Book Review: Pen Pal

[osprey_archer]

I started Pen Pal yesterday morning, with the intent of setting it aside after I’d finished my tea. But in the event, I just kept reading until it was practically time for Emma’s birthday party, at which point I fortuitously finished, because otherwise there might not have been any birthday scones at all. (Fortunately, no one ever complains when they walk through the door and are informed that there will be fresh scones in about ten minutes.)

I am a biased reader: I read the first draft of this back when asakiyume posted it on LJ, and liked it so much that I committed my one and only act of fanart. But, in my totally biased opinion, the book is pretty fabulous.

The skeleton of the book remains the same as it was in draft on LJ: the exchange of letters between Em, who threw a message in a bottle off her floating home on the Gulf Coast, and Kaya, a political prisoner in W--, an island country between Indonesia and Malaysia. If I’m not mistaken, both settings have been fleshed out in this rewrite: in particular, the political situation in Kaya’s country seems more firmly sketched.

I particularly liked getting to know more about Kaya’s local friends, who sort of personify the different aspects of the complicated political situation, without ever seeming like ciphers rather than people. Her good-hearted lowland friend Tema, who nonetheless can’t understand Kaya’s experience as a member of the mountain people, and her childhood friend Nawalam, driven by an ambivalent mixture of political ambition and concern for his people, particularly stuck out.

I really like the unlikely friendship aspect of the story. They’re separated by half a globe and a decade in age (Em is 12, while Kaya recently graduated college), but both come from minority populations that are viewed as backward and strange (and, in Kaya’s case, dangerous) by their governments, and both combine a love of their own traditions with an insatiable curiosity about everything.

Em’s letter, which kicks off the story, encapsulates this combination. She’s reaching out to the outside world by sending the letter, but she’s doing so in the most Mermaid’s Hands way possible: tossing a message in a bottle and seeing where the sea will take it.

Because Kaya is so isolated in her prison, she depends on Em for emotional support, but the age difference means that she also strives to protect Em. There’s a somewhat heart-breaking contrast between her letters, where she attempts to be upbeat, and her journals, which grow increasingly aware of the gravity of her situation. Her prison is built over a volcano, and the lava is rising.

Despite this gravity, there’s an odd euphoria in her journals: she’s started to see visions of the Lady of the Ruby Lake, the goddess of the volcano, for whom she put on the festival that got her arrested. Her arrest and her visions have clarified her political opinions: she didn’t mean to oppose the government, only to celebrate her own culture, but if the government can’t handle that - well then.

But this is a euphoria tinged with despair. The Lady of the Ruby Lake is not a kind goddess, and doesn’t love gently. It’s not that Kaya wants to die; she remains afraid of starting a war that will get lots of people killed. It’s just that fighting the government has come to seem more important than her own physical survival.

And as this tinge of despair begins to seep through in Kaya’s letters, Em begins to worry...

Comments

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

I couldn't put it down either. I read it in four or five days.

The lessons are sincere, never preachy. She touches on so many buttons, political and emotional, societal--just outstanding. I loved it.

The Lady loves an uprising, and in her quieter way, so does Francesca.