Devotion & Loss

A ten-hour redeye flight from Canada to Santiago, Chile serves as the backdrop for much of Marlene Faye Cheng's memoir “Devotion & Loss”.

As we all know, your mind definitely wanders on along haul flight. The author uses her rich imagination to reinvent what is being said on an in-flight pay-per-view documentaries other passengers are watching. These lucid stories are based largely on the experiences of Raven, a soldier who served in Africa and the Middle East and Tree and Oriole, who lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before immigrating to Canada.

Following the flight, the author briefly recounts her time spent in South America, return home and life after this trip, intertwining her own experiences with those of the protagonists of the stories she imagined while on her bucket list vacation.

The author's ability to meander from one story to the next is seamless and her writing style is effective. My only small criticism, if I had to make one, would be that I would have so enjoyed to hear more of the author's own story. The glimpses into her character revealed a self-depracating but entirely relatable person with a wry sense of humour that made me cackle at times. Her inner dialogue about her seat mate on the plane was a wonderful example of this.

Overall, I think this was very well done and I really enjoyed it!