The 20th century through one man's life
Right from the beginning, America has viewed itself as a global beacon, a shining city on a hill that would, by its shimmering example, remake the corrupt Old World in its image. As Abraham Lincoln said, America represents "the last best hope of earth." This millennial urge to re-create the world, tinged with a self-righteous sureness in our national destiny, is something that novelist Askold Melnyczuk calls into question.
"The House of Widows" is an absorbing, meditative exploration of the 20th century's horrific history, reflected in the dark secrets and painful dislocations of one family. Melnyczuk delves deeply into the mysterious life and suicide of Andrew Pak, a Ukrainian refugee who's adopted by a well-to-do British family, joins the British Army during World War II, and later flees to Boston's North Shore. Melnyczuk, director of creative writing at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, tells this brilliant story from shifting narrative points of view, including Andrew's and that of his son James, who witnessed his father's suicide.
It is James's stubborn investigation into the roots of his father's secretive past that propels this powerful narrative forward from darkness into increasing light. Leaving Massachusetts for Europe, James begins as an American innocent who gradually comes to discover the unspoken trauma of his dead father's life. James believes his Old World quest, taking him to Oxford, Vienna, and Kiev, will result in answers leading to self-understanding.
Yet Melnyczuk isn't interested in giving his characters lessons gleaned from history. Accepting the indeterminacy of the past, its stubborn refusal to offer up what we ask of it, is part of James's maturation: "What was the good of knowing what I knew?" he rightly wonders toward the book's end.
On a train for Kiev, where his Ukrainian-born grandmother Vera is headed to die, James speaks with a family friend who's tired of America's ballyhooed self-confidence: "Americans always look for the good in a thing," he tells James. "In death, in war, you search for the positive. . . . You people are so overwhelmed by the fear of losing what you'll never really own, you can't see things for what they are."
James uncovers Andrew's weighty history, interwoven with the 20th century's own, as the narrative flows between past and present. We learn of Andrew's brother Khoriv, who deserted from the Soviet Army during World War II and was held at a British camp where Andrew worked as a translator. In line with British policy, Khoriv was sent back across Soviet lines, and later banished to Siberia. Andrew is haunted by his failure to protect his brother, and grows disillusioned with his adopted British homeland.
James struggles with his own past and cultural identity. By book's end, he's an American diplomat in Vienna who's uncomfortable with his nation's political leadership. When James receives secret documents detailing atrocities committed by American troops in Iraq, he's torn about what to do with them. Is it better to maintain one's innocence, one's "clean hands," through a conscious effort of denial? If America has "lost its innocence" in Iraq, is it best to keep moving blissfully forward in our self-proclaimed righteousness?
Melnyczuk's "The House of Widows" is a small gem of a novel that's filled with more crucial questions about the meaning and psychological impact of history than a hundred textbooks. As Voltaire once wrote, history is the set of lies commonly agreed upon. We can stop the lying too, if we're able to accept the darker truths the past reveals.
Chuck Leddy is a freelance writer who lives in Dorchester. 