A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Published by Hogarth on May 7, 2013

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena is a haunting novel of exquisite prose and striking images, of big themes built upon small, poignant moments. Every character, no matter how minor, rings true. Rarely has a debut novel so impressed me with its power and beauty.

Sonja Rabina is a trauma surgeon who left London and returned to her home in Volchansk in 1996. She is the hospital's last remaining physician when Akhmed shows up in 2004 with eight-year-old Havaa, who was hiding in the woods as Russian soldiers took her Chechen father away and burned her house to the ground. Akhmed, an incompetent doctor from Havaa's village, agrees to stay on at the hospital if Sonja will allow Havaa to remain. The two physicians are a study in contrasts: Sonja is skillful but lacks empathy for her patients (and for Havaa); Akhmed has empathy for all but no skill (except for drawing, which he much prefers to medicine). Neither would willingly trade places with the other.

The story looks back over a ten year period to reveal how the novel's key players arrived at their present circumstances. Anthony Marra creates sympathy for, and assures the reader's understanding of, each character. There are no true villains here, only people who are forced by circumstances to do things they regret. Characters are steeped in their region's misery: Dokka, Havaa's father, whose ten fingers were the price of resistance before he disappeared for the final time; Khassan Geshilov, the historian whose "history of a nation that had destroyed history and nationhood" reached fifteen million words and was forever in need of revision; Khassan's son Ramzan, an informant for the Russians who is feared and reviled by all, but who once (unknown to all) was a tragic hero; Akhmed's bedridden wife, Ula, whose descriptions of her day are mistaken for hallucinations; Sonja's sister Natasha, who twice pays an unconscionable price for her freedom. Although the characters endure atrocities and disappearances and lives of deprivation, they carry on, often guarding secrets, not just from the state, but from those closest to them.

The characters form a microcosm of Chechnya during a harsh and brutal time.  The novel provides a fascinating, condensed look at Chechnya in evolution over a ten year period, as well as the tension between Chechens and the ethnic Russians who were forcibly relocated to Chechnya, but the information is so seamlessly integrated into the story that it never feels like a history lesson.  Some chapters are so intensely moving they're difficult to read, but the trauma of Chechen life is tempered by the reminder that "the nervous system doesn't exist exclusively to feel pain."  Love and tenderness coexist with torture and death.

The maturity and sophistication of Marra's storytelling is astonishing. Among the novel's many symbols, my favorite is ice, symbolic of both survival and disappearance, "a melting into the past, not an erasure but a conversion in form, from presence to memory." Another is static from the radio, formless sound that can be shaped (like memories, or certain people) into whatever we desire.

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena explores diverse themes, all timeless and universal: the cycles of life (babies are born to replace the dead as new wars flare up to kill the living); the importance and difficulty of family; books and art as instruments of bonding and as vaults for the preservation of memories; the nature of betrayal (of family, friends, and lovers) and what it does to the soul; the protective power of hope, kindness, and generosity. Although the novel's time frame is 1994 to 2004, with a particular focus on the last four days of that period, every now and then Marra gives us a peek at what will come later, reminding us of the story's most important theme, one that is echoed in the book's title: people suffer, death is inevitable, but every day, new lives begin and existing lives begin anew. Life goes on.

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