07/29/2019
Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams) portrays a Cambodian family’s conflicts with precision in this affecting novel told from the perspectives of six characters. In 2012, Ryna, a mother who has struggled with her father’s death during the Khmer Rouge regime, feels her hesitant impulse for revenge crumble after seeing her father’s now elderly murderer 33 years later. Ryna and her husband Pich’s middle daughter, Nita, has her dreams of finishing school scuttled by her father’s insistence she marry wealthy, inattentive Mr. Noth. In a moving story, Kamal, Ryna and Pich’s only son, attempts to talk to his crush Sophea despite rumors she is a prostitute. The oldest daughter, Thida, moves to Phnom Penh to work in a garment factory to support her family after several bad harvests but is taken to a brothel by a cousin, who claims her father sold her. Lightman avoids voyeuristic exploitation in the ensuing tragedies. A bicycle-stealing, teenaged Pich, dodging conscription in 1973, is visited by his grandmother’s ghost before his scheme collapses. The youngest daughter, pensive Sreypov, finally cracks through her father’s authoritarian rule by marshalling family support for her refusal of an arranged marriage. Lightman infuses Cambodian culture naturally among his considered dissections of pain. Readers will be moved by this collection’s navigation of deeply personal heartaches and lingering implications of war. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman-Schneider Literary Agents. (Sept.)
Praise for Three Flames
Chicago Review of Books, One of the Best Books of the Month
“Lightman (Einstein’s Dreams) portrays a Cambodian family’s conflicts with precision in this affecting novel told from the perspectives of six characters . . . Lightman infuses Cambodian culture naturally among his considered dissections of pain. Readers will be moved by this collection’s navigation of deeply personal heartaches and lingering implications of war.” —Publishers Weekly
“Set in Cambodia, Lightman’s first novel in almost a decade follows three generations of a rural farming family as they struggle to adjust to changing values and the steady encroachment of the modern world.” —The New York Times Book Review
“[An] intimate examination of a Cambodian family’s post–Khmer Rouge lives, driven by survival, redeemed by resilience . . . This undeniable testimony to the empowering effects of educating girls should resonate especially with aware teens.” —Booklist
“[Lightman's] time spent in Cambodia is apparent through the beautiful and unforced descriptions in Three Flames, his first work of fiction in six years . . . Lightman illustrates generational family trauma in a way that is succinct (at a slim 208 pages, Three Flames can be read in the better part of a day) yet leaves just the right amount of speculation to the reader. Three Flames is moving and beautifully written—an unforgettable embodiment of the resilience of the human spirit.” —Leslie Hinson, BookPage
“Weaving together six individual stories from one family, Alan Lightman examines freedom and obligation, heartache and forgiveness, and ultimately imparts a sense of hope with Three Flames . . . Sometimes charming and sometimes heartbreaking, Lightman’s novel is an accessible bridge into Cambodian culture for Western readers.” —Joan Gaylord, The Christian Science Monitor
“Pulling off a convincing story set in rural Cambodia is no mean feat, and in what seems a humble honoring of Khmer culture and traditions, the book pays notable attention to detail . . . The characters are flawed and complex: multidimensional and sensitive personalities. His nuanced writing of the female protagonists is particularly welcome as a departure from traditional literary clichés of voiceless Asian women relegated to secondary or invisible spaces . . . Three Flames is the story of an evolving Cambodia, as villages interact with modernity and a new generation dreams of choices and self–affirmation different than their parents’.” —Farah Abdessamad, Asian Review of Books
“[Lightman's] extensive travels in Cambodia and his reverence for the place shine through in this novel’s details—of planting the monsoon–season rice and later transplanting the tender shoots; of the strict hierarchies of age and status, as reflected by a complex system of honorifics; and of the tangible ways fate and difficult choices can pile up and doom another generation to poverty. That kind of reverence is essential when an author dares to conjure the dreams and terrors of characters from a world so different from his own, in a language that is not theirs. The author has approached that daunting task, it seems, with the awestruck curiosity of a stargazing poet, blending diligent study with a scientist–philosopher’s grasp of the vastness of what cannot be known. It’s the novelist’s job, after all, to imagine the unknowable universe of the human heart. In Three Flames, using prose as simple as in a fable, Lightman has ably channeled his characters’ private worlds, transcending the unfamiliarity of distant tongues and customs, and found the universal language of private shames and fondest desires, thwarted dreams and familial love.” —Kim Green, Chapter 16
