The Charm Buyers

Blog Response – The Charm Buyers

            In Lillian Howan’s book entitled The Charm Buyers we follow the life’s story of Marc Antoine, who belongs to the Hakka people. A nomadic people of China, though the story takes place on the island of Tahiti and islands near them. What I appreciated about this story was the focus on Marc Antoine’s relationship with Aroure, his relationship with Marie-Laure, his relationship with his great grand-mother A-Tai and the very well written dichotomy of the “pretty” world of his family to the coldness inside of him versus this sort of magical realism underlying inside of the plot. Throughout this story I was un-impressed with Marc’s ability to emote. It seems there was something that always stopped him from annunciating clearly how he felt.
We see this a few times in the beginning of the book with Marie-Laure, when she invited him to the party that he hadn’t originally planned to go to. When he tells his friend Harris that he is hesitant to go, Harris makes fun of him for going with Marie-Laure because she isn’t beautiful “It isn’t because of her looks She’s an ugly kid – everyone knows that. The island’s full of beautiful women and she isn’t one of them” (Howard 13). After this moment Marc becomes ashamed to go with Mari-Laure and then projects that shame without actually stating it however, Marc projects it enough so that his cousin Marie-Laure feels it and decides not to go herself. We see countless other examples when he is in a relationship with Aurore where he feels some way but then doesn’t say at all how he feels “Do you remember Vetea Tchong?” Asked Aurore. Go to Hell, I wanted to say. “He died,” said Aurore. “About a year ago.” (Howard 285). We see here, near the end of their relationship, after the truth of their relationship is revealed through Aroure’s perspective, that Marc wants to be emotional here but is not. This is a big wedge in their relationship with each other, other than the fact that it seemed like she preyed on him from a young age, which in and of itself was a huge flaw in their relationship. We see another example near the end of the book where Marc is speaking with Marie-Laure on going to Sydney with her, he wants to tell her “don’t go where I can’t follow” (Howard 295) but instead he pushes her to go to Sydney to continue living her life without him, something Howard lets us in on about Marc’s character that he does not want. Howard does an amazing job of painting an emotionally complicated young male, not knowing how to navigate through life because of complicated matters that surround him.
There seemed to be an edge of existentialism in Marc Antoine’s character that led him; this dichotomy with the “pretty” world he lived in and the coldness inside of him. Although he has a lot of avenues of purpose in his life; like helping his father’s budding business or doing well in school and being able to expand the family’s wealth. He doesn’t go down any of those avenues and instead goes into selling weed. This is something that drives a huge wedge between his relationship with Cecile, his father’s new wife, who just can’t understand this and says that there is a coldness inside of him. The same way that characters in the book have talked about his mother, a maternal figure he is constantly compared to, who he is always said to be almost as beautiful as (because beauty has a way of determining worth in the world of the characters in this novel). The only thing that I think differentiates himself from being fully existential is his love or feelings towards Marie-Laure and the charm he buys so that she can survive a sickness. Marie-Laure’s father thinks the sickness came from the nuclear testing in the area but in the book, there is a sense that it is a somewhat magical disease. That can’t, and would never be able to be solved by modern medicinal practices. This is where Howard is able to bring in Hakka mythology through A-Tai’s character but also through Mr. Lu’s character. Mr. Lu (and Monsieur Li) seem to represent magic in this book as he is the one who gives Marc the bean to give to Marie-Laure. What I love about Howard’s structure of the book is that she makes the reader wrestle with the thought; did Marie-Laure get better because of the magic? Or did she improve by the doctor’s medicine? Versing our own thoughts between what modernly can happen and the ability of magic. I loved wrestling with this theme. Howard gives us more detail near the end of the novel where we find out that Marie-Laure saw the bean in her hand and surmised its use. This throws the reader into wondering what the relationship was that magic had with this situation. Howard does an amazing job of creating this tension while also eloquently speaking about the Hakka people.


Comments

  1. AnonymousSeptember 26, 2017 at 1:38 PM

    I agree that Marc is struggling between a lot of dichotomies in the novel - reality and fantasy, beauty and ugliness, and so on - and these all seem to culminate into a dichotomy within himself. He seems to be trapped between what he wants to do and what he feels he should do, and this dichotomy often has to do with his family. He wants to be a good salesman like his father, but he sells marijuana instead of pearls. He knows he should speak at the celebration of his father and Cecile's engagement, but he feels sick and ducks out of it. Considering the fact that Marc has so many struggles with his family, it's especially interesting that perhaps his healthiest relationship is the one with Marie-Laure, his cousin. Since it seems like family is very important to Tahitian culture, it's interesting that Marc struggles with it so much, and perhaps says something about masculinity and post-colonialism.

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