不久前读了Anthony Marra的第二本小说“The Tsar of Love and Techno”，刚好有爱书的朋友买了Anthony Marra的第一本小说“A Constellation of Vital Phenomena”，推荐给我，真是一本很深刻的好小说。
书名来自医学字典里对生命的定义－“Life: a constellation of vital phenomena—organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction, adaptation.” 小说的背景定在2004年战火肆虐的车臣。
老实说，我对车臣的印象相当刻板，一提起它，脑子里立刻浮现蒙面穆斯林恐怖分子－－在莫斯科戏院把炸弹绑在人质身上，在Beslan劫持千多名无辜学生，还有炸毁客机，引爆地铁；最可怕的是那些黑寡妇，蒙着黑头巾，披着黑长袍，绑着自杀腰带，内心燃烧着黑色仇恨；三年前的波士顿马拉松爆炸案的凶手也是两个目光冷酷的车臣后裔兄弟。。。似乎有关于车臣的新闻都是坏消息。
车臣的面积才1.5万平方公里，人口也才一百万多一点点。 虽然只是弹丸之地，但位于北高加索战略要地，又有丰富石油，且是俄国跟高加索各国石油管道的唯一枢纽。 1944年，斯大林为防车臣人跟纳粹结伍，把全部车臣人流放到哈萨克境内的荒漠和西伯利亚的原始森林做苦力，直到1957年斯大林死后三年才获准回归。 但只有一半的车臣人存活下来，而他们原有的土地财产却已被新移民的俄罗斯人占有。
故事的开始在2004年一个白雪覆盖的车臣小村庄内，八岁女孩Havaa藏在屋后的树林里目睹家园被烧毁，爸爸也被俄军带走，十有八九凶多吉少。 她虽然躲过一劫，之后被邻居也是爸爸的好友Akhmed救助；但Akhmed深知俄军一定会回来捉拿她，此地不可久留，天一亮就带Havaa去附近城市的医院寻求庇护。
医院基本上早已被废弃，唯一的医生Sonja是车臣长大的俄裔，八年前（1996年）为了寻找失散的妹妹，放弃了在伦敦医院做实习医生的大好前程和未婚夫，回到刚停战（第一次车臣战争）的家乡，没想到又被卷入第二次车臣战争的漩涡，日日见证着战争的残酷无情。 Akhmed请求Sonja收留Havaa，作为交换条件，他每天留在医院帮忙。 这三个车臣普通人的命运因此联结在一起。。。
作者Anthony Marra好年轻（1984年生）。 大三的时候他去圣彼得堡做交换学生，在车站附近结识了一群从车臣战争退役的俄兵，他们在车臣的故事令他开始阅读关于车臣的文献和报道，之后更两度来到车臣收集材料，花了三年时间才写完这部小说。 Marra目前在Stanford教写作，我朋友的女儿正要去Stanford读英文，赶快跟她推荐，说不定会给他教到呢。
虽然年轻，Marra的写作功力却非常纯熟。 全书的主线浓缩于短短五天，但相关的铺垫却往前延伸了十年。 Marra跳跃于横跨这十年的时间轴上，分别展示几位主角的过去、未来、因缘、后续，即使是旁枝末节小人物的人生际遇也多有交代。 经过这些前因后果的层层发掘翻转，几位主角人物都被塑造得很丰富很立体，而不是单一的脸谱化。
在战火的暴虐中，即使每一个人物都那样残破悲恸，作者的笔调始终满含同情和希望。 最难得的是，Marra的文笔写实，没有一丝一毫的煽情。 有些地方他也很自然地加入幽默或者反讽，叫你读起来会心一笑。 这本书不好读，题材沉重，但我学到很多，也叫我思考，而且作者有很多聪明的句子，读起来很享受。
Quotes：
用冰块来做比喻。“At the kitchen table she examined the glass of ice. Each cube was rounded by room temperature, dissolving in its own remains, and belatedly she understood that this was how a loved one disappeared. Despite the shock wave of walking into an empty flat, the absence isn’t immediate, more a fade from the present tense you shared, a melting into the past, not an erasure but a conversion in form, from presence to memory, from solid to liquid, and the person you once touched runs over your skin, now in sheets down your back, and you may bathe, may sink, may drown in the memory, but your fingers cannot hold it.”
“Invader and invaded held on to their fistfuls of earth, but in the end, the earth outlived the hands that held it.”
姐妹情。“She wouldn't climb out of the bed for her sister, but she had climbed into a crater. She wouldn't cross a room, but she had crossed a continent.”
“For their entire lives, even before they met you, your mother and father held their love for you inside their hearts like an acorn holds an oak tree.”
“...she stood back and wiped the sweat-sting from her eyes. The air was clean. Her hands brown with dirt. Pride surged through her, raw and immense; she had believed happiness to be an absence - of fear, of pain, of grief - but here it roared in her as powerful as any sadness.”
“The look on his face told her what had happened and that hurt burrowed deeper than anything she'd ever felt, deep enough to change from the thing she felt to the thing she was. Love, she learned, could reduce its recipient to an essential thing, as important as food or shelter, whose presence is not only longed for but needed.”
