ASLAM'S second novel, Maps For Lost Lovers, was critically acclaimed around the world. His third sets a story of loss against the backdrop of war-torn Afghanistan, where young radicals blow themselves up for Allah and atrocities are committed on a
daily basis.
Russian Lara arrives in Afghanistan at the house of English widower Marcus, trying to find out what has happened to her brother. Marcus is steeped in lonely grief in the house where his dead wife once nailed all her books to the ceiling in an effort to hide them from the Taliban. The books remain, an occasional tome falling to the ground in a flap of dusty pages, as does Marcus's stump (terrorists forced his wife to saw off his hand). Over the course of the next few weeks a handful of other characters materialise at the house, all of whose stories are linked. One is a young radical who "knew that a gun could be smuggled onto an aircraft by concealing it in a mixture of epoxy and graphite", and knew how to "kill with his hands and feet".
The growing fondness between Marcus and Lara is well drawn, but much of the text proves less easy to read.
The novel drips with fruit imagery; much is made of the pomegranate, to an almost embarrassing extent: "the outer layer of scarlet seeds had been warmed by the flames. The temperature of menstrual blood, of semen just emerged from a man's body."
Undoubtedly a topical and worthy novel, The Wasted Vigil is considered, elegiac and ably conveys the horrors of life in Afghanistan over the past 20 years, but despite the hopelessness of the characters' situations, the novel fails to grip and the plot is unfocused.
At times the author seems unable to draw a line where one needs to be drawn; in the novel, the "point of no return" is deemed by one of the characters to be "the moment the arrow leaves the bow, the moment when sexual climax is unstoppable, the moment when poetic inspiration begins". For the reader, it may well be the moment when such passages begin to dominate. In this dark, intense book, there are many chances to admire the author's writing, but sadly not enough enjoyment in the read.
The full article contains 394 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
