Last week, I wrote about learning that Margaret Atwood has been a long-time supporter and admirer of Thomas King’s writing, a writer I’ve enjoyed reading for a couple of decades. And I teased that this week I’d be writing about someone whose books likely wouldn’t have landed in my stack without her recommendation.

When I first heard that Margaret Atwood was recommending Vincent Lam’s debut story collection, I wasn’t a dedicated short story reader; I’d started down that road, but persisted in prioritizing novels over stories.

And I’d recently moved to Toronto, which meant that hundreds of authors were freshly available to me via an expansive and diverse library system…so I probably wouldn’t’ve selected a collection of stories about medical students and young doctors.

Not only did her recommendation seal the deal for me, but the book went on to receive a Giller-Prize nomination. A few weeks later, Justin Trudeau presented him with the prize. Because this is what you do, before you become prime minister, you dispense literary awards.

  “’Luck is not what it seems and most of it falls into the category of divine blessing or people who have been kind to you,’ he said in an acceptance speech that honoured his publisher and writer Margaret Atwood.
Lam was a ship’s doctor when he met Atwood on an Arctic cruise.
Atwood agreed to read his work and became his mentor and advocate. She introduced his book at the Giller ceremony.”

But despite having enjoyed the collection (the stories are linked, which is my favourite kind of short story collection, and are set in Toronto), I’d never made time for his follow-up, a novel from 2012: The Headmaster’s Wager. Margaret Atwood’s is the first name in the list of people Vincent Lam thanks in the note which follows his novel, but she would be first alphabetically too.

It’s four hundred pages long, and unless I read a book like that when it’s new, it’s harder to make time for it later. But earlier this year, when I was enjoying a cluster of books set in Vietnam, I realized this year’s MARM would be the perfect opportunity to get acquainted with Percival Chen.

A rich and complex story, The Headmaster’s Wager is set in 1960s Saigon. Percival is at the heart of the narrative; readers understand just enough about his father to situate the language school, just enough history to allow us to be as uncertain as Percival is, particularly when policies begin to shift (along with citizens’ ideas about whether and how Chinese and Vietnamese and English languages should be taught).

The key relationship for the bulk of the story is between Percival and his own son, who becomes vulnerable in the political climate for actions he takes willingly (actions Percival does not condone, but he becomes engaged in an effort to protect and influence his son).

It’s difficult for Percival to manage the situation in this political climate. “Or perhaps better to say, everyone’s actions have political meaning, whether or not they have political intentions.” It’s intensely difficult to navigate the changing landscape, where “[s]ome acquire their politics by accident.”

And for a young person, coming-of-age, it’s arguably even harder. “What good have the French ever been to us Chinese, or any white people? You would be miserable in a land of the gwei lo. How could the boy even contemplate living amongst the white ghosts?”

But readers never feel insecure in Vincent Lam’s storytelling. The emotional power of the story resonates from beginning to end. Whether or not you’re familiar with Saigon, with global politics of the 1960s, the characterization roots readers in all of that, seemingly effortlessly.

It’s the kind of writing that reminds me of the futility of the “likeability” stance when it comes to fiction. This novel read very slowly for me—every other night or so, I would read a chapter or two—during months when the number of library books I’d checked out translated into my reading a book a day for weeks on end.

Even if you’re not mathematically inclined (I’m not either!), you can calculate how many other stories I encountered and completed while reading The Headmaster’s Wager. So many of them shorter and sleeker, more readily completed and returned (so that I could fetch other, newer books in their place). But I never considered returning this unfinished.

Then, there comes a point in the story when Percival follows a pattern of behaviour that has repeated so often that I could feel myself growing angry with him, with his willingness to disregard the advice and help that someone in his employ was offering. So frustrating!

Just there, I found myself wondering why I was still hanging around with Percival—who was behaving so abominably. But somehow, despite his having trod this ground many times (seemingly endlessly, he makes the same mistakes), Lam manages to hold this behaviour apart from Percival so that his emotional experiences remain on the surface while these poor decisions roil beneath.

There are many ways to describe the growing intensity of the story, depending on your political positioning and understanding. The most optimistic is Percival’s, in describing it to an influential figure: “A small misunderstanding.” (Of course, not everyone considers it so “small.”)

Ultimately, one could argue that, as in Lam’s acceptance speech, the story in The Headmaster’s Wager turns on luck.

There is a great deal of control in the narrative. And not only on the author’s part. Looking backwards, to the early days of Percival’s relationship with his son’s mother (now Percival’s ex-wife): “Cecilia allowed him to be as passionate as he liked, but stopped him at the elbow.”

The female characters in this novel are complex and their decision-making takes the narrative in directions I had not anticipated, which made this story even more satisfying. (But I’ll say no more, because…spoilery.)

It’s unsurprising, for anyone who has followed Margaret Atwood’s career, that she would support an author who prioritizes political stories.

Above is a short discussion from Jan 28, 2021, wherein she discusses politics and the pandemic in a virtual discussion with Adrienne Arsenault. And here’s a peek at the news of her contribution to pandemic fiction. (Readers of The Decameron Project will remember that she had a story published there as well.)

Next week? I unexpectedly find a conversation between Margaret Atwood and a Canadian writer in a volume of memoir-writing and essays, which meshes perfectly with another recent recommendation in her Twitter feed.

Have you been reading or watching or contemplating for #MARM this year?