"And now I wanted to explain to her that I understood how you can live, that love cannot be dosed, cannot be measured."
Graham Joyce knows how to be different, unpredictable, that's why I love him. Every time I choose his book, I don’t know how the author will surprise me, where we will go with him and what questions we will look for answers to.
Graham Joyce (22 October 1954 – 9 September 2014) was an English writer of speculative fiction and the recipient of numerous awards for both his novels and short stories. After receiving a B.Ed. from Bishop Lonsdale College in 1977 and a M.A. from the University of Leicester in 1980. Joyce worked as a youth officer for the National Association of Youth Clubs until 1988. He subsequently quit his position and moved to the Greek islands of Lesbos and Crete to write his first novel, Dreamside. After selling Dreamside to Pan Books in 1991, Joyce moved back to England to pursue a career as a full-time writer.
Together with the hero of the "Red Poppies" Dan Innes, we have to go to the East, to Thailand. The title (especially the original title “Smoking Poppy”) sets the reader in a certain mood: you can expect something in the spirit of English novels of the 19th century, when opium was in use, laudanum tinctures are mentioned in many novels of that time. And what are the censuses worth, in the very depths of which, bowing low to the noble English gentlemen, are carried by the colorful Chinese to offer a pipe and oblivion. The name of Thomas de Quincey immediately comes to mind and his famous novel, which, by the way, is mentioned by Joyce. And yet, behind the adventure scenery of the Red Poppies, something completely different is hidden ...
Dan Innes is a simple hard worker, electrician, father of two grown-up children. In family life, he has a discord, for pleasure - a quiz in a pub every week. And then suddenly terrible news: his daughter Charlie, an Oxford graduate, has been arrested and is in a Thai prison on charges of drug smuggling. She faces twenty years to capital punishment. And Dan, accompanied by a friend and son, goes to Chiang Mai to rescue his daughter, not yet knowing what surprises and surprises he will face there ...
Indeed, everything indicates that we are in for an action-packed novel full of exotic adventures. However, it is not. Well, or not exactly. First of all, “Red Poppies” is a story about what it means to be a father, about the relationship between fathers and children, about responsibility, about parental love, about sacrifice and about mistakes.
You start reading - and there appears a still indistinct and vague, but persistent feeling of some kind of strangeness, almost irrationality. And most importantly, this feeling cannot be captured, not tied to something specific, because the text seems quite mundane and tangible. Nevertheless, this vague veil becomes more and more intrusive with each chapter. Dan flies to save his daughter not alone: his son, Phil, has long moved away from his father, their worlds simply cannot touch, let alone intersect. Phil is deeply religious, closed in his world of biblical vague sayings and allegories, not parting with a pocket Bible, almost an ascetic, in many ways a redneck who makes tea for himself and his father from one tea bag. On the other hand, Dan's best friend is Mick. That's who the shirt guy is, the funny, chatty fruit vendor Dan has been meeting every week at a quiz show for several years now, only to Dan he's always been nothing more than an "acquaintance". And this same Mick, as soon as he learns about the tragedy, does not hesitate for a minute: he also flies to the rescue of Charlie, taking with him all his savings.
It is no coincidence that Graham Joyce chooses a first-person narrative, so he manages to reveal the character of his main protagonist without revealing the cards of other characters. Dan, throughout all the trials, toils with doubts, questions to himself and, most importantly, tries to understand what kind of father he is, where he made a mistake, why his children became what they became: a drug addict and a religious fanatic, why their relationship went wrong, when, exactly at what moment, the sweet, loving, tender little ones, reaching out their hands to their father, turned into distant alienated strangers. Dan thinks that he is going to save his daughter, but in fact he makes his personal “pilgrimage journey” in order to understand what real friendship is, real filial love, daughter’s love, because he knows everything about fatherly love, but Dan is also becoming it is clear that one cannot love more or less, especially when it comes to children, that love implies fear for them, but also acceptance of them as individuals who go their own way and make their own mistakes. And, oddly enough, this largely spiritual journey helps Dan understand himself too. It turns out that sometimes you need to go beyond your fortified walls, reconsider your views, plunge into another world in order to better understand it and its laws, and it does not matter whether it is a world of biblical quotes or a world in which poppies drooping under the weight of huge red petals drop congealing opium tears.
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