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Book Reviewed by:Spare, unsentimental, and distilled to riveting essentials, these "emotionally devastating" stories honor the surreal, funny, and often wrenching realities of trying to build a life far from home (Sheila Heti).
Winner of the 2020 Giller Prize.
In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences. Thammavongsa is a master at homing in on moments like this -- moments of exposure, dislocation, and messy feeling that push us right up against the limits of language.
The stories that make up How to Pronounce Knife focus on characters struggling to find their bearings in unfamiliar territory, or shuttling between idioms, cultures, and values. A failed boxer discovers what it truly means to be a champion when he starts painting nails at his sister's salon. A young woman tries to discern the invisible but immutable social hierarchies at a chicken processing plant. A mother coaches her daughter in the challenging art of worm harvesting.
In a taut, visceral prose style that establishes her as one of the most striking and assured voices of her generation, Thammavongsa interrogates what it means to make a living, to work, and to create meaning.
Paris
THE SKY WAS BLACK like the middle of an eye. Red revved the engine, impatient, having to wait for the truck to warm up. She never failed to make her morning shift on time. The truck was an old thing. A thing she had seen on someone's front lawn, a For Sale sign taped to the windshield, handwritten in black marker. The make was nothing special. They call it a pickup truck, but she never picked anything up in it, just herself. It might have been the colour that drew Red to the truck. And the thought of that big red truck in the parking lot at the plant. It would be the best-looking thing there, and it would belong to her. She wanted that.
Red worked at the plant like most of the others in town. It was her job to pluck the feathers, make sure the chickens were smooth when they left her. By the time the chickens got to her, they were already dead, their eyes closed tight like they were sleeping. It was almost like what happened in the next room didn't happen at all. Sometimes she ...
Throughout the 14 stories collected in How to Pronounce Knife, nearly all of which follow Lao immigrants and refugees building new lives in unnamed towns across Canada, not once do we encounter a character homesick with nostalgia. By limiting cultural particularities, Thammavongsa steers the reader closer to a general experience of alienation bound up with the immigrant experience. These stories never rely on twists or a-ha moments. They are deeply affecting, humorous and heartbreaking in equal measure...continued
Full Review
(680 words)
(Reviewed by Dean Muscat).
Helen Oyeyemi, author of What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours and Gingerbread
I love these stories. There's some fierce and steady activity in all of the sentences--something that makes them live, and makes them shift a little in meaning when you look at them again and they look back at you (or look beyond you). Mary Gaitskill, author of Veronica and Somebody With a Little Hammer
These poignant and deceptively quiet stories are powerhouses of feeling and depth; How to Pronounce Knife is an artful blend of simplicity and sophistication. Paul Yoon, author of Snow Hunters
Not since the stories of Edward P. Jones have I encountered such a unified and yet wide-ranging vision-both geographically and emotionally-that captures the spirit of not only a community but of the greater world-then, now, the future. This is a book full of powerful resilience, great journeys, and above all else: fierce, heart-wrenching love.
In the story "Chick-A-Chee!" from How to Pronounce Knife by Souvankham Thammavongsa, an immigrant father takes his children trick-or-treating on Halloween in the hope that they will integrate better into the local culture.
Around the world today, treat-or-treating is very much seen as an all-American activity. However, its origins can be traced back to the ancient Celtic holiday of Samhain (pronounced SOW'inn), which is still celebrated by modern pagans. During this end-of-summer festival, the ancient Celts believed that the barrier between the world of the gods and humankind was lifted and that deities played tricks on humans.
In the 8th century CE, Christians began to celebrate All Saints' Day, a day to honor saints and ...
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