The Last Thing that Burns by Will Dean

[In 2010, one of THE books to be read was Room by Emma Donoghue. That richly acclaimed novel was made into a 2015 movie that won Brie Larsen the Academy Award for Best Actress. If you were blown away by that book . . . buckle up.]

It’s a tale we’ve heard all too often. Far East immigrants pay exorbitant amounts of money for transit to the west on the promise of jobs. Their hazardous transport in a shipping container drops this group in England where brokers sell the survivors to the highest bidder. Work is promised that is used to pay the buyer back (years of work) and once the debt is paid, the immigrants are then on their own. Those are the lucky ones.

Thanh Dao and her younger sister, Kim-Ly, arrive from Vietnam. Each gets sold to different men. Thanh is bought by Lenn who lives in the Fensland, a low-lying region on the east coast in the south-central England. The Fens used to be a boggy region that was drained by man to support farming. Today, it is crisscrossed by a series of dikes containment pools.

Lenn is a brutal, controlling, abusive farmer who lives alone on a farm that his parents built. We learn little about the father, but it’s obvious that Lenn holds his late mother, Jane, in high regard. Most everything in this tiny farmhouse has a connection to his mom – fry pans, the Rayburn wood stove, towels, aprons, clothing, underwear, recipes, daily menus. Practially everything Thanh does touches another reminder of his Mum.Lenn requires that Thanh (who he renamed as Jane as an homage to his late mother) do everything exactly as his Mum did. Any departure is punishable.

 

Seven years Thanh/Jane has been crushed under Lenn’s thumb. Doors, TV, outbuildings, and gates are locked. He has the entire house wired for video that he reviews each night. When he sees that she does something wrong, he burns one of her few possessions. Punishment that pushes her deeper into the hole he has dug for her.

 

Her existence, outside of being Lenn’s slave, is a paperback book, Of Mice and Men, letters from Kim-Ly, and dreams of either killing Lenn or escaping. Two years ago, she made an attempted escape. Lenn’s punishment was to take bolt cutters to an ankle and crushed the bones. Now her foot is a useless and painful appendage to her leg. She is forced to hobble and has to sit to scoot down steps. Pain is controlled by pieces of a horse tranquilizer easily obtained by farmers. Once all of her possessions have been burned, Lenn then threatens Kim-Ly’s existence.

 

A new neighbor drives up. Cynthia wants to rent a corner of the property for her horse. Jane says to come back later to ask her husband.

 

Lenn and Thanh/Jane sleep together, except for that time of the month. On the occasional weekend, she has to lie passively while he penetrates her. After seven years, she becomes pregnant. Lenn won’t take her to a doctor, even for the delivery. His Mum bore him in that house. Jane can do it, too. His Mum’s towels become diapers. Buying formula and baby food would alert the folks in the store. When the baby gets sick as newborns will do, he refuses to seek medical care. Baby feel cool? Stand by the Rayburn. Feel feverish? Run a cool bath. That's what his Mum would've done.

 

It is this claustrophobic existence of life and abuse in a forgotten corner of England that Will Dean tells from Thanh’s point of view. Go into this book forewarned. This is extremely hard to stomach. The surveillance, the despair, the monotony, the threat of further abuse and pain. The effect of human trafficking on one individual is a story that is hard to tell, hard to read, and even harder to put down. Tension, threats, physical and emotional pain, the unsettling drudgery of Thanh’s existence will leave you enraged and breathless. This brutal, personal tale was one of the hardest hardest books that I may have ever read (I didn’t read Room). A story of pain and survival that I almost guarantee will stay with you long after you close the book. Dean has constructed a narrative that is so tense, your own personal peace will be penetrated.

 

And another word: regular readers of my reviews may recall that, in my opinion, books published by Emily Bestler Books (an imprint of Atria Books and Simon and Schuster) are consistently brilliant. How she finds authors with this kind of talent is beyond me. Many thanks for the advance review copy was sent to me by Atria’s publicist.

 

Due to be published April 2021. Mark your calendar.