He's a doctor but graduated at the bottom of his class and they both see his shortcomings very quickly. She agrees that Havaa can remain at the hospital on the condition that Akhmed works at the hospital. She has one nurse and a security guard to help her, and she has no interest in helping Havaa. Sonja is the only doctor remaining at Hospital No. He hopes this woman will take care of Havaa. The next day, Akhmed heads for the nearby city where he has heard of a woman doctor who runs a hospital. Akhmed sees that Dokka's daughter, Havaa, is not taken and as soon as the military truck leave, Akhmed goes looking for Havaa in the nearby woods. Yes, life pushes around the gloom and carries on in this phenomenal new book.The story opens with a man named Akhmed who watches helplessly while his friend and neighbor, Dokka, is arrested and hauled away in the middle of the night. Even in its heartbreaking closing pages, his characters find forgiveness and companionship in the face of torture and death. Marra leaves no stone unturned, doubling back in time to examine the things his characters have endured and how they influence decisions in present time.Ī Constellation of Vital Phenomena may ultimately be a tragedy, but Marra leaves his surviving characters with enough hope to prevent a read enveloped in complete darkness. When the book begins in 2004, Dokka has already once survived the interrogation center, known as the Landfill, and is missing his fingers as a result. Some of Marra’s characters do unforgivable things and have unforgivable things done to them. The danger of being erased is very real, yet Marra’s characters still cling to life.
Another character writes a 3,300 page tome on the history of Chechnya. Akhmed creates those portraits of the disappeared. Before her disappearance, Natasha recreates a park, painting it on the hospital’s window, where now there is nothing but destruction. Each of his characters yearns for a different, better life. It is miraculous that Marra is able to pull off such a horrific story, one filled with rape, torture, murder and betrayal, in such a way that elements of humanity still poke through the darkness. The three survivors band together and form a desperate bond born from loss, as Akhmed begins to volunteer at the hospital and Sonja begrudgingly harbors Havaa. Meanwhile, Sonja is still reeling from the disappearance of her sister Natasha. Akhmed channels his fear into crafting portraits of his vanished neighbors, placing them around the village in remembrance. Once the wars began, his wife took ill and now spends her days in bed in a semi-comatose state, unable to cope as villager after villager is taken away, questioned and killed by the Russians. As the book unfolds, Marra reveals how each of his principal characters and their pasts influence one another.Īkhmed was a good friend of Havaa’s father, Dokka. But like Havaa, both Akhmed and Sonja are reeling from the bitter toll of the wars. She is immediately hostile to Akhmed, a character whom Marra paints tenderly with buffoonish qualities, a failed doctor who is a much better portraitist than surgeon. In Volchansk, Akhmed takes Havaa to the city’s ruined hospital to meet Sonja, a hardened ethnic Russian doctor. The loss of Havaa’s father is just the beginning. As the Russians (“Feds” as they are called in the book) take her father away to an interrogation center from where people never return (or return disfigured) Havaa takes refuge with Akhmed, a local doctor and artist.ĭesperate to get Havaa to a safe haven, Akhmed takes her away from their village and to the city of Volchansk. When the book begins, 8-year-old Havaa escapes a nighttime raid on her house in a tiny village. Marra’s story is deeply entwined with the conflict which saw local guerillas fighting to remain autonomous against a more powerful Russia. The novel, set in Chechnya, skips time between 19, bookended by the two wars that devastated the region. It’s a book of beautiful prose, a serpentine story filled with writing that reads more like the work of a seasoned novelist rather than an author just making his entrance in the literary world. It’s a book of ghosts, a story of people disappearing into the night, leaving family members with a hole the size of a human body in their hearts. A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, Anthony Marra’s debut novel, is a difficult yet rewarding read, the type of book that can make you cringe, laugh and cringe with laughter.
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