“Three Flames is Alan Lightman’s best book since Einstein’s Dreams. It is a piercing story of social dissolution in damaged Cambodia. The traditional patriarchal control of women here combines with the lingering hurts of the Vietnam War and the intrusion of the entrepreneurial world in a caustic mix that burns generations of a rice–farming family. But a note of hopeful change delights the reader, and Lightman’s personal commitment to that change makes this an important story of global women’s rights. It is unusual for a writer to plunge so deeply into perceived social injustice in another culture, but the depth and detailed accuracy of Three Flames shows us humans working through big and serious changes in traditional beliefs and practices. Today we need such knowledge.” —Annie Proulx
“It is rare for a writer who is not native to a place to speak with a voice so real, honest, and true. Lightman does not miss a detail, with every gesture, every word uttered, every word refrained reminding me of my homeland. He burrows into the complexity of the Cambodian way of life, with its intricate maze of memories, dreams, and ghosts and reveals an aching for love and acceptance that is universal.” —Kalyanee Mam, award–winning filmmaker of A River Changes Course
“Lyrical and poignant, Three Flames weaves the stories of three generations of a poor, Cambodian farming family as they struggle to survive and hold on to their humanity. Each family member, like a flickering flame, lights the hopes and dreams of the others, offering courage in the face of shattering heartbreaks and tragedies. Beautifully written and told with great compassion, Alan Lightman's novel gives readers a family that is rich in stories, history, and heart, proving in the end that love shines even in the midst of great darkness.” —Loung Ung, author of First They Killed My Father
“Three Flames is a rich and poignant story of family, revenge, and redemption. Alan Lightman captures all the complexities of a rural Cambodian farming family living in a world hampered by customs and familial duties. Each carries the scars of their parents and ancestors, while courageously navigating through the tragedies and heartbreaks of modern life. With keen insight into the human heart, Lightman has written a deeply moving, multilayered story that resonates long after it’s over.” —Gail Tsukiyama, author of The Samurai's Garden
“Three Flames is a beautifully observed portrait of a Cambodian family by a writer with great insight and humility. Never melodramatic or sentimental, Lightman writes about a mother grappling with a desire for revenge, a daughter sold to pay a debt, and a younger sister determined to continue her education. And, in each case, he portrays individuals—not merely the products of history or poverty.” —Allegra Goodman, author of The Chalk Artist
“The gentle pressure that individuality exerts against tradition is the concern of Alan Lightman’s Three Flames. This set of deft vignettes gathers up the strands of a rural Cambodian family’s life and shows them pulling in concert and in opposition. As always, Lightman stints neither in sympathy nor honesty, and this deceptively slim volume is a salute to that most cunning of human capacities: endurance.” —Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked
2019-06-17
The struggles of a Cambodian farming family.
Each chapter of Lightman's novel focuses on a different member of a single Cambodian family at different times in their history. The mother, Ryna, is obsessed with bringing to justice a man she recognizes as her father's killer from the Khmer Rouge era. Second daughter Nita seems to have lucked out when her parents marry her to a rich man while the eldest daughter, Thida, is sent to work in a factory and the youngest daughter, Sreypov, dreams of finishing her education. Kamal, the only son, suffers from unrequited love for a beautiful city girl, and Pich, the father, is quite literally haunted. The title refers to Ryna's advice to her daughters to keep the "three flames" or virtues for women: not revealing family secrets, honoring one's parents, and serving one's husband. Novelist Lightman (In Praise of Wasting Time, 2018, etc.) is the founder of the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with women in Cambodia. While he clearly understands the many obstacles impoverished Cambodian women must overcome if they're going to live more fulfilling lives, the book's focus on a different kind of social problem in each section makes the characters feel more like symbols than individuals whose unique quirks and personality traits will drive the story forward.
Almost unrelentingly grim, but there are moments of unexpected grace that provide the characters, and readers, with hope.
