Losing Kei by Suzanna Kamata and Flight of the Dragonfly by Melissa Hawach

CATEGORY: Fiction

PAGES: 196

PRICE: $14.95 / Paperback Original

Pub Date: January 2008


This month I find myself reading two books with a similar theme - not by design, just mere coincidence. The theme? Child custody.

One, "Losing Kei", has been written by writer and fellow blogger Suzanne Kamata, whose blog "Gaijin Mama" I have been reading for a while now. Not only does it give me great insights to parenting but also shows me a Japan that one doesn't always read about in books.

"Losing Kei" is an easy-to-read contemporary story (fiction) about an American landscape artist (Jill Parker) who travels to Japan to get over a heart break. Whilst there she meets and marries a traditional Japanese man (Kukume).

Kamata, an American married to a Japanese man, does an excellent job showing the reader how when two very different cultures meet there could be clashes, especially in the area of marriage, inlaws, bringing up the children and so on.

The Japanese tend to be a highly homogenized society and very often will be wary with foreigners. Jill's inlaws did not approve their son's choice of a bride but accepted it because it pleased their son. Jill was expected to live in her inlaws' home and was also expected to play the role of a subservient wife and eager-to-please daughter-in-law, something that was totally alien to her independent upbringing. Cracks soon formed in the relationship forcing Jill to ask for a divorce. What she hadn't bargained on however, was that she would have to give up custody of Kei due to Japanese custody laws which state that a foreigner has no rights to custody! Indeed, even when both parents are Japanese it is not uncommon for children of divorced parents to be told one of their parents is dead - case in point, former PM Koizumi. When he divorced his pregnant wife he retained custody of his eldest son and the wife was never allowed to see or meet him. Anyway, so Jill sees no way out but to arrange to smuggle Kei out of the country....does she have the guts to do it? Will she get away with it? You'll have to read the book to find out!

Format: Hardcover

Published:May 13, 2008

288 Pages

Published By:Harpercollins Canada, Limited

"Flight of the Dragonfly" is the true story of how Canadian mom Melissa Hawach fought to get her children (Hannah,5 and Cedar,3) back after they had been abducted by her Lebanese-Australian husband, Joe Hawach and taken to Lebanon during the height of the Hezbollah-Israeli war.

I remember reading about this incident (it was all over the papers) in 2006 and I thought Melissa's story would make a good book (especially because the way she went about bringing the girls back home was particularly dangerous and had a potentially nail-biting ending) but sadly, something about the tone of the book fell flat for me.

Try as I might, I just could not evoke feelings of anxiety for Melissa, nor did I find myself feeling any sort of tension through the proceedings. Even worse, despite the awful thing that happened to her, she didn't quite cut a sympathetic character in my eyes. Also, the book bounced about quite a bit taking us from Sydney in Australia to Calgary in Canada back to Sydney, to Lebanon and so on, in no particular order. Perhaps my ambiguity had to do with the writing which I am told was heavily edited for possible libel or perhaps it had to do with the fact that Hawach simply narrates the story..it's just details upon more details. What the reader is going to want and doesn't receive, are discussions of feelings and emotions..

No real explanation is given for why Joe Hawach felt he had to abduct his children despite having visitation rights...it certainly made me think about parental abduction and how and why it happens. It saddened me to read that the mercenaries hired by Melissa to abduct the kids from Lebanon were family men themselves and while she managed to return to Canada safe and sound, the two men were arrested in Sydney and kept in jail for three months! What I did like about her however, is that she doesn't seem embittered by what she's gone through. She allows they girls to speak to their father once a week on webcam and even entertains the thought of taking them to visit him in Australia some day.

Giller Prize 2007 (Short List) and Barbara Gowdy's "Helpless"

		The Giller Prize Jury has spoken...the 5 books on the 2007 Giller Prize shortlist are: Elizabeth Hay for her novel Late Nights on Air, McClelland & Stewart Michael Ondaatje for his novel Divisadero, McClelland & Stewart Daniel Poliquin for his novel A Secret Between Us, trans. Donald Winkler, Douglas & McIntyre M.G. Vassanji for his novel The Assassin’s Song, Doubleday Canada Alissa York for her novel Effigy, Random House Canada

I was so surprised that Lawrence Hill's "Book of Negroes" did not make it to the shortlist. It seemed to be the very kind of book that would appeal to the judges of a prize like this. I also missed seeing Richard Wright's "October". Ofcourse, the question on everybody's mind is, will Vassanji win his third Giller for "The Assassin's Song"?

What do you think of the Giller shortlist? Were there any surprises? Do you have any predictions?


Barbara Gowdy's "Helpless" (HarperCollins, Canada) is another book that didn't make it to short list. I am halfway through it and it's gripping, suspenseful, haunting, in short, an excellent, but uncomfortable read.

In a nutshell...Ron, vacuum repairman, has a passion for little girls. So when he spies beautiful nine-year-old Rachel, outside her school, he follows her meaning to take her home to his basement which he has lovingly converted into a place for her replete with Disney videos and Barbie dolls. He doesn't see himself as a kidnapper or an abductor but as a rescuer (somewhere in his confused mind he believes Rachel's mother is exploiting her by making her sing in bars where she (Rachel's mother plays the piano). He also believes that that the family’s kind gay landlord is a child molester.

The story is told from multiple perspectives and what emerges is a man who is aware of his lust for children but who hesitates to cross the line. Barbara Gowdy sees Ron as being similar to Alice in Wonderland writer Lewis Carroll, who enjoyed taking photographs of naked girls. She told CBC.ca, “Ron falls madly in love with little girls but he doesn’t want to harm them, which is unusual. It happens, but it’s unusual…." As a result the reader comes away with a rather sympathetic view of Ron which is a real achievement on Gowdy's part because I can't think of anyone the world hates more than a child abductor and yet she completely succeeds in humanizing him.

As I said in the beginning, I am only halfway through it, the tension is so heavy, I get the impression Ron will not harm Rachel, but I don't know for sure, Gowdy is sure keeping me guessing. The novel has had a mixed reception, its themes of obsessive love, the sexualization of young girls and an abductor who is portrayed as a victim rather than a villian have made readers either love or hate the novel and in turn, love or hate Gowdy.

Guardian (UK) had this to say:

Society would barely countenance a male author writing like this: he would run the risk of being labelled a crazed pervert. This leap of the imagination by a female writer may be more tolerable; but though it's courageous, and though Ron's awareness of the "line" not to be crossed remains, there are passages that slip into the gratuitously disturbing. Being propelled through this skilful but unpleasant page-turner leaves the reader with a distinct feeling of being stalked.

And our very own Toronto Star:

This is a novel not a sermon. It is a genuinely suspenseful read, gripping to the last page. Without any betrayal of ending, it can also be said that the novel does not leave the reader in darkness, and the general effect is not depressing.

The author's sympathy is a generous one – not assumed for any shock effect of making a pedophile kidnapper more of a human being than a monster – and that sympathy communicates itself in various grace notes throughout.