Small Country: A Novel
By: Gaël Faye / Translated By: Sarah Ardizzone / Narrated by: Dominic Hoffman
Length: 6 hrs and 2 mins
Beautiful translation of stunning prose… just didn’t see the point… tho’ Big Sis has many thoughts on that…!
Here’s the thing.
I do a lot of Military audiobooks, have listened to a LOT on War(s) and genocide. It’s a horror show in my head sometimes, I’ll admit. So I feel really, Really, REALLY bad when I get to a work that is relentlessly graphic when it comes to the: And Then All Hell Broke Loose parts. Cuz, you see, at times, and I dunno why it is, I come across something, perhaps beautifully written, emotionally evocative… and I think: >MEH<
To be clear: This is not something I’m terribly proud of, and I do not find it to be admirable.
Small Country by author Gaël Faye wound up being such a work for me. That you can smell the smoke of burning cars in the air, that you’ll never be able to scrape/clean the blood stains on the floor, left by your cousin’s mutilated corpse? That you’re almost left with the metallic taste of blood in your mouth from the violence and gore that surrounds you? Stunningly written by Faye. That its impact is so forceful? Stunningly translated by Sarah Ardizzone who probably had to drag out a thesaurus in efforts to find numerous and more precise words for violence, mayhem, chaos, self-loathing, guilt, shame.
The audiobook begins with Gabriel’s life as an exile from his native homeland of Burundi. He drinks, he prevaricates, he entices, he seduces. He feels nothing for the women he attracts, feels nothing for the culmination of the act. He bides his time in an alcohol-fueled numbness… until… images of violence hit the television. Then he’s taken back to Burundi, to the Beginning of the End.
But 10-years old at the time and the eldest of two children, he was born to a French father, a Rwandan mother. Theirs was a marriage based on desire and ignorance, and their marriage has frayed almost beyond repair. A journey to visit Jacques, a racist old man who’s a father figure for Gabby’s own father, proves to be more than Gabby’s mother can bear. She lashes out, demanding to move to France. Can her husband not see the change in the wind? The upcoming horrors?
No no no, Gabby’s father quips. Our French citizenship will keep us safe. He is dismissive. He is offensive. He is oblivious. And the whole time, Faye shows interactions between Burundi natives and the upper class whites where there’s a vast chasm between the two, with the whites firmly ensconced above. Right away, if you’ve any knowledge of what’s about to happen, you’re cringing. You think: Ahhhh, you’ll be the first to die.
But Small Country takes a long and leisurely path to get there. First we see how Gabby has his own blinders firmly in place. The one time he’s exposed to the reality of the poverty that exists on the other side of his own gated home, he makes the most self-serving and unkind choice possible. What’s his is his; poverty, suffering of others be damned. Faye makes no attempt to pretty the act up.
Eventually discord becomes unrest becomes violence becomes chaos, and the genocide is portrayed with great pathos and with names and faces given to the perpetrators, the victims, to those seeking revenge.
And I thought: Well-written, truly. But: What’s the point? Was this simply an exorcism? Laying it all out there as confession soothes the soul? Dunno, and I finished the book, with its Uber-abrupt ending that does NOT tie into the beginning in any manner whatsoever, thinking, Okay—onto the next book.
Which is where conversation with Big Sis came in. She posited that Gabby was THE Personification of Entitlement, of willful ignorance. P’raps Gabby’s biracial status, his Not of This Country, Not of the Other Country, was well-depicted. That it made her draw parallels between History, between our current politically fraught Now with our own willful ignorance where we refuse to feel compassion for those suffering, never thinking of their realities, even though we’re never asked to sacrifice even an iota of our own privileged lifestyles. We scorn, we isolate, we stick our heads into our blissful little made for TV lives (Okay, I’m the one who thinks we’re all going around like we’d make really grand Reality TV… but maybe that’s just me…)
So all in all, when all was said, when it’s now done, yeh, I’m okay with this book, this story. I’m thinking less >MEH< and more Ahh Jeez, And So Shall It Ever Be. I’m currently remembering Burundi not even coming into the conversation, with Rwanda scarcely more than: Nobody woulda said even ONE thing had not bodies floated downstream and into other countries. With Clinton vowing Never Again, scarcely stepping away from Air Force One.
And still it keeps happening: War. Rape As A Means Of Subjugation.
Genocide.
A harsh point Faye has made…
And Dominic Hoffman? I’d dearly love to hear him do something else. Cuz right now, I’m thinking oh gosh, I need a break.
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