The Rainy Season: Myfanwy Jones

There’s a new generation of Australian fiction writers coming up; confident and assured: Cate Kennedy, Nam Le, Toni Jordan, Jacinta Halloran – and now, Myfanwy Jones.

Seemingly abandoned by her Vietnam vet father when she was five, Ella has been brought up by her alcoholic mother. When, following a confusing relationship break-up, she travels to Vietnam to confront her father’s past, she’s drawn into the chaotic social life of Saigon’s ex-pat community. It’s 1994: the Clinton administration has just lifted the 19-year economic embargo on Vietnam, ostensibly in return for the fullest possible account for Americans held as prisoners of war (POW) or missing in action (MIA). For Ella, the talk of MIAs heightens her conflicting feelings about her father.

The Rainy Season is successful on many levels. Primarily, it’s the story of a young woman coming to terms with her feelings of rejection and gaining a sense of herself; but it’s also a vivid picture of expatriate life, the exuberance and recklessness of youth, a tortured country coming to terms with change, and the agony of the once-young fighters who were largely reviled or unacknowledged when they got home. Finally, it is a vibrant description of a lively, chaotic and contradictory city and culture. A wonderful achievement.