Certainty

Vancouver, its rains, its peoples from so many places, carrying their histories, their losses, and their hopes is beautifully captured in this book. The book is set in Strathcona, the old residential district east of Chinatown that was at the center of a cultural renaisance in Vancouver in the 1980s and 1990s. The characters Gail and Ansel are in a way typical of the writers, artists, activists and their friends who have made the area a center for cultural nomads. Certainty is about the difficulty we all have, when being honest, of being certain of ourselves, our loves, our parents and our (un)shared pasts. It weaves together the stories of lovers (Gail and Ansel) with parents and children (Mathew and Ani) and the troubled history of Eastern Borneo and the city of Sandakan - a name that invokes the horror of its death camps under the Japanese, the brutality of its British commercial masters, and the cultural fusion of the Chinese (many Hakka), Japanese (Japanese have been living and trading in Sandakan since before the Edo period), Malays, Dutch and British. Madeleine Thien adds depth to the novel by informed discussions of sound (the protagonist Gail is producer of radio documentaries), image (her mother's husband and her half brother are photographers) and fractal math. These threads provide deep links back into the memories and relationships of the people. This book helped me remember Vancouver, its cultures and people, and see its links back into the Asian diaspora. My thanks to the writer. I look forward to her next book.