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September 30, 2013
An American tourist’s second trip to her ancestral homeland in search of guidance falls flat in Sendker’s follow-up to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. At first, Julia Win believes the voice in her head is just a symptom of the stress built up from her high-pressure job and recent breakup. But when Western medicine fails to give her relief, an old monk at a yoga retreat suggests the pleas come from an unhappy Burmese soul inhabiting her body. Returning to Burma, Julia enlists U Ba, the half-brother she hasn’t seen in 10 years, to put the unhappy soul to rest. It turns out to belong to a woman who tried to protect her sons from a raging civil war in the country, only to be forced into a terrible choice. The bloody horror of her ordeal opens readers’ eyes to a history of buried atrocities, but the premise for Julia’s visit is tenuous, and its resolution has little to do with her original problem. Sendker takes pains to develop a realistic world, only to offer Burmese characters who speak almost exclusively in aphorisms (“Whoever forgives is a prisoner no more”), coming across less as flesh-and-blood people than as mystical guideposts for the heroine.
November 1, 2013
In the German novelist Sendker's sequel to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (2012), a Manhattan attorney returns to Burma 10 years after her first visit for further lessons in love. When she was 28, intellectual property lawyer Julia traveled to Burma, where she learned of her Burmese father's early life and his reunion with the love of his life, whom he'd left behind before moving to America and marrying Julia's American mother. While there, she became close to the saintly half brother, U Ba, she never knew existed. Since her return to New York, she has meant to return to Burma but never got around to it. Now, shortly after breaking up with her boyfriend and receiving a letter from U Ba, Julia begins to hear a voice asking her questions. A psychiatrist prescribes drugs to quell the voice. Instead, she visits a Buddhist center, where a Burmese monk clarifies that another woman's soul is trapped inside Julia's body. Soon, Julia is winging her way to Burma, where she quickly finds U Ba, who takes her to visit Khin Khin, an elderly woman who tells the story of her dead half sister, Nu Nu, whose voice haunts Julia. (In his first novel, Sendker used the similar technique of framing one story inside another.) Nu Nu's crisis was that she loved her first son more than her second. The second son, Thar Thar, grew up aware he was unwanted by his mother. Nevertheless, after his loving father's early death, Thar Thar cared well for his mother and brother, but when Burmese soldiers forced Nu Nu to make a "Sophie's choice," she didn't hesitate in deciding to save her favorite. So, 12-year-old Thar Thar was forced into the army. As Julia and U Bar discover what became of Thar Thar, Julia learns about the power of love and realizes where her own heart truly belongs. Sendker can be a mesmerizing storyteller, but his high quotient of romantic spiritualism is hard for even the mildly skeptical to take seriously.
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November 1, 2013
Sendker's follow-up to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats (2012) picks up the story a decade after Julia Win traveled to Burma, seeking her missing father. Now a high-powered attorney mourning the end of her engagement, Julia has started hearing the voice of a bereft, heartbroken woman in her head. This voice propels Julia back to Burma, where she is reunited with her half brother, U Ba, who believes the voice belongs to Nu Nu, a woman who recently dropped dead while out for a walk with her sister. U Ba and Julia seek out Nu Nu's sister, who tells them the sad tale of Nu Nu's life: her happiness with her husband; the birth of her longed-for first son, Ko Gyi; and the arrival of her second son, Thar Thar, whom Nu Nu couldn't bring herself to love. Tragedy compelled Thar Thar to step up and take care of his mother and brother, until Nu Nu was forced to make a fateful choice that ripped her family apart. An absorbing, moving sequel that likely portends a third entry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)