Kitchen Music

June M. Blurton is a retired speech pathologist.

Charles Koran’s writing has a lyrical quality that captures the beauty
and sadness of a community on the west coast of Ireland. The men and
women in this dying society have little to look forward to, but only the
young dare to emigrate, and they never lose their rootedness in the
village.

Michael was one of those who did leave. Although youthful, he was
already marked as a magical fiddle player in a community that values
fiddle players (the novel’s title refers to the old Irish practice of
holding impromptu fiddle concerts in the kitchen); but he never touched
the instrument in Canada. Six years later, he returned to Ireland and
fell (or jumped) to his death on the day his son, Pat, was born in
Toronto.

Now Pat has returned to the village to learn the story behind his
father’s death. His Vietnamese girlfriend makes the trip with him. Hia
is also searching, but her search is for forgiveness. Her mother was
killed by the Vietcong in the Mekong Delta, and Hia feels responsible
for the death. Why her search for forgiveness involves obsessively
drawing and redrawing the Angkor Wat in Cambodia never becomes clear.
Also not clear is the author’s use of flashbacks, which often leave
the reader without information about people and events, and make empathy
difficult, particularly early on in the novel.