Review – The Saint of Bright Doors

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

It seems almost pointless for me to review a book so original, so outside of the norms I know, as this. The awards are numerous, major, and utterly deserved. People are speaking of The Saint of Bright Doors in superlatives and wonder, and having just finished my first read (of which I think there will be many more), I can only agree with what everyone else is saying. And who even cares about my opinion, anyway? But having finished the book, I feel I have to write about it. There are thoughts banging around, and I need to get them out.

There are books that are good because they are fun, or interesting, or thought provoking. People like what they like. Books that are great, though, tend to have more than that—undercurrents that hint at unseen depths, at leviathans swimming in seas of culture and history.

The reason that a children’s book like The Hobbit has gone on to become an enduring classic of Western Literature is that Tolkien rooted it in a thousand years of hero’s journeys and Anglo Saxon sagas. Gene Wolfe’s books are layered with allusions and histories of Greece and Rome, religions pagan and Catholic, pushing them beyond mere adventure and space opera. Le Guin wove stories of wizards and dragons from primordial myths and basic human truths.

Vajra Chandrasekera has written a Great book; done something that echoes those feats, with a weft of modern post-colonial literature and woof of lit-in-the-age-of-Covid, but the roots and undercurrents seem deep and… Unknown to me. This, I think, is what makes this book in particular, right now, so worth rereading and excavating. For me, anyway. This book breathes the air of an unknown land even as it echoes more familiar Kafka-esque paranoia and surreality, and that air is still fresh to me. I feel that I recognize some of the pieces Chandrasekera used in assembling this mosaic, but some are still in colors I cannot name.

I want to learn those names. I want to know if the “invisiblelaws and powers” are his, or if they belong to a history and tradition I am simply ignorant of. This book is a signpost toward a place I have never been, and I think I want to follow it.