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Dogs at the Perimeter

3.9 of 5 stars 3.90 · rating details · 108 ratings · 25 reviews

“Remember this night,” he said. “Mark it in your memories because tomorrow everything changes.”

One starless night, a girl’s childhood was swept away by the terrors of the Khmer Rouge. Exiled from the city, she and her family were forced to live out in the open under constant surveillance. Each night, people were taken away. Caught up in a political storm which brought star...more

Hardcover, 264 pages

Published May 3rd 2011 by McClelland & Stewart (first published 2011)

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May 25, 2011 Friederike Knabe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: canadian-lit

"We had to sign our names to these biographies, and we did this over and over, naming family and friends, illuminating the past. My little brother and I were only eight and ten years old but, even then, we understood that the story of one's life could not be trusted, that it could destroy you and all the people you loved." Evicted from their family home in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, by the Khmer Rouge, Mei and her family are forced to follow the long and arduous trek through a devastated co...more "We had to sign our names to these biographies, and we did this over and over, naming family and friends, illuminating the past. My little brother and I were only eight and ten years old but, even then, we understood that the story of one's life could not be trusted, that it could destroy you and all the people you loved." Evicted from their family home in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh, by the Khmer Rouge, Mei and her family are forced to follow the long and arduous trek through a devastated country, only to see the parents being taken away and the children ending up in a one of the many work camps. "Families are a disease of the past" and "attachment to the world is a crime", was the official position of the Khmer Rouge. Mei's voice forms the compelling centre of Madeleine Thien's extraordinary and deeply moving novel of loss and survival, of memory and identity, of past and present intermingling, and of the underlying deep-seated need to heal from the wounds inflicted on body and soul. But how?

Rarely have I read a novel that pulled me so quickly so deeply into the emotional life and traumas of the central characters and the external circumstances that led to these upheavals. Madeleine Thien takes us deep into the brutal and devastating realities of the Khmer Rouge Regime that lasted officially from 1975 to 1978, but whose violent actions were felt inside the country for a much longer time. It seem inconceivable to us today, what happened to the people of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge Regime, that left between one and two million people dead and many others displaced without trace.

Written with admirable delicacy and tenderness, deep compassion and understanding, Thien recounts the harrowing and life-threatening circumstances of the past as seen primarily through the eyes of ten-year old Mei. These events not only kept haunting the young girl but they inflicted such deep emotional wounds that the after-effects have been reaching, like an octopus's tentacles, into the present and continue to deeply trouble the innermost soul of forty-year old survivor, Janie. "It's in the night, I know, that the ones we love disappear[...] In my dreams I saw every one and everything[...] The Khmer Rouge had taught us how to survive, walking alone, carrying nothing in our hands. Belongings were slid away, then family and loved ones, then finally our loyalties and ourselves. Worthless or precious, indifferent or loved, all of our treasures had been treated the same."

"Mei" was not her real name, but a name given to her by one of the guards controlling the children's camp, a youth hardly older, but with AK 47s slung over his shoulder as a sign of power. "Names", Mei learned, "were empty syllables, signifying nothing, lost as easily as a suit of clothes, a brother or a sister, an entire world. " For her it felt normal, when, some time after finally escaping and arriving in Canada, she requested a Canadian name: Mei became Janie. If only suffering and trauma could be stripped away as easily as a name! Janie, now thirty years later and working as a neurological researcher in Montreal, cannot free herself from the past: "How many lives can we live?" [...] "I have too many selves and they no longer fit together." While memories are vivid in her dreams, she sees bare walls when she wakes up. She is still not able to find a voice to share any of her harrowing experiences, not even with those closest to her. One day, however, her search into the disappearance of her fatherly friend and mentor, Hiroji, "cracks open" something hidden deep inside her... and her life shatters into more shards than she is able to catch as they fall. Convinced that Hiroji left for Cambodia in search of his brother Junicho (James), who had disappeared in Phnom Penh in 1975, she also has to embarks on a journey...

Madeleine Thien's novel opens with Janie's investigation into Hiroji's disappearance. Her search for clues as to his whereabouts provides the trigger to bring her own past vividly back into focus and to relive Mei's ordeals and her struggle for survival. It is an intimate account, a journey that, at times, is harrowing, always emotionally charged, fast moving and totally absorbing. With a confident hand, a tender gentle touch and a deeply compassionate mind, Thien has brought a story to life in which the past and the present blend together in the minds of her characters, where the world of the past demands attention in the world of the present, where wounds can only heal when the causes for the paperthin scars are confronted again and written or talked about with those who love and can give of themselves.

Madeleine Thien's new novel is a marvel in many ways. She writes with such gentleness and thoughtfulness as well as deep understanding of a particular historical time that as readers we feel drawn completely into the mind of "Mei", the ten-year at the centre of the harrowing events and her forty-year old adult self, Janie, whose life is in danger of total disintegration if she cannot heal from the past experiences. Depending on her needs, Thien's language can be sparse or rich with poetic imagery and unusual rhythms; often her descriptions are impressionistic, evoking situations rather than spelling out the gruesome details, leaving it to the reader to complete the picture or thought in their own minds. Some images remind me of Chinese painting where a few brushstrokes can tell a complete story. Thien's many personal encounters with survivors, both in Cambodia and elsewhere, has given her rare insights into the long-term effects of deep trauma even decades later. She has transposed these authentic voices into an extraordinary, powerful and important novel. (less)

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Sep 20, 2011 Aban (Aby) rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book, written in a stark - sometimes not always easy to follow - style, is the story of Janie a young researcher living in Montreal. She is haunted by memories of her past, when her family was forced to leave their home in Phnom Penh by the Khymer Rouge. The family was split up and endured horrors beyond belief. Janie's inability to process all she has experienced, forces her to leave her husband and small son (whom she loves). She goes to the home of her mentor, Hiroji Matsui. The latter h...more

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May 18, 2011 Ariel Gordon rated it 4 of 5 stars

MONTREAL-BASED Madeleine Thien's second novel is a fractured and fragmented story that inhabits both 1970s Cambodia and modern-day Montreal.

Thien's debut novel, 2006's Certainty, was about integration, her characters dealing with grieving and loss at a safe remove.

In Dogs at the Perimeter, however, Thien locates her main character - and so also her readers - mid-mental breakdown.

Janie is the only member of her family to survive the Khmer Rouge's reign in her native Cambodia. After she escapes to...more

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Mar 24, 2013 John Hanson rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is an important book. It is not so much a history book. The author talked about how she doesn't have the right to write about the disaster of Cambodia, at least from a causeal perspective -- my interpretation of her talk I attended. This is a story of people impacted by the events of 1975-1979 -- the evacuation of Phnom Penh, the 'killing fields', the escapes, and the afterlives.

She chooses to tell the story from a thematic perspective -- lost identities, many lives, the etherealness of sel...more This is an important book. It is not so much a history book. The author talked about how she doesn't have the right to write about the disaster of Cambodia, at least from a causeal perspective -- my interpretation of her talk I attended. This is a story of people impacted by the events of 1975-1979 -- the evacuation of Phnom Penh, the 'killing fields', the escapes, and the afterlives.

She chooses to tell the story from a thematic perspective -- lost identities, many lives, the etherealness of self, all for the sake of survival and protection but ultimately lead to an uprooting, a transience, a lack of foundation. The story is told through a Canadian refugee now working as a brain researcher whose compatriot, Hiroji, also with ties to Cambodia through his lost brother, the YMCA doctor. Hiroji disappears without notice. He just walks away, and this throws Janie back into her workd of lost persona.

The first section is difficult to get in to. The author writes what I'll call reified prose. She writes disjointed, uncoupled, abstract prose splattered with concrete images and loose metaphor -- she paints series of images with her words. The whole story reads like a poem, and once I learned to read it as imagery, the text took off surprisingly well. I had to read the first thirty pages twice to ground myself, though. She doesn't write classic scenes, yet her tension slowly builds. It feels like you are being hit with your upstairs neighbor's 500w bass amplifier as you try to sit and read -- the prose thumps and hums and jars. Yet somehow you find yourself following along, fluttering like a butterfly, unable to stray from that field of flowers you know is around the next tree, but is also frought with predatation.

I was 14 years old in 1975, and my own identity was being stripped away by my juvenile diabetes diagnosis. I did not pay attention to that Southeast Asian world I only knew about through filtered North American news. I knew people suffered and died, but I lived my day as a happy, ignorant Canadian teenager. This book takes us back to that time when the real horrors behind the television were hidden from us. This story moved me very much. I give it a five star rating for impact alone.(less)

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Apr 03, 2011 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is a beautifully-written story of identity, loss, and the search for who we are. From the description, you'd think it was about a woman who left her husband and went searching for a lost colleague. However, it's more about the search for oneself and one's "true" identity.

Most of the "action" takes place in the form of dreams and flashbacks to the killing fields of Cambodia, so you'd think the topic would be too heavy. However, the beauty of the prose makes the heavy topic not only bear...more

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Oct 04, 2012 Marc Nash rated it 4 of 5 stars

A beautifully written book about the grossest of subjects; the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. The language and images float like spider silk, even as they describe the atrocities committed against a people. Orwell's "1984" is a book about totalitarianism, but it left me the reader on the outside looking in; Thien's book is a novel, but it reeks utterly of real people whose lives get snuffed out.

The book traces the splintering of family relationships under the ideology of the "Year Zero" retur...more A beautifully written book about the grossest of subjects; the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia. The language and images float like spider silk, even as they describe the atrocities committed against a people. Orwell's "1984" is a book about totalitarianism, but it left me the reader on the outside looking in; Thien's book is a novel, but it reeks utterly of real people whose lives get snuffed out.

The book traces the splintering of family relationships under the ideology of the "Year Zero" return to a clean sheet for society. it also traces the splintering of the individual, as psyches are assaulted first by being cut adrift from others, then having to survive bodily the harshest of privations and then identities are deliberately stripped away as people are renamed and forcibly made to ascribe to the ridiculous sayings of "Angkar", the Khmer Rouge's authoritarian "Organisation". The sayings are part Marxism, part Buddhism and part nonsense. They are empty boasts from the very get go of the revolution. " I looked at the sky, at the trees, at the disturbed mound of earth and saw no possible gods". An agricultural people stripped from their spiritual atachment to the land through turning them into killing fields of dead bodies.

The reason I give this book 4 stars rather than 5 is because it sets up a potentially fascinating image, since the two main protagonists who have remade new lives in Montreal are both scientific researchers of the human brain. They engage with it at an electro-chemical level, stimulating the neurons, breaking down everything into the constituent chemical reactions. implicit in this is that human emotions too are just chemical reactions, including the suffering and emotional turmoil that plays merry hell with memory- what we retain, what we lose. But this theme is never really returned to, and the future lives of the two characters at the start of the book, remains an untapped resource for its bulk.

Still, an outstanding read. I have read a lot of history books on the period, but it takes a damn fine novel to really bring home the atrocity and its scale.(less)

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May 14, 2013 SilverRaindrops rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: tbr-down-to-213-in-2013, 238-books-in-238-days, 2013-around-the-world-in-52-books, region-asia, country-cambodia, favourites-read-2013

This is part of my "238 books in 238 days"-challenge. You can follow my progress here.
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Once again, I find myself not really knowing what to say about a book depicting the aftermath of the Cambodian Killing Fields. Contrary to "The Disappeared" (*) however, Madeleine Thien's protagonist is not a young Canadian girl in love, but a woman that has escaped Cambodia as a child and is now being haunted by memories.

Janie has built a life for herself, working at a Brain Research Centre, and ha...more

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May 20, 2011 Michele rated it 5 of 5 stars

I picked this book up at a bookstore in Vancouver. It immediately grabbed my attention, and I bought the actual book. I usually read exclusively on my Kindle, so the characters and the story *really* sucked me in. I read 20% of it in the bookstore. Brilliantly, beautifully written. Disturbing. It kept me riveted, but I had to put it down a few times; it is that disturbing. This books brings home the completely pernicious, malevolent nature of the Khmer Rouge. You can't help but relate to the des...more

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Oct 27, 2011 Chantale rated it 4 of 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It made me want to read more about the Khmer Rouge. They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children by Romeo Dallaire is next on my reading list as I wanted to read more about child soldiers as well. Very vivid depictions of give a real sense of place. The images have stuck with me long after reading it. There is much subtext and much of the history and background of the characters is not revealed till later in the plot, if not right at the end. There are a few p...more

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Mar 08, 2013 Annabel Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: pwf2013, canadian

I should start by admitting that I rarely read books with this kind of harrowing subject matter because I find them too distressing. But there is a gentle beauty to Madeleine's writing that enables you to keep reading, despite the atrocities being described.

Like Elliot Perlman's The Street Sweeper, and Kim Scott's That Deadman Dance, this feels like one of those stories that absolutely needs to be told. I had no idea of the scope of the genocide committed at the hands of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge,...more

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Jun 15, 2011 Alexis added it

Shelves: 2011

I really like Madeleine Thien's writing, but I'm not sure that she is a writer that I can read. She has a very non-linear and descriptive style. I find her writing beautiful and I admire her craft, but I have a lot of difficulty following her plot lines. That said, I learned a lot about Cambodia from this book and I thought this book was gorgeous.

But I sort of feel like it was wasted on me and my brain, which is so completely linear and moves from point A to B. It's frustrating, but I can't chan...more

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Jun 11, 2012 Brenda rated it 4 of 5 stars

The story is set in Montreal and Camdodia. Thien's prose
is deftly controlled.

The novel invites slow, careful reading which can be more rewarding than turning pages at a furious pace.

As a book that explores memory, loss and madness — both political and personal — Dogs at the Perimeter is disturbing, haunting and extraordinarily good.

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Mar 25, 2013 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is beautifully written and completely engrossing. It is not a typical book about war, nor was the war in Cambodia typical in any respect. It is an analysis on "identity" both personal and national and how people can move intentionally or unintentionally between those identities. As a student of many cultures, I found it fascinating to have some light shed on this tragic wound of Cambodian history which is too deep and too fresh to heal.

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Apr 03, 2011 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars

Disclaimer: I won this book through a goodreads contest.

This book was absolutely gorgeous. Having done work with memory in undergrad I found the tidbits about work at the research institute fascinating. The prose pulls you along and doesn't slow down. My favourite bits surprisingly were when the main character struggled with her native language. I could feel myself struggling along with her.

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Mar 26, 2012 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

A haunting novel of loss as Hiroji searches for his brother who was lost many years ago in Cambodia where he worked as an doctor for the Red Cross. His actions cause his friend and colleague Janie to revisit her past as a refugee from the Khmer Rouge. Beautifully written.

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Jun 03, 2011 Raimo Wirkkala rated it 3 of 5 stars

An excellent story of love and loss with the killing fields of Cambodia as the backdrop. The author's telling of a young girl's ordeal under the insane rule of the Khmer Rouge is very affecting.

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Mar 01, 2013 Ellen Bard rated it 4 of 5 stars

A tough read but a vivid portrayal of the Khmer rouge's atrocities an the individual consequences. Beautiful, solid writing but ended a bit quickly.

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Dec 28, 2011 Stephen rated it 5 of 5 stars

OH MY GOD! Madeleine Thien; you have such beautiful prose! If you wrote a technical manual, I bet I would still read it.

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Sep 22, 2012 Leigh Hensley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Poetic prose, beautiful imagery, expertly drawn characters. Dogs at the Perimeter is very sad to read, but hard put down. I came away understanding so much more.

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Aug 29, 2012 Yvvette Edwards rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very much enjoyed this. Harrowing, yet beautifully written, deeply moving, enormously compassionate.

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May 15, 2012 Sybil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Beautifully written, harrowing book about the Khmer Rouge and after. Highly recommended.

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Jul 12, 2011 Kris rated it 3 of 5 stars

'Dogs at the Perimeter' by Madeleine Thien is an interesting read. I wouldn't say it is my favourite book, but it is interesting. I was captivated by her description of growing up in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime. Having visited the country I could incorporate her descriptions with what I learned and saw when I was there. However, in places I found the storyline a bit jumbled which took away from the novel. I think 'Dogs at the Perimeter' is worth reading, but give yourself time to read...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Fabienne Gassmann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Fabienne by: Friends

This book is a beautifull novel recovering of humanity

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Mar 30, 2013 Pooker is currently reading it

Shelves: canada, fiction

There is only one opening line that I remember from all the books I have read. It is this: "There is a simple recipe for making rice." It comes from the title story of Madeleine Thien's short story collection, SIMPLE RECIPES. I love the simplicity of the sentence, its precision, and its rhythm.

March 30, 2013:
I'm about 1/3 of the way through Dogs at the Perimeter and again I find myself marveling at the simplicity, precision and rhythm of Thien's writing. If only there were a simple recipe for wr...more

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Feb 14, 2012 Susan Glickman rated it 4 of 5 stars

Heartbreaking and utterly believable.

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Mar 22, 2012 Carrie Marcotte rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: canadian-literature, east-asian-lit, south-asian-lit, five-star-books

Haunting. I read this novel in one day because I just couldn't put it down. You can read the history of the Khmer Rouge, but anyone studying about genocide should also read this. Beautifully written.

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Apr 21, 2013 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-to-make-you-think, misc-books-for-adults

Hard to describe but a wonderful, thought-provoking read.

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May 19, 2013 Heather Dawn rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: places-away

May 17, 2013 Susan Macdonald rated it 5 of 5 stars

May 16, 2013 Lesley marked it as to-read · review of another edition

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About Madeleine Thien

Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist.

She was educated at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia. In 2001 Madeleine was awarded the Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Award for most promising writer under age 30.

Thien's first book, Simple Recipes (2001), a collection of short stories, received the City of Vancouver Book Award, the VanCity Book P...more

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