Thirty Three Teeth by Colin Cotterill

JL suggested I read the Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. It was checked out from Loussac library so J brought Thirty-Three Teeth. (When I told JL, he said I had to read them in order, but I was already half way through Teeth.) These books have an M in their library call letters - they are murder mysteries, but they take place in Laos and the main characters are all Laotian.

One of the best ways to get a sense of another culture is to read good fiction by someone in that culture. With google it's easy to find fiction about the place you are going. Even at the library you can search the name of the city or country and 'fiction' and come up with some good options available in the library. While they don't give you the well organized tips a travel book gives, they give you a sense of the place that travel guides can't convey.

These books don't quite fit this category because they are written by a foreigner living in the culture. So in that sense it's a little filtered, but that can give the advantage of having a guide explain what's happening.

I think the key aspect that will be strange to Western readers is the role of spirits in this book. For people who read science fiction or vampire stories, a little suspension of the normal rules of physics shouldn't be a problem. And people who believe in things like creationism, immaculate birth, and resurrection, should also feel comfortable with the idea of people believing in things that can't be explained by science.

When I tried to find some quotes to give you a sense of the book, I realized that the writing was a little heavy. The real draw of this book is the easy-to-digest peek into life in Laos and a sense of a place that most people know nothing about.

At the beginning you meet two of the main characters - Siri, the coroner, and one of his assistants, Dtui.

Siri walked into the office to find Dtui at her desk poring over the pictures in one of Siri's old French pathology textbooks. As she studied the black-and-white photo of a man who'd been sliced in half by a locomotive, she chewed on a rice snack wrapped in pig intestine. (pp. 36-37)

This sounds - and was probably intended to sound - a little gross, but really a lot of these foods look and taste delicious and you wouldn't know what they were made of if you didn't ask.

Siri is a widow who spent most of his life as a doctor with the communist rebels in the jungles of Laos and only recently (this book starts out in March 1977) has moved into the city when the communists finally overthrew the King of Laos after the US left Vietnam.

Boua, his wife, had been the middle child of nine and the only rebel. While her family was in the royal capital working under the king's patronage, Boua was in France training to overthrow the royal family and rescue her country for communism.

She had returned to Laos after eight years with ideals and a rather baffled doctor husband called Siri. (p. 65)

As we read, the existence of spirits becomes increasingly important. Siri has recently been buried alive when a stupa in a temple in the old royal capital of Luang Prabang fell on him. Later he meets a shaman named Tik.

Tik sat cross-legged on the floor and stared at this guest. He was a man who didn't waste time creeping up on the point. "I feel you should be dead."

Siri joined him on the ground. "How could you know?"

"How could I not? How could I miss the incredible force you drag behind you? A powerful shaman and a wild pack of angry spirits could hardly arrive in Luang Prabang without my knowing. Tell me. Begin with this morning."

Siri related the events leading up to his death: the sound, the stupa closing around him, and the feeling of being dragged below the earth. He told him how he knew beyond a whisper of a doubt that he was dead. Tik gave him an admiring chuckle.

"Ahh. They're devious, the Phibob. Those from the south especially so. Yeh Ming has obviously made some powerful enemies over the past thousand years." (p. 126)

This isn't a great book, but it lets you travel to Laos and it's pretty short - 238 small pages. Now I have to get the first volume of the series.