19/16
Recommended.
I'm a fan of Edna O'Brien's short stories, which are masterful. But until now I hadn't read one of her novels. THE LITTLE RED CHAIRS shows off her gift for powerful short set pieces, which
Not many writers could create so many note-perfect characters in one novel, from the precocious 6-year-old Mistletoe (her letter to Fidelma is hilarious) to the quiet widow James. Even if we only meet them for a few pages, each character feels real and true.
That said, I'm not sure the novel entirely worked as the fully realized sum of its parts. It felt a bit disjointed at times. The haunted main character, Fidelma, mostly holds the story together as she moves from Ireland to London to The Hague. O'Brien portrays Fidelma's courage and dignity as she comes to terms with her past while trying to survive and create some sort of future for herself.
I started THE LITTLE RED CHAIR with very high expectations, not just because I've enjoyed reading O'Brien's short fiction, but because the novel involves the wars and genocide of the former Yugoslavia. I'm very interested in that conflict and I've read many books about it (both fiction and nonfiction). Yet I was a bit surprised that this aspect of her story didn't entirely succeed for me. I didn't feel that I learned anything new about those events or gained any new insights into evil through her portrait of Dr. Vlad. Sometimes the backstory of those events felt a bit forced, as various characters stepped forward with their personal stories. It's a morally complex novel, with tough questions and no easy answers. Credit to O'Brien for that.
The most compelling part of the novel for me is the section where Fidelma makes her way among the refugee community in London. O'Brien does a fine job of showing me a side of London I didn't really know. It's an unflinching look at the poverty, struggles, and bureaucratic indignities of that harsh existence. But we also see the sense of community, the resilience, and the work being done by charity organizations.
This is honest writing with a lot of heart, culminating in the final section with the refugee production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which is terrific. It's a fine and fitting ending to her book.
(Thanks to Little, Brown for an advance copy via a giveaway. Receiving a free copy did not affect the content of my review.)
The narrative opens in a little Irish town, where a mysterious alternative
(spoiler alert) As a consequence of her actions, Fidelma too becomes a migrant. Cast off by her husband and community, she finds herself living a very different life in London, working in menial jobs, sleeping in others' spare rooms, mixing with other immigrants at a local centre, where they tell their stories...
The author certainly brings home the horrors of genocide, war and brutality, but she writes from such a broad spectrum, characters whom we only meet briefly describing their experiences, that it somehow dilutes the emotion aroused in the reader.
What I like about this book is that the devilish is called by name. What I don't like is that the second part (London) is a very own story - very valuable - but somehow too little linked to the first part.
The title comes from the memorial put up in Sarajevo twenty
The Guardian called this book breathtaking, a masterpiece and spectacular and said "Holding you in its clutches from first page to last, it dares to address some of the darkest moral questions of our times while never once losing sight of the sliver of humanity at their core." I guess I slipped out of its clutches at some point.
She really gets under the skin of her characters.
Highly recommended.
This digital book was given to me by the publisher via Goodreads in return for an honest unbiased review.
Vladimir Dragan is modelled upon Radovan Karadzic, the Serbian president of Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996, who masterminded the siege of Sarajevo and the ethnic genocide of Muslim and Croat civilians. This is not a historical novel in which real people appear as themselves in actual events, rather O'Brien is confronting the realities when the victims of violence flee to other countries as immigrants. And it is a novel about trying to find home in a world that violently thrusts people from the places they once considered home.
It isn't for readers who like neatly wrapped plots or straightforward narration. There are multiple narrators ands viewpoints, and the horrific complexities of the conflicts of the contemporary world are center-stage.
Plot in a Nutshell
A mysterious Eastern European healer Vladimir wanders into a small Irish village where he sets up home and a practice. A local woman Fidelma who is desperate for a child starts a relationship with him only to find that he is a wanted war criminal. After suffering terribly for her relationship with Vlad we follow Fidelma as she endeavours to start a new life in London before finally facing him once more at his trial in The Hague.
Thoughts
The book is written in significant number of short chapters many of which introduce characters and perspectives which are not revisited. Whilst reading I did not particularly enjoy this and was frustrated by the shifting points of view and upon completion I feel like the reader is left with any number of loose ends all of which could be jumping off points for other, possibly more compelling stories. Particularly confusing is the second third of the book which shows Fidelma starting her life in London amongst a cast of refugees and immigrants who as you might expect have sad and difficult back stories but are only loosely connected to the main narrative.
For much of the novel the writing is wonderfully descriptive – whether painting a strong visual of the landscape of rural Ireland or a pen portrait of any of the cast of ancillary characters nearly all of whom I believe I would recognise if I happened to meet. Where this falls down however is in the writing about the atrocities of the war where the writing is significantly more sparse. I can only assume given the quality of overall writing that this was a conscious decision but I found it cold and unemotional.
I struggled also with many of the characters including Fidelma herself. A woman approaching middle age and desperately longing for a child; finding herself the victim of a frankly horrific act of violence and then ultimately homeless in London should be a sympathetic character and yet I found myself at best unengaged and at worst incredibly frustrated by her ongoing apathy and life choices. One character I did relate to and who I would have liked to see more of is Mujo, the kitchen porter who first recognises that the new doctor is not who he is portraying himself to be and of whose back story we see only a little.
Ultimately whilst Edna O’Brien does an excellent job in painting scenes and snapshots that will stay with me I think my ultimate issue is that in a novel that takes its title from a moving war memorial the war itself is secondary and the characters truly impacted by the war be it Mujo or Zelmic have limited airtime in favour of exploring its impact on Fidelma.
I'm a
3.5 stars - a book of two halves that in truth are two different types of novel. It was too light a touch to do justice to the true human impact of the horrors of the Bosnian war, and that second half seemed incongruous with the sleepy Irish backwater of the first half.
"We don't know others. They are an enigma. We can't know them, especially those we are most intimate with, because habit blurs us and hope blinds us to the truth." page239
A war criminal from Sarajevo is hiding out in Ireland until he gets caught. The story is more about the