Customer Reviews

Burmese Lessons: A Love Story

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Reading this book was a sometimes difficult, but profound experience. Karen Connelly brings to life her experiences in Burma and Thailand, and illuminates the Burmese struggle for independence from a military regime, in this memoir/ love story.

In bits and pieces, we get the history of Burma and the revolutionary dissidents, as well as an overview of the various rebel groups, representatives, and artists/ writers who have been imprisoned and tortured by the regime for their efforts at shedding light on the brutalities occurring in their homeland. Connelly interviews several of these people throughout the course of the novel. She has an insider's view into the underground in which the dissidents move; she soon realizes, however, that she is naive as to the delicate workings and history of this world in ways she did not realize.

She meets Maung, a leader of one of the dissident groups, who has pledged his life to the cause. The two fall in love, and for the majority of the novel, the story moves back and forth from the larger scope of the Burmese struggle to the more intimate world of Karen and Maung's budding love.

The writing is diamond-like, hard and brilliant, and spares nothing. Scenes of torture and brutality are described unflinchingly; there is nothing watered down here. This is what makes it effective at what the author intended-- to bring Burma to life, to expose the effects of a military regime on ordinary people, to juxtapose a passionate, sweet love affair with the bitter realities of living in refugee jungle camps, malaria, war, and death.

The one shortcoming, for me, was that this relentless honesty carried into the very intimate relationship between Karen and Maung. I always appreciated the candor of Karen's thought process about her relationship with him, her relationship with Asia, and her life as an author-- it made her human, flaws and all. But the vivid, detailed descriptions of the sexual relationship between Karen and Maung felt to me a bit self-indulgent, as though these bits became more of a personal journal than a memoir. I'm a big fan of brutal honesty, but these scenes felt a bit voyeuristic to me, and in the end, not necessary to the overall message of the book.

That aside, it was a very worthwhile read which sheds light on a struggle that's not mentioned on the news. The author's quest is an admirable one and her writing has a lovely flow to it that makes it difficult to look away even during the most horrifying of scenes.

I am a big fan of Connelly's "Touch the Dragon" (or, by its other title, "Dream of a Thousand Lives") and so I was happy to see she'd written another memoir. This book is deeply, intimately personal, and at times I admit I squirmed during the descriptions of Connelly's sexual relationship with her Burmese lover. However, I think by telling her story in such a close, subjective way she has given us (the readers) a visceral experience of what it's like to be a person caught up in political and personal currents that are overwhelming and dangerous. I learned a lot about Burma and its brutally sad recent history--I would have loved the book if it had been "just" a political account of the Burmese resistance fighters because Connelly is such a vivid, gripping writer--and, more surprisingly, I learned a lot about what it means to be a privileged Westerner whose relationship to the rest of the world is always complicated and fraught with shame, fascination, and envy. (Just before I read "Burmese Lessons" I finished "The Places In Between" by Rory Stewart; it's similar to Connelly's book in that it details a Westerner's immersion in a troubled Asian country--Afghanistan, in Stewart's case; I liked Stewart's memoir very much, but he never explored his interior life and its reaction to the turbulent world around him. I hate to stereotype, but it was a very male account in its focus on movement and historical details. He did bond with a wonderful dog on his journey; it's the one thing that elevates his story into something touching and human. Connelly's book is not stereotypically female [I'm getting in trouble here!]; it's androgynous in that it embraces the internal and external world with gusto and humor and poignant sadness). I write too much. I loved this book. I look forward to more from Karen Connelly!

I was ready to give up on this book. I found the author full of herself. We learn how difficult it is for her to be taken seriously because of her youth and beauty. She tells us of how she is envied by others because of her freedom, artistic nature and adorable house in Greece. She notes how Burmese will be the sixth language she will learn. Etc.

Additionally, she takes herself and her work very seriously. She fights injustice. She will write a book about Burma.

Once the love story kicks in, however, I did find the story engrossing. (Unlike other reviewers, I thought the descriptions of sex were a key component to filling us in on the nature of the relationship.) Perhaps inadvertently, Connelly portrays the difficulties, if not the impossibility, of bridging two cultures. Some of her issues with her dissident boyfriend seem to be universal (does he love me or my body? why can't he leave work for once and come home for dinner?). Yet her idealism does not blind her to the impossibility of truly sharing her life with a jungle fighter.

I must agree with Marla [character in the book] that Connelly had no business risking the safety of the Burmese she encountered to share what she does here about the Burmese situation. But she does tell a story of women loving and living with men fighting for a cause, and that is worth reading.

Connelly's experience, and her telling of it, is courageous, eloquent, wise, honest, and powerful. To be so externally focused and at the same time so personally engaged is a challenging balance to strike, but Connelly does so with easy authority, in language that is original, poetic, true. A generous, rigorous, rich outing. Brava.

