Three of the most searing essays from Hemon’s recent autobiographical collection are the first, middle and last. “The Lives of Others” chronicles his hate, then love relationship for his baby sister—first trying to choke her out, then protect her from all the world’s pain. “Dog Lives” is the story of the Hemon family dog, Mek. A gentle Irish Setter, pets had no place in the war torn streets of Bosnia during the 90’s, but makes his way to emigre status in Canada. And finally, in “The Aquarium,” Hemon conveys the anguish of helplessness when it comes to his child.
In all of his insights, the most common theme seems to be that we are all ill-prepared for life. The lessons it is supposed to teach are often simply the well-intentioned suppositions of the masses—religious, or otherwise—that mean nothing in the end.
His most illuminating sentence, involving the mysterious smells in his building, but really saying something else entirely, “I spent a lot of time parsing the stench, as though understanding it would make it bearable—a common intellectual fallacy.”
