The taut artistry of Radiance makes for a highly provocative exploration of American guilt following the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In her first novel, Vancouver’s Shaena Lambert has woven together a searing narrative that offers no easy answers as it unflinchingly examines the anguish, fury, and thwarted redemption of postwar America.
The story begins with the arrival of Keiko Kitigawa, a Hiroshima survivor who has come to New York to serve as the disfigured poster child for the anti-bomb movement. Through her scarred yet resilient beauty, the girl casts a spell over everyone who sees her as they struggle to transcend unsettling wartime traumas. As encroaching McCarthyism casts its shadow over the nation, Keiko is transformed into a political pawn.
Lambert achieves compelling narrative tension by skillfully creating in Keiko a character who both eludes and submits to the desires of those around her. Keiko is a perpetual question mark who reflects back the inscrutability, exoticism, and passivity her American hosts choose to see in her while keeping her dark, hidden demons at bay. From the newspaper photographer who longs for his dead sister to the surgeon who champions his suturing powers, all who come into Keiko’s presence are fixated on their own imaginings. It is only Daisy Lawrence, a suburban wife who hosts the young visitor, who is allowed brief glimpses of the unspeakable complexity of Keiko’s wartime experiences.
Fortunately, the novel refuses to provide the closure that America and the characters so desperately seek. Instead, the bubbling tide of the past rises up even as Keiko strives to create a new, unblemished façade for herself. Daisy tries to save the girl from the media hordes, in a sudden (and unconvincing) about-face, but it is Keiko herself who slips away from their frenzied grasp. The girl remains as unreadable as on the day she first arrived. –