by Karen ConnellyVintage Canada
~ Review in Halifax Herald, September 2010
“Nostalgia is a Greek word. A pain for the sweetness of home” and for Karen Connelly, home is where the heart is. She is a traveler, and when she went to Burma in the mid-nineties as a young journalist, her intention was to observe, to watch and wait, and to gather information. She was idealistic, obsessed with a desire to absorb the culture and language.
She soon moved into circles which brought her in contact with members of the resistance. And among them she found Maung, a young, charismatic leader of the resistance - or rather, he found her. His magnetism was irresistible. She fell deeply in love - with Maung, with Burma and with the Burmese people. But this is an occupied country and these are not frivolous times. “San Aung wants me to learn serious words ... death and freedom. Democracy, cruel, trust, don’t trust … I lament the loss of my innocence.”
Burmese Lessons is part memoir, a sometimes travelogue and an extraordinary love story.
Connelly’s writing is sensual and dramatic, and the tastes and flavours of a country teetering on the edge of disaster juxtaposed against the gentle Buddhist culture linger long after her words are read and the book is closed. Her deep compassion for the Burmese people as they endure hardship beyond comprehension infuses her words, but it is her developing love for the charismatic Maung which finally causes her to confront the hard questions about herself, her future and the role she is plays in Burma. In every sense of the word, Burmese Lessons is a love story.
Karen Connelly writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Her first novel, The Lizard Cage, won Britain’s Orange Broadband Prize for New Fiction in 2005 and her non-fiction book Touch the Dragon, won the Governor General's Award in l994. She divides her time between Greece and Toronto.
