A review by lurdesabruscato
Music of the Ghosts by Vaddey Ratner

4.0

Left with just an aunt and barely escaping Cambodia to America as a child, Teera is reluctantly drawn back as an adult. As a refugee and survivor, she struggles to come to terms with so much. The country she knew is vastly different, ravished by war and poverty, where former torturers now live side-by-side with their victims. Delving into the genocidal atrocities better known as the Killing Fields, which plagued Cambodia in the late 1970s, Ratner has created a haunting story of love, war, survival, and denial. Though at times a little choppy and confusing with its past-present narrative and cultural references, the novel is beautifully written, the prose fittingly melodic and ethereal.