The Courier Mail on The Rainy Season

Myfanwy Jones finds hope in Vietnam War sad aftermath

MYFANWY Jones lived and worked in Vietnam for two years as a journalist during the 1990s, the time period in which this book is set. Her eye for detail is sharp and sensual and she has written her first novel with great feeling for this beautiful but wounded country trying once again to position itself within the world.

At the centre of the story is Ella, a young Melbourne woman who arrives in Ho Chi Minh City with a gnawing need within her to be loved. She has just broken up with her boyfriend of five years, her relationship with her mother is fractured, and she carries burdensome dreams of her father who disappeared when she was five, after his return from active service as a "Nasho".

At times, Ella's misery and self-destructive behaviours are irksome but I found myself moved by her plight as she ricochets from one bout of drinking to another, from one experience of abandonment to another.

But the story is wider than Ella's loss and grief.

There's Vietnam itself trying to move on from the brutal death and destruction of the war, there is the loss of innocence for the young conscripted soldiers who came to war reluctantly and ill-prepared, purely because their numbers were drawn.

And there's the loss for those left behind – people like baby Ella whose childhoods were defined by the disturbed or missing father.

Jones pulls all these elements together in The Rainy Season. It is a soulful story, rich with the atmosphere of Vietnam – the bars, the bikes, the stall-vendors, the street-sweepers, coconut rum. I was moved by the way her story reveals the connectedness between Australia and Vietnam and how this connectedness is both sad and ultimately hopeful.

Review by Mary Philip, The Courier Mail, 6 March 2009