At 72, Dr. Siri yearns to drink coffee, tend his garden, and read his books. But instead of a pension and honorable retirement for this combat surgeon to the Pathet Lao, he is now, in 1976, the chief and only medical examiner in Laos– the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos– shortly after the communists seized power after a long cave-based insurgency that Siri helped. Now he will be cutting up bodies until the day he is ready to become one. Dr. Siri’s unair-conditioned morgue is no better equipped than a butcher shop. Cockroaches scurry across its floors while moths bounce against mosquito netting. An additional challenge, Dr. Siri has no official qualification to be a coroner, and he must teach himself with ancient French textbooks.But Dr. Siri has a secret advantage. He sees dead people in his dreams. Sometimes this gives him the insight he needs where his primitive equipment fails. Although an agnostic scientist, Siri is comfortable with spiritual mystery. “He learned to walk tall through his nightmares and not be afraid of what happened there.” Strangers loiter in his dreams “with no intent of entertaining him.” He learns the feelings and personalities of the departed, who lurk in his dreams like “visitors in a waiting room.” Siri has another advantage, everyone underestimates him. Nobody can recall him ever losing his temper. He keeps a cheery smile on his face, and his hypnotic green eyes have seen so many hardships that he reached the “calmness of an astronaut bobbing in space.” Siri has an independent streak as wide as his grin but somehow stays one step ahead of re-education camps. He is too old and wise to be bullied by ideological group-think. “There was nothing fake or added or subtracted about him. He was all himself.” Despite his service in the jungle, Siri has not shown proper enthusiasm for the cause now that victory has been achieved. He is “passively rebellious:” “There is nothing that you can do to me to fill me with even a smidgen of dread.” (104) Siri is a “heathen of a communist.” He believed that communism was the only way man could be content, but man, being a selfish animal, could never actually practice communism with any success. Thus, man could never be content. It is fun to read the officious double- speak of bureaucrats and observe the cynical Siri and his friends deflect it with irony that sails right over the heads of ideologues.This book, in addition to being rich in humor and irony, is crowded with satisfying mysteries– physical and spiritual: 1) a fisherman is sliced apart “as if by scythe cutting through rice stalks” by a military patrol boat;2) the outspoken wife of a senior party member drops dead at a womens’ club;3) three bodies from a delegation of Vietnamese (Lao allies and benefactors), dumped in a resevoir, show signs of torture;4) a series of mysterious deaths amongst ranks of military personnel working among the Hmong tribes have all the evidence of occultic assault from the spirit world;5) the mistress of a commissar appears to have committed suicide; and6) Siri’s wife died violently, 11 years earlier, under mysterious circumstances. I also enjoyed the lessons in Lao culture and history. The easy-going people of Laos are indifferent to their communist overlords. Life is no worse under communism than it was under the royal family, which collaborated with the French colonizers and then the Americans. The Lao traded one set of corrupt masters for another. Although poverty endures, at least the Lao are now mismanaged by other Lao not foreigners. Not too long ago, I believed that if a book did not make Harold Bloom's canon, or if a work of contemporary literature was not written by Roth, DeLillo, McCarthy, Garcia-Marquez, or McEwan, I could not waste precious time reading it. I thank Richard Derus for teaching me to be less snobbish. This book was the best of both world's: character-driven and plot-driven. Richard wrote an apologia for the reading of mysteries: Let's talk about mystery series for a minute. I like them, as readers of past reviews will yawningly recall, because they satisfy my need for order, for the world to work *right* for a change. I think a lot of people feel similarly to me. But a series, iteration upon iteration of similar plots/characters/motivations/dialogue...what makes a well-read consumer of Lit'rachure such as I, and so many fellow Goodreadsers, am/are seek these books out? Comfort? Yes, but... Ease? Yes, but... Quality. Some of the best storytelling going on in literature today happens in mysteries and thrillers. Link to Richard Derus' apologia for mysteries: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...I have returned from re-education camp. I confess my thought-crimes against mystery writers and readers. I confess my snobbishness and servitude as a puppet of the media elite-- our cultural oppressors--and I will no longer be sent forth as a minion of the literati to do their bidding. (Irony or capitulation? Dr. Siri keeps them guessing. So does Steve.)Link to my review of the second book in the series: "Thirty-Three Teeth"http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Laos is a landlocked socialist republic in southeast Asia, bordering with the more dominant nations of China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. The Coroner's Lunch is set in 1976, a year after the end of a long civil war that resulted in the Soviet-backed communist Pathet Lao coming to power. The protagonist is Siri Paiboun, a doctor and a widower who, rather than being able to enjoy a peaceful retirement at the age of 72, is made the country's only coroner. One of the many delights of this book about ordinary people's experiences of living under the communist regime are the small everyday acts of subversion and rebellion that avoid the notice of the unimaginative authorities but cause a liberating sense of personal triumph that sustains people through each day.Siri has been a communist ever since his student days in France, but only because of the woman he loved and subsequently married. Although perceived by the authorities as a safe pair of hands, Siri in fact is a detached observer of the soulless regime. One of the many pleasures of this novel is the life Siri has made in his hospital lab with his two co-workers: Drui, a spinster who reads out-of-date fashion magazines and looks after her ill mother; and Mr Geung, a man considered "simple" (he has Down's syndrome). The collaboration and relationship between these three in their working and, occasionally, personal lives is a subtle yet sharp portrait of how the human spirit can prevail against the most deadening official dictates and the most extreme poverty of resources.Siri himself lives in a room in a building with many others, including the predatory Miss Vong, whose curtain is always flickering and who bullies Siri into digging trenches for the Party on his Sunday off. Siri has other neighbours, however, whom only he can see - the spirits of the dead, who come to him at night and reveal to him the stories of how they met their ends.Turning to the actual plot, Siri is faced with two baffling and dangerous cases. One concerns Mrs Nitnoy, the wife of a senior government official, who has died mysteriously while at a Women's Union meeting. Another concerns the bodies of three men who have been discovered at the bottom of the sea, tied to rusty bombshells. Siri's professional attitude leads him to dig into these obscure deaths against the desires of officialdom to the extent of endangering himself. He also feels driven to continue because of his spiritual visitors and the final rest that will be brought to them by the knowledge of how they met their ends.The investigation and the story of Siri's life continue almost in parallel. We meet a range of sharply observed characters, some sympathetic and others less so, but all convincing. The strength of the book lies in the beautiful touches of detail, the irony and the coded conversations - for example between Siri and his lunchtime friend Civiali, whom he meets every day on a nearby log; Siri with his baguette always specially made by Auntie Lah of the bread trolley. There is excitement too, as the energetic Inspector Phosy and a policeman from Vietnam, Nguyen Hong, become involved in the cases under investigation, and Siri is sent into the jungle to find out why the past three military commanders of a unit helping to rebuild the local communities after the war, have mysteriously died.
Do You like book The Coroner's Lunch (2015)?
Anna wrote: "This sounds really interesting! I just sent my mother a copy of this for her kindle, sounds like her sort of thing."Please let me know how mom liked them, Anna. I hope she's pleased! Maybe you can let her know that "Dr. Siri" is pronounced, in Lao, as Dr. Silly." Just an interesting little sidelight....
—Richard Reviles Censorship Always in All Ways
I thoroughly enjoyed this novel.The setting is Laos just after the Pathet Lao seized power (c. 1975). Dr. Siri Paiboun is an old member of the Party dragooned into being the country's chief coronor because all the qualified candidates have fled. Untrained, nevertheless Siri sets out to learn the job and do the best job he can.Cotterill writes with ease and engagingly and Siri is a very likable character (I can empathize with his phone phobia). I hope the author develops this into a continuing series.
—Terence
A wonderful tongue in cheek satire on the revolution in Laos, "The Coroner's Lunch" tells the tale of Dr. Siri Paiboun, unwillingly chosen to become coroner in the new communist state. The powers that be think he will be another incompetent cog in the machinery of the bureaucracy. What they do not realize is that this man in his 70's has a work ethic that demands he do his job properly despite lack of equipment and resources. How Dr. Paiboun goes about his job and solves the mysteries is both entertaining and informative.
—Marsha
