Daniel Chaikin's Reviews > Miss Burma

2. Miss Burma by Charmaine Craig, read by the author

published: 2017
format: 13:21 Overdrive audiobook (~370 pages, hardcover is 355 pages)
acquired: library borrow
listened: Dec 11 – Jan 4
rating: **½

I enjoyed the first sections of this novel on audio as Craig, an actress who reads this herself, captures some interesting aspects of the mixed racial atmosphere of British Burma before, during and after WWII. Burma/Myanmar is a fascinating place with a remarkably complex history. And Craig has a great story to tell, based on the life of her mother and her mother's parents.

Craig's heritage is kind of complicated. She is American born. Her mother, Louisa Benson Craig, was from Burma and was half Jewish and half Karen. Her maternal grandfather, Saw Benson, was a descendant of a Jewish community within Burma. This community, and all the European and Indian communities are pretty much gone, after having been there for a couple hundred of years. Her maternal grandmother, Naw Chit Khin, was a variety of Karen. The Karen name encompasses melange of peoples in Burma who aren't all really related, but all are minorities in a country whose government is adverse to any non-Burmese. During the long British rule a community of Christian Karen worked closely with the British government, enjoyed a reprieve of racial subjection, and played an important role in clearing the Japanese from Burma during WWII. This was her mother's community.

Burma is a crazy place. When the Japanese invaded, they were supported by the Burmese independence movement and one of the first things these groups did under Japanese control was massacre non-Burmese minorities, including Karen. Once this caused problems for the Japanese it was stopped, but the damage was done and the mentality never left the Burmese political center.



So this is a quite a setting for a novel. And Louisa Benson (pictured above) really did win the Miss Burma award in 1956 (?), running as a Karen minority. The novel covers the trajectory of Craig's maternal grandparents and then her mother. It starts out really well, although there were a few writing oddities early on. For example, eyes can be expressive, but can they communicate long sentences with complex and precise grammar? Several times? From different characters?

But as the book progresses it becomes clear that the author is limited and the trend of this long novel stretches her abilities. She has some strengths. But she seems to really only have one style, roughly to make every single moment magical or emotionally moving in some way. That doesn't apply to this whole story. But she forces it. And when the story gets awkward, she tends to compensate by writing at length around this and avoiding the problem in the center (in this case maybe a family awkwardness). To me the book just fails. It gets silly and borderline dishonest (and makes the reader wonder how much license she really took with Burmese history).

Overall this is a good story that needed either a more experienced, or more talented writer, one could manage pacing over the long course, and change styles. It's still maybe worth reading because it is an amazing story within quite a wild real context. But it's not a very good novel.