Published 15th September 2022 by HQ.
From the cover of the book:
They claim they saw nothing. She knows they’re lying.1996 – Cabramatta, Sydney
‘Just let him go.’
Those are words Ky Tran will forever regret. The words she spoke when her parents called to ask if they should let her younger brother Denny out to celebrate his high school graduation with friends. That night, Denny – optimistic, guileless Denny – is brutally murdered inside a busy restaurant in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta, a refugee enclave facing violent crime, and an indifferent police force.
Returning home for the funeral, Ky learns that the police are stumped by her brother’s case. Even though several people were present at Denny’s murder, each bystander claims to have seen nothing, and they are all staying silent.
Determined to uncover the truth, Ky tracks down and questions the witnesses herself. But what she learns goes beyond what happened that fateful night. The silence has always been there, threaded through the generations, and Ky begins to expose the complex traumas weighing on those present the night Denny died. As she peels back the layers of the place that shaped her, she must confront more than the reasons her brother is dead. And once those truths have finally been spoken, how can any of them move on?
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1996: Cabramatta, Sydney. When Ky Tran's parents ask her if they should allow her younger brother Denny go out with his friends for a meal to celebrate his high school graduation, she could not have foreseen what her simple response of ‘Just let him go.’ would mean for them all. For somehow, during a quiet meal at restaurant in central Cabramatta, Denny is brutally murdered.
When Ky returns home for Denny's funeral, she is crippled by the guilt she feels about her part in putting Denny in the path of danger, but seeing her parents shell-shocked and unable to engage with the reality of this situation drives her to action. The police seem indifferent to the fact that none of the witnesses admit to having seem what happened to Denny, and assume that he was just another victim of the gang and drug problems that plague this Vietnamese enclave of Sydney.
But Ky is sure her brother was a hard-working boy who would never involve himself in anything illegal... isn't she? Determined to uncover the truth, Ky hunts down the witnesses for herself, convinced that her Vietnamese heritage will be enough to loosen tongues. What she discovers goes way beyond the events of a single night, delving deep into the silence of a community that carries the weight of loss and disaffection with the country that was supposed to be their new home.
All That's Left Unsaid is a powerful and affecting novel that explores how a shocking incident can set in motion a chain of events that exposes the rawness at the heart of a grieving refugee family, and the wider community in which they live. The story is set during the heroin epidemic that affected Cabramatta in the 1990s, which particularly hit hard upon the young members of the Vietnamese families who had settled there, and begins with the arrival home of a young Vietnamese-Australian woman to attend the funeral of her brutally murdered younger brother.
Ky is carrying with her the guilt of her believed complicity in her brother's death, and is overwhelmed by his loss, but her sorrow is soon transformed into anger by the seeming disinterest of her parents to find out who was responsible, the inability of the police to make headway by design or incompetence, and the inexplicable silence of the people who were present while her brother was beaten to death.
As Ky tracks down the principal witnesses, we hear them talk about the lives they live, the way their family life and heritage has shaped them, and their reasons for keeping what they know to themselves. It is a slow burn story that unfurls ever so gradually, and as we learn the truth about so many aspects of this troubled community, we also begin to understand the part played by the dynamics of Ky's own family, and the significance of a person from their past.
Lien's choice of characters is nothing short of genius. They cut across a range of ages, from the oldest members of the community who remember well the lives they left behind and what they went through to settle in a new country, to the very youngest who are going through the kind of upbringing that Ky and her brother experienced. Lien uses their stories beautifully to make us see the things that have changed over the years, and those which have remained the same, on an intimate level and in a wider sense. I cannot convey quite how brilliantly this works in a brief review, but I am mightily impressed with how she makes you consider every angle of their relationships, the impact of their cultural heritage, and the many contradictions that make up their identities. This is not a book that clumps people together into an amorphous mass that can be easily stereotyped, instead it lays bare their differences.
As debuts go, this is astonishingly good. It combines an unconventional murder mystery with a complex family tale, and offers sharp insight into the pressures from within and without on migrant communities. It is unflinching, bringing you up sharp with tough descriptions of trauma, heartbreak, deprivation, discrimination, and loss, which are difficult to read. But it also has golden moments that make you feel the sincere emotions that flow when the words which have been unsaid for so long are finally spoken, allowing barriers to be overcome. It is spellbinding!
All That's Left Unsaid is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to HQ for sending me a hardcover copy of this book in return for an honest review, and for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
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