Tamil Tigress by Niromi de Soyza

Tamil Tigress was published in 2011 and ever since I heard of it, I wanted to read it. Who wouldn't? The story of a female child soldier who joined the LTTE and fought in the civil conflict - it sounded a best seller even in the abstract. But for a long time, I was ambivalent on getting the book, finally, I managed to get my grubby hands on a copy and read it over three days.
It taught me a good lesson. When you sometimes hear of something over and over again, especially with regard to books and movies, you might either be put off or have really high expectations that are never fulfilled. It was the former for me, regarding this book. I was put off for many reasons: that she chose a Sinhala name to write the book, when she was clearly Tamil, I was put off by all the comments I heard from friends who read it, who said she trivialized the issue, it was not accurate, etc etc.
But now, here I am, one of those who read it and I am so glad I did. First the debate on the name. Apparently, she adopted the pseudonym in honour of Richard de Soyza. But I still can't think why she chose a Sinhala name. There are so many other Tamil's she could have honoured, if she didn't want to write under her own name. But pseudonyms for no reason are not new at all, even in Sri Lanka (refer Ashok Ferrey) and so I could not hold that against her for too long.
In reading the book, I forgot all the charges. I was totally into it from beginning to end.
The story, is of a young Tamil girl, who moves  from Kandy to Jaffna after the riots of 1977. Not many people know or remember that before 1983 there were other riots against the Tamils. Her father leaves her with her grandmother and goes to the Middle East to work, some months later, her mother and younger sister join her. In Jaffna, she witnesses the burning of the library in 1981, and then came the riots of 1983. The young girl, enamoured by the Tigers, romanticizes the notion of freedom fighters. She speaks of seeing young boys casually toting guns around the town, spoken off in hushed whispers with tinges of admiration and the young girl is hooked. It was a time when the Tigers were in charge unofficially. The Tigers would regularly speak to children in school and Niromi heard them speak. I am not sure if that had an impact or not but quite early on she wants to join the Tigers and together with her childhood school friend, off she goes.
At that time, the Tigers were not keen on having female cadres, and not keen on enlisting under age children. A far cry from what they became. But Niromi, speaks of a period, when the Tigers were still forming as the dominant group. There is an air of innocence, of hope in a strange way, of wanting things to be different and trying to find ways, albeit all the wrong ones, of righting wrongs.
Her book focuses on the time of the IPKF mainly and ends in 1988. It is important to remember that time frame, because her experience of the Tigers were completely different to what they later became.
Regardless if her facts are true or fabricated. Regardless if Tamils swear or don't swear accurately, if they had boyfriends or not, to me the story rang true. Her descriptions of the training, of jungle life, guerilla skirmishes and day to day life, reveal a side that we in the south had just no idea what was happening.
In segregated Sri Lanka today, we have no idea how the youth of other communities really live. We think we know, but we don't. And through the ethnic conflict, the complete separation of communities of North and South, made us have images and views of the other, that became embedded in stone.
To me, it was refreshing to read a book where boys and girls are interested in each other, have fun, even amidst the struggle for the rights of their people. Prabhakaran, Mahatthaya, Kittu, and Thileepan, familiar, even fearsome names, became human. Her distant love interest Roshan, seemed very real, even the emotions she captured are real in a Sri Lankan context, where the sexes are distant from each other.
The way she leaves the Tigers, shows that it was a time, when free will did play a part to some extent. There were many who resigned and many who were asked to leave, and also many executions and eliminations to those they perceived as not having behaved properly and who were traitors. 
Niromi, left the Tigers, finished her education in India and managed to emigrate to Australia, where she still lives. She has become a prominent literary figure, doing the circuits and speaking of her experience.
It is a good book, well written, and worth a read. If I have one criticism, it is that Niromi does not talk much about Tiger ideology. It is more a recounting of an experience than a philosophical reflection of the Tigers. It makes me wonder, if like in the army, there would have been recruits in the early days among the Tigers, who were all fired up to fight on behalf of their ethnic group but with very little understanding of what it entails.

Cry for Me a Little: Stories of the Souls by Mariam Riza.

 Its been a long time since I wrote in this blog and its not for lack of reading material, its just that I took a long break from Sri Lankan books. The Gratiaen Prize was last month and Madhubashini Ratnayake won this year but we will have to wait for at most a year until the book is published so that we can see if it is worthy or not a la Shehan Karunatilleke, Vivimarie, Ruwanthie de Chickera etc. But I have in my hands a Gratiaen shortlist from this year. At the shortlist reading at the British Council, the reader of Mariam Riza's work was so amazing that he made it a strong contender for the prize, yet now having read the whole book, I realize he could have read any of the other candidates and made them equally strong.
Mariam Riza has a lot to say and she says it bluntly. No censoring of language or situations, she addresses a multitude of situations - conflict, trafficking, drug testing on animals, and poaching are just a few. The book also traverses the globe - stories on Rwanda, South Africa, and Saudi Arabia and of course Sri Lanka are some of the countries. So it presents itself as being a sophisticated collection for the world reader.
Written in a style that is typically Sri Lankan (sloppy writing, bad grammar, wierd punctuation and capitalization) she addresses topics that are usually shunned in Sri Lankan books in a manner that is in your face. It is a style that might have worked had the author paid a little attention to details that make a book well written and above average. Having said that, I have to imagine that the Gratiaen shortlisted the book more on content and subject matter than writing style.
Most of the stories start well but then end up going nowhere or in a direction I personally did not want them to go to. The story read at the Gratiaen shortlist was titled The Smell of Roses. The direct and blunt rantings of a male gigolo peters out to become a love struck teenage like obsession that has no bite. A story titled Wrongful Imprisonment which flirts with the theme of prisoners in Guantanomo is so weakly written that you wonder what kind of President of a country has such a nincompoop working for him. After reading several stories that dealt with serious themes but failed to deliver, I began to wonder why the author would write about these topics if she didn't make the effort to ensure that the reader was moved not only by the subject matter but also by the writing.
The stories are undeniably powerful and deal with themes that are current, political, social and humanitarian but for me, the experience of reading it was frustrating with the turns and twists that some stories took that rendered them inane, and bad; and unrealistic dialogue that was featured in other stories that made them unbelievable and soppy. To cap it all off the cover, perhaps to reflect the depressing title was shaded grey depicting something I could not quite decipher so I could not even take a break from the writing to gaze at the cover and get inspired.
Mariam Riza has talent but she needs to hone it. As it is a first book a lot can be forgiven but I shall look forward to her second book and hope that it will be a lot better.

A Calf in Milk and Milk Chocolate by Jagath Kumarasinghe

First let me wish all of you a Happy New Year. Let's hope that 2010 will hold a bright future not only for us but for the country as well.

Sometimes, I wish that I hadn't restricted this blog to only Sri Lankan books. For instance I read Michelle de Kretser's book The Lost Dog, towards the end of last year (she is coming to the Galle Literary Festival this year, I hear). I couldn't understand head or tail why reviewers thought it was such a great book. For me, it was boring, obscure and totally self-indulgent. But as she is not a Sri Lankan author, I can't review her book and must content myself with these few snide remarks!

So off I went to read a truly Sri Lankan author and happily my mother had bought Gratiaen winner Jagatha Kumarasinghe's latest book, A Calf in Milk and Milk Chocolate - isn't that a great title? Even if you never read the book, the title will make you lick your lips. So I took it off to my holiday destination to read in peace and tranquillity. What a mistake!

Jagath is a truly unintelligible writer, for me at least, and all things being relative, I could be very wrong. The stories claim to be advertisements in spiritual realism. Unfortunately, it sounds that if you want to be spiritual you have to be incomprehensible as well. The ten stories are liberally sprinkled with Bible quotes and sound as if they are going to be portentous. Instead they seem to ramble on and on using fairly bizarre language that makes the reader exhausted in a few minutes.

I generally hate reviews that copy chunks out of books, but just in case you haven't read the book this will give you an idea of what I am talking about. For instance, what do you make of the following passage -

"I myself am erected. Even men get themselves erected and that would lead them to beget and I myself am erected on this sprawling grounds, which is quite hilly. Yeah four things say not it is enough; The grave: and the barren womb; The earth that is not filed (sic) with water And the fire that saith Not, it is enough ...The sprawling grounds on which I am erected has many a grave, and on this ground I witness the nature of a barren womb and the nature of fire which is kindling within my belly that never satisfies. The Sinhalese use a nice word for hunger - Badagini - it denotes about the very nature in the belly when the fire within the belly gets roaring you need food to sacrifice for the fire. And I have a chimney which is running upwards and which adds zigzagging curly smoke to the sky where heaven is. ( The Barren Womb Grounds)"

Whoa! Now that is a mouthful. And a complex and confused mouthful to me. The whole book is peppered with such passages full of spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes disguised as philosophy. It is such a perplexing read that you are not sure if the writer intends the mistakes and perhaps they are not mistakes or are they real mistakes. Who knows?

Jagath's first book Kider Chetty Street which won the Gratiaen Prize some years ago was also full of this adhoc English but at least it was sweet. But I