A VOICE FOR INDEPENDENT AUTHORS

A Review of: Love and Loss in Cambodia

by Debra Groves Harman

Love and Loss in Cambodia by Debra Groves Harman is a bit more than just a memoir. Sometimes, it reads more like a confessional, or possibly even the transcript of a therapy session. In any case, be warned that this book is ultimately and progressively seductive. In fact, it occurs to me that it shares some of the dark appeal of The Heart of Darkness, except in this case the allure is real rather than fictional. What begins as a somewhat familiar tale of childhood and family life — stark, but only as dysfunctional as most and with remembrances that resonate later in the book — soon becomes the portal through which the reader progresses into deeper waters, an immersion with no escape. This telling of a life lived more vividly than most belies the easy entertainment found in other memoirs.

A young and somewhat conflicted Debra Groves Harman travels with her husband to Southeast Asia late in the last decades of the previous millennium, there to experience Love and Loss in Cambodia. Incredibly, her tersely worded recollection only augments the vast contrast in realities she experienced while living there. Although her story often feels objectively told, as if by one emotionally at a distance, at no moment does the reader feel disengaged or…