Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli, author; Valeria Luiselli, Kivlighan de Montebello, William DeMeritt & Maia Enrigue Luiselli, narrators
I have reached the particular age of reason that gives me the right to decide not to finish a book if it contains foul language, explicit sex, or a political agenda. This book satisfied two of the three reasons to give it up. After listening to a bit more than one third of the book, I felt I had heard enough to know what the author’s message would ultimately be. I did enjoy the writing, as I felt there were moments of brilliance in the presentation, with metaphors that painted unusual scenes in my mind, but also there was the unnecessary use of crude language. The use of the “f” word to indicate lovemaking and messing things up, was unnecessary and the novel would have been better served had it been elevated with a better choice of language. The writing style intrigued me, however, with short chapters, titled imaginatively to make this reader wonder about the intended meanings.
The narrators do an excellent job of reading the novel, not interfering with it, but rather enhancing it with a matter of fact tone in the presentation that contains just the right amount of emotion and just the right amount of distance. However, the story becomes embroiled with too much detail and too much political innuendo as the family progresses in their trip across the country.
The novel’s message feels like part travelogue, part parenting instruction booklet, part marriage counseling, and part left wing agenda. It definitely appeals to the emotional, virtue signaling side of the reader, contrasting it with those readers who can’t sympathize with the plight of the innocent who are hurt in the process. They are made to feel pretty hard hearted. The plight of the undocumented children and their undocumented parents is front and center. Apparently, once someone enters the country illegally and manages to hide successfully for a lengthy period of time, it is acceptable, to some, for them to then bring in their children illegally and to object if they are caught in the process. Then the abusive and cruel treatment of the Native American Indian is also illustrated in the novel. The wife and mother is handling one side of the problems and the husband and father of the two children in this family, handling the other. Their identity, ethnicity and true background was not revealed to me.
Although the couple met at work, both having one child of their own, they soon formed a blended family that they thought worked quite well until they became embroiled in their own personal research projects which threatened to divide them for either a lengthy period of time or possibly, even, forever. Although they both met working on a project concerning the study of sound and both were interested in different sides of the sound spectrum, their studies now were leading them to more amorphous sound studies with the mama, studying the sound of the lost children’s voices and the papa studying the echoes of the phantom sounds of the Native Americans, specifically the Apaches.
The book had the potential to be great, if it had kept to the subject and not gotten caught up in so much detail used to denigrate the American countryside and the American treatment of people they didn’t consider to be “white eyes”. The message imparted by the book could have remained non partisan had it stuck to the plight of the children and the history of the Native American, but in the drive across country, the lessons they taught to their children tended to be very partisan and often “fake news” in nature. Their own failures in their relationship, and the secrets they kept from each other, colored their interpretation of events.
I would recommend this book to someone with a bit more time and patience than I have for the topic in the way it was being developed. The two sides of the coin being studied would have been far more interesting to me without so much extraneous information. It contained a great deal of truth about public opinion concerning the immigration problem and ICE. I was more interested in learning about that, rather than the tangential issues covered within the novel.
The author, an immigrant herself, worked in the field of undocumented immigration and so the information she brings to the table should be irrefutable, as it comes from a place of actual experience. Imbuing the story with fantasy and foul terms diminished the overall quality and message imparted.
No character had a name, except for Manuela, an illegal whose children were being held in a detainment camp. No character endeared themselves to me, not even the children who seemed one-dimensional and as smug as the parents who were alternately too wise or too ignorant. On the one hand they seemed imbued with knowledge and on the other with immaturity, naïveté and inexperience. This was presented in contrast to the lives they had already lived.
From what I read, the book was a study in opposites. They were smart or not, they told the truth or not, they kept secrets or not, they were happy or not, they were making a life together or not, they were going forward or not, they were in love or not, etc. The ground kept shifting.
The book felt well researched as names of famous authors, composers and song writers were dropped into the narrative with bits and pieces of really interesting information that I did sometimes question in terms of its veracity. I wondered, from what I read, is it really worthwhile to provide money for grants to study the sounds of conversation, languages, etc., over the study of scientific causes and cures for disease? Should not money be allocated for more realistic research?
The book also made me wonder about the way we tell a story about history. Are we rewriting it in the telling of it with our own interpretation? So if sounds are different to everyone, is information also imparted differently to each learner?
Overall, I felt the book was exploiting my emotional reactions to the facts, rather than presenting the facts for me to ponder. The children cross into the country from Mexico facing danger and then hope to be captured and provided with sanctuary. Am I expected to agree with this behavior? Are children being brainwashed to sympathize with this illegal immigration policy simply because of the danger they face. Are we?
The book swings from an intellectual presentation to a crass one, from factual to fantasy, from high brow to low, intentionally. Is the message that the problems we face are fluid, fungible, depending on the time and place and circumstances?
Are we being instructed to listen, even to the sounds of silence, as we read, to the sounds of the world around us, the noise, the quiet, the echoes, the murmurs, the whispers, the shouts?
Mama, is relating her experiences and she interprets all of the reactions and relates to all of the conversations. She is in charge. She knows the answer to that question. Perhaps, when I am more inclined, I will try and read it again. It has potential. It isn’t that I didn’t like it, it is rather that it wasn’t written in a way my mind would appreciate, at the moment.