This book had great educational value for me. I felt as though I went on the journey with the author, saw what she saw, felt what she felt. The story is touching in that the passion of Burmese people for democracy is so strong, their suffering so great. I was left with many questions. The book takes place in 1996, so why did it take 14 years to write? Is this the book the author promised her sources in 1996, when she said she would write their story? Its value is not lost to us who know little, but for those hoping she would make a difference in their lives, the disappointment can't be small. The author acknowledges that she came in touch with her own selfishness, and that honesty is seen throughout the book. Not flattering, but lessons learned don't always come easily. I agree with other reviewers that the sexual activity is too prominent; sometimes honesty has a limit! Finally, I feel for the man she left behind. Was he using her, she using him, or a combination of the two? Or is that just what love looks like up close?

Burmese Lessons: A true love story

Flawed by its addiction to a fictional image of life in contemporary Myanmar, Connelly's work is plausible as a "true love story." Here is a rich and rare glimpse into the lives of the anti-government dissidents who continue their disastrous insurgency along the Thai-Myanmar border many years later.

The irony is that the gifted author reveals her naiveté as a young adventurer by focusing upon the suffering of the victims while glorifying perpetrators of this political conflict.

A compelling read, especially for female lovers of a romance story, beware that the foundation of this one is powerful misleading propaganda created by sophisticated public relations firms funded by wealthy Burmese exiles. The picture painted of life for citizens of today's Myanmar is absurdly false. I was offended by the dishonesty of concealing that a few days visit to Yangon and Bagan more than 15 years ago was the sole basis for the detailed presentation of apparent contemporary life in Myanmar.

Equally distressing was her Epilogue claim that the military government initially refused international assistance in dealing with the aftermath of cyclone Nargis. The fact is that aid from neighbors was welcomed within hours of the storm's conclusion. I was there. I saw it.

The dispute Connelly alludes to was with the U.S. when the Bush administration linked its aid to allowing its military inside the country to deliver it. This came at the height of Bush's military aggression in Iraq, so prudence in accepting assistance was based upon the reality of the time. Ironically, once a deal was made to accept the U.S. aid without strings attached, lobbyists for the insurgency frantically pressured NGO's in Washington to suspend their aid activities, attempting to turn the natural disaster into a political weapon to destabilize the government.

But that's another chapter in the overwhelmingly successful campaign to create a fictional "reality" of life in Myanmar by those who seek political and economic power there.

Karen Connelly interweaves the emotional, political, and literary strands of her story in a pleasing and satisfying way. The love story is powerful but so is the background situation on the border between Burma and Thailand and her honesty about her reactions is compelling.

I would suggest to you that Karen Connelly is not a writer. Instead, I would put forward the argument that she is an artist who paints pictures with words. The sentences she writes exude literary color and vibrancy like thousands of Bollywood dancers all dressed in the brightest and most eye catching Saris performing their greatest routine. On more than one occasion I found tears streaming down my face when I took myself out of the narrative. I had become overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the pictures she had painted through the strokes of her words. At times I felt submerged in the environments described to the point I was almost feeling the Buddhist serenity and smelling the Burmese foods. The page truly is her canvas upon which she paints vivid imagery using the brush of her heart and the paints of her soul.
'Burmese Lessons' dissolves Ms Connelly's personal experiences and the day to day lives of the Burmese people, who live under a military dictatorship, into a memoir. Like the proverbial tea and sugar they start out as separate entities but one is added to the other and the stirring of a relationship takes place that has Ms Connelly drinking from the cup of love. Outside of this cup the Burmese table, on which the cup sits, is covered with dishes filled with oppression and injustice. Intimately linked to the Burmese culture Ms Connelly puts her safety on the line so we too can sample the foods that cover this table, digest the sociopolitical situation and taste for ourselves the life changing events of which she partook in the mid 1990s.
Reading this book was the literary equivalent of making love one last time to your soul mate in a four poster bed, on a balmy night, on top of the finest satin sheets and never wanting that night to end. It was bittersweet...full to the brim of joy and love yet overflowing with hurt and pain. So wonderful is the writing that the book itself is like a living, breathing entity that is full of life, love and sorrow. If you want to read a factual work that will move you and leave a lasting impression on your heart then look no further than 'Burmese Lessons'.

Every aspect of the book is interesting and Connelly tells the story perfectly for those who are politically or sociologically inclined to read this book.

I could not finish this book. I absolutely loved The Lizard Cage by this author, a devastatingly honest novel about a Burmese political prisoner. Though quite well written (with some glaring exceptions; e.g. I would have appreciated knowing when this took place. I had to look on the book's jacket to discover her trip was in 1996), this book would be better titled Burmese Lust. I'm sure I learned more about Burma/Myanmar and the atrocities of that government via the fictional Lizard Cage than I could have from this book that read like soft porn. I certainly don't object to some honest writing about sex, but this became obsessive and just too personal and graphic for my tastes. And I felt it took away from the reality of what has happened - and continues to happen - in that country.

I read half the book and I couldn't continue it for another 200 pages.