STREET MUSIC has been widely advertised as the latest installment in the long-running Poke Rafferty series. I hope for more, being an absolute expert in denial, but Timothy Hallinan wouldn’t have said it was the last if it wasn’t. Taking his statement at face value, it is safe to say that he has saved the best for last.
For those who have just arrived at the dark, sweet party that Hallinan has been organizing for the past few years, Poke Rafferty is a travel writer who came to Bangkok to write a book and stayed. He married Rose, who worked in the city’s dingy bars, and they adopted Miaow, a street orphan who blossomed under their patient guidance over the course of the series.
Given that information about Miaow’s past has oozed out in bits and pieces over time, it is only fitting that the final volume addresses her longest and most intricate mystery: how Miaow came to be tied to a bus stop bench in the middle of Bangkok by her mother in the midst of her childhood. Much of this story is told in memories of what happens outside the Rafferty home, which they are (at first) unaware of. What is happening inside is that Poke and Rose have Frank, a two-week-old son whom Rose named after Poke’s father, who was almost gone, and who has disrupted everything as only a newborn baby can.
Pock, who goes through life with a deep confidence in his own strong center, is in a state of disarray, feeling displaced by this new thing called fatherhood and completely unsure of what to do. He also feels guilty because he feels no more than he does for his young son, a sad fact that has not been lost on Rose or her former colleagues who have come to the Rafferty residence to help care for Frank, who is so restrained (though never too much) that he probably won’t learn to walk for a while. However, there are forces at work that will cause the past to collide with the present on several fronts, and this is tragic, though not without the ultimate possibility of redemption. The question of whether this will be accepted or not remains unanswered until almost the end of the book.
As I was reading the last page, it occurred to me that if it were possible to maintain some sort of mild localized amnesia, whereby I could not remember reading this book throughout the seasons, I would summon it just for the joy of experiencing it again for the first time. I’m really not joking. It’s as funny, sad, horrifying, and unforgettable as anything you’ve ever read. There are countless passages in here that will open up in two, five, or seven decades.