BOOK REVIEW: CARLY RHEILAN'S "ASYLUM"

Cabdi knew that after the world finishes there are those for whom time goes on -- beyond the moment of catastrophe, into the jagged shadowland that follows, where thin flames burn across chaos and emptiness, revealing nothing except that everything is lost. And he knew that for some there was even a time beyond that -- a time when the world reforms itself, into another thinner life, composed of fragments all wrongly put together, with moments of unexpected pleasure and satisfaction, as in a dream -- though at every step, the breaking of the world remained in the heart, like an arrowhead that can never be removed."

ASYLUM is the debut novel from Malta-born British writer Carly Rheilan, and it is quite the achievement -- a thoughtful and profound book about a stranger in a strange land. I bought it on a whim, having "encountered" Ms. Rheilan on Twitter, but didn't have any particular expectations as to its quality. I was soon drawn in, however, and -- I confess this with no shame -- finished the book with a hefty crop of goosebumps.

I should begin by saying that, for reasons you may already know if you read this blog, I am hard to move. I am not bragging when I say this, quite the opposite. Like one of the villains in this book -- an enormously memorable and terrifying villain whose internal monologue I now paraphrase: "very occasionally, [I] feel the hollow inside of myself where some faculty should be, and remember how it felt, long ago, when I was whole....perhaps it was the ability to ache that I had sacrificed." The things I have seen have cauterized me emotionally to a degree not many people can comprehend, and they should perhaps thank God, or their lucky stars, for that incomprehension. There are times when things happen, and I know I should be moved, and I want to be, and I am not, or the shallowness of the affect is soshallow that I wonder if I surrendered my membership card in the human race a few years back without realizing it (I suppose this is why Hemingway's DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON did, in fact, affect me; it spoke to what is wrong with me, held a lantern over my broken places). In any event, ASYLYM did move me. There is pathos in this novel, but no bathos; it is written with that coolness of purpose which even German literature cannot quite reach, showing the reader suffering and nobility without telling them "look at the suffering and nobility!"

ASYLUM isn't an easy book to break down for a review because there are many moving parts, and in any case I leave it to the perspective reader to discover the intricacies for themselves. Taken as a whole, this is a novel about East African refugees living under the rather Dickensian-style supervision of British social workers in the UK, which is a surprisingly fascinating subject in itself, but that is not where the drama comes in. ASYLUM is a book that, under the guise of a mystery-suspense story, probes the darkest corners of the sex trafficking trade while simultaneously offering some wonderful insights on the nature of social work, culture clashes, the subtleties of bigotry (African and European style), and the complexities of the human heart. And it does all of this without the kind of gratuitous detail that might make it distasteful or unreadable. There is a kind of deft subtlety to the prose that prevents this from happening, and it's one of the reasons I try to remind myself to read female writers more often, because sometimes even the ablest male writers sometimes lack this sensibility (I am probably one of them).

ASYLUM has a number of POV characters. The most interesting of these are Cabdi, the mutilated, socially isolated East African refugee whose arm was hacked off by Somali soldiers, and who lives mostly within his own head, experiencing Britain through the eyes of someone who may as well be from another planet, and Christmas, the Moriarty-like head of a human trafficking ring who deals exclusively in young boys, especially "disposable" African refugees. Though the two characters never meet, they are the opposing moral poles of the story, which Cabdi struggling to come to terms with his grim new reality -- one-armed, mutilated, thousands of miles from home with all of his family dead and only a feeble knowledge of English or English customs -- while the brilliant sociopath Christmas tries to manipulate all and sundry to facilitate the needs of his perverted criminal empire. Both characters are very well-written, and to some extent share the "outside" view of existence: Cabdi literally, Christmas morally. In addition, there is Helen, a well-meaning but not terribly likeable social worker who is having an affair with her boss while she juggles her many responsibilities, and Mustaf, another East African on an obsessive quest to be reunited with his adoptive sister Semira. All of this weaves together gradually into a comprehensive narrative that ends neither in Shakespearian tragedy nor the tacked-on, thumbs-up Hollywood ending so many editors demand. Like real life -- and this novel is nothing if not grittily realistic -- it is not trying to please or to injure. It simply is: a thing-in-itself.

ASYLUM is a grim story but there is also humor in it. Rheilan has some tart things to say about bigotry, about the well-meaning yet cruel system by which refugees are housed and supervised, and most especially about Britain and its culture as seen through the eyes of an African refugee (he describes Santa Claus as a "red demon" and Halloween as "a festival of skeleton gods"). In terms of social commentary she wields a long whip: unlike most white writers she is fearless in discussing slavery in contemporary Africa, as well as the caste systems and ancient ethnic and racial-religious hatreds that pervade the region, and transfer to some extent to British soil. The novel is in a sense an attack, and a principled one, on all the systems and forms wherever they may be found, and whether good-natured or evil, which cause human beings to be moved around like herd animals or even worse, like commodities, and provide justifications to treat others cruelly or indifferently. As a former parole officer and correctional specialist, who works now as an advocate for victims of crime, I can relate to this -- boy, can I relate to this.

Before I part I should like to share one of the many passages from this novel which moved me deeply:

"Perhaps all bereavement is a mourning for dreams. What has really happened can never be undone. The dead never leave us. What torments us is the loss of things that never were -- the years of life unlived, the things not said or done, what might have been, what wasn't, what couldn't be."

Like this passage, ASYLUM is not easily forgotten. I highly recommend it.