Published in 2011, Suzuma’s novel ‘Forbidden’ is definitely not one that you want to go into without knowing a little of the subject matter. As with many of Suzuma’s stories, love and family are at the heart of it…in this case, they form an uncomfortable alliance.
‘Forbidden’ takes a controversial subject, the incestuous relationship between seventeen year-old Lachan and his younger sister, Maya, and urges us to explore our feelings and responses to this taboo. Suzuma writes about the topic sensitively, and alternating the viewpoints of our two main characters means that we can clearly see just how each of them responds to their feelings and what they think they should do about them.
As with other stories by Suzuma, dysfunctional family relationships are a recurring theme. In this story, we are surrounded by them! Lachan and Maya are, essentially, teenage parents to their younger siblings as they cover for their alcoholic mother when she abandons them. Their closeness seems to make sense as they have, for years, depended on each other. When they finally make the decision to cross that line of social acceptability, we are asked to question whether what they are doing is really that wrong.
The angst felt by both characters stops this feeling like a doomed love story cliché. Unfortunately, Maya was a character that I often found irritating. Sometimes she seemed very naive, yet she also seems to be the one pushing for more and I felt that her reactions at key moments were not wholly credible. I also found it hard to accept that this situation would ever have gone on as long as it did without some adult intervention.
The ending, when it inevitably all goes wrong, was hard to take. By the time we get to the, quite frankly, stunning final moments, we are caught up entirely in the relationship between all the siblings. What we got was not what I expected and I’m not sure I can say I enjoyed this book, but it certainly got me thinking.