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 by Kyo Maclear, 2007
On July 9th, the ESPC Book Club met to discuss Canadian writer Kyo Maclear’s first novel, The Letter Opener.
This complex novel centres around Naiko, a young Japanese-Canadian woman working in Toronto’s Undeliverable Mail Office. Naiko spends her work days reuniting the contents of lost or damaged parcels with their owners.
It is this obscure occupation sets the stage for an overwhelmingly convoluted story. The author depicts Naiko as a character easily absorbed with the task of sorting out objects, inventing stories, and reunifying people with that which they’ve lost. So when her colleague and close friend Andrei, a Romanian refugee, goes missing, she becomes fixated on understanding how and why he disappeared.
The author devotes a considerable amount of time to the telling of Andrei’s story, which becomes a central feature of the novel. Andrei and his
lover, Nicolae, fled Romania as young men to escape persecution because of their sexual orientation. Andrei deserts his mother, his brother, his red-herring wife, and their unborn child. What’s worse, Nicolae and Andrei’s
escape plans go terribly wrong: Nicolae goes missing on the journey out
of Romania, and Andrei ends up making his way to Canada as a refugee
entirely alone. In Toronto, he tries to make a new life for himself,
but is haunted by his past. Is that why he disappears?
The Letter Opener also examines Naiko’s relationships within her family. Her mother’s memories are slowly being eroded by dementia, and Naiko is left to pick up the pieces as she tries to come to terms with her mother’s illness. At the same time, she struggles to rebuild her relationship with her absentee father, and cope with her overbearing older sister, Kana – an overachieving international journalist.
Oh, and then there is Naiko’s relationship with her own partner, Paolo. This starts out rocky, with Naiko suspicious that Paolo’s ability to trust others was fundamentally damaged by his youth in Argentina, where friends and neighbours routinely turned one another in or went missing. Naiko herself is hesitant to commit, but as the various narratives of The Letter Opener unfold, we see her relationship with Paolo grow and change.
The Book Club discussed many different issues – the political and social climate in Romania, the difficulties refugees and immigrants face when relocating, the challenge of moving loved ones into long-term care facilities when they can no longer care for themselves...
But what we found to be most compelling about The Letter Opener was Maclear’s honest and precise narration of human relationships. We each reflected on how some of our own relationships are similar and dissimilar to those presented in The Letter Opener: the way older sisters can be overbearing, but in a well-intentioned way; how valuable and irreplaceable those relationships with parents can be; the different roles that friends play in our lives.
We’re revamping the Book Club now – so take a minute to vote in our poll – what types of materials do you think we should read? Stay tuned for our next series of books, and plan to join us!
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Sunday, 05 February 2012 
