Yesterday I read Sia Figiel’s They Who Do Not Grieve, a very rich and disorienting and disappointing novel from a Samoan writer. Rich because of the multitude of really bizarre characters and motivations and plot lines; disorienting because of the multitude of betrayals, abuses, disembodiments (where there is pain, there is psychosis; where there is psychosis, there is displacement, disembodying, dislocation); and disappointing because of the lack of transformation, change, recovery.  At the end of the novel, a child will be born who will be allowed to speak: is that enough to justify a novel of entangled, maligned, atrophied, and manacled women?  Fewer women and more possibility would have made this a better novel.

There are fascinating women in the book but none that are fully explored, probably because there are just too many of them (lineage charts help keep characters and their relationships straight).  There are no good men, except perhaps, “You-Know” Junot but he isn’t kept around long enough to turn into an abusive and/or abandoning partner.  The novel needed to reduce its number of characters and focus on one or two of the interesting women, their situations, and their manifestations of change.

I do not doubt that the novel is genuine or heartfelt; the writing is certainly lovely and true, original in terms of text and rhythm, and paced with action that is rhapsodic then slapping, beautiful then brutish.  There are expressions and observations that are perfection itself (as when Figiel describes a suburb: “houses that stood in rows.  Each house is numbered.  Each house has a mailbox….they all look the same.  Each house caged in like an animal.  A crippled animal.  A permanently crippled animal that would never be able to walk away.  With no capability of being healed… ) and dream sequences that will send you flying (women “with the thickest thighs….covered with stars, spears, centipedes, fish…Cloud Woman and Stone Woman…guardians of the tattoo.” )

With all of Figiel’s skills at observation and portrayal  she could have written an incredible novel of sharp and targeted power.  Instead, They Who Do Not Grieve is a wild scatter shot of too many characters, too many complaints and moanings and wailings (they do grieve, actually, quite a lot), and a repetitive litany of the nastiness of man and the survival instincts of women.  Not bad (some of it was really good) but it could have been great with a narrower scope and a deeper examination. I am sure Sia Figiel could give more, and write better, if only she would limit herself to a few characters and one story line; if only she would force focus and allow editing; and if only she could trust more in the women, and men, of her Pacific Islands.