This is 85-year-old Edna O’Brien’s first novel in 10 years, and in interviews, she has said that she found it difficult to write. One could argue that the violent history behind the novel added to her difficulty. For as she explains in a brief preface, the chairs of the title refer to the siege of Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia: The 11,541 red chairs were part of an art installation set up there in 2012 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the siege. Each empty chair stood for one Sarajevan killed, with red representing the blood that was shed.
O’Brien’s story features Fidelma, an Irish woman who falls in love with a notorious war criminal. But she doesn’t know who he really is until he’s ruined her life. He comes as a stranger into the small, claustrophobic Irish town of Cloonoila. The villagers are impressed with the depth and breadth of his knowledge, especially of plants and their health benefits; he’s also steeped in Celtic folklore and symbolism from the pre-Christian era. Women, especially, are attracted to him and don’t seem to realize that there is something sinister about him. Readers, however, are aware because O’Brien deftly adds dramatic irony as she drops hints about his identity.
O’Brien adds resonance to her main story by including the voices of Cloonoila’s townspeople, who act like a Greek chorus, offering different perspectives on tragedies they’ve encountered—mostly in Eastern Europe. The historical basis for the novel, which is revealed gradually as the plot unfolds, concerns the war in the former Yugoslavia and the ethnic cleansing to rid Serbia of Muslims and Croats. O’Brien uses this as the backdrop for a story of love and betrayal set in a contemporary Ireland with a strong Roman Catholic influence.
Lasting from 1992 until 1996, the siege of Sarajevo was especially brutal. It left thousands, mostly Muslims and Croats, dead. Civilians were detained, brutalized, and murdered. Men, women, and children were herded into trucks, slaughtered, and tossed onto the street, where (as one of the characters describes it) army trucks ran over the bodies of the dead and nearly dead. The lucky ones were taken to camps.
At the end of the Bosnian war, the perpetrators were indicted for war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. One of the perpetrators, Radovan Karadzic, escaped and wasn’t found until 2008. (This past March, he was found guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.) Here, a fictionalized Karadzic is the fulcrum on which O’Brien rests her story. Called Dr. Vlad Dragan, he is a poet, holistic healer, and sex therapist—and in a none-too-subtle dig at the Catholic church, O’Brien creates a bishop who objects to the notion of a sex therapist while having nothing to say about Dragan’s war-criminal past.
Vlad’s story is told primarily through the perspective of Fidelma, the town beauty and the woman with whom he has an affair. Divided into three parts, The Little Red Chairs first brings Vlad and Fidelma together; Vlad is arrested; then his enemies torture Fidelma and reveal Vlad’s identity as the Butcher of Bosnia. In the most compelling segment, Vlad is put on trial for initiating the siege, as commander of Bosnian Serb forces, and held responsible for the deaths of more than 7,500 Muslims. Vlad shows no remorse, justifying his actions as the nature of war. Meeting with Vlad after his trial, and hearing about his war crimes, Fidelma ponders the character of a man who could commit such evil acts and live with himself—yet she still finds him attractive. Now she must choose between her infatuation with the man and the reality of the evil he embodies.
If Vlad had been any other thug, O’Brien’s story might have been easier to write and more satisfying to read. But the savage history behind The Little Red Chairs makes the fiction seem almost insignificant. If any novel brings to mind the adage that truth is stranger than fiction, it is this one.
Diane Scharper teaches English at Towson University.
