Spies in Canaan
David Park sets his novel in two timeframes: the present-day United States and towards the end of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s. The protagonist is Michael Miller, a small-town American who is sent to Saigon in the dying days of the war as an intelligence agent. He tells the reader that he always felt an outsider due to his upbringing in ‘a church that believed in individual salvation.’ This gives him a more distanced view of his experience.
At first, the narrative is suffused with an atmosphere of intense despair. The reader will feel the sensation of panic in Saigon and the protagonist’s need to escape and his guilt about leaving his Vietnamese friends behind. That same feeling returns when, now retired, Michael receives a letter from one of his agent friends. The writing in this relatively short novel is full of sensory descriptions. It almost insists the reader feels the despair of the protagonist as he recalls his younger self. Older now, can he make amends for his past naivety?
In a way the novel is the story of America’s transformation from a naive, young country, whose government thought they could save the world, through to being older and wiser and hoping to survive, ‘the plagues and dark angels sweeping in from the desert.’
Michael Miller narrates both parts of the story in the first person. I found it strange at first, but I soon got used to it and found that this intensified the narrative. An excellent read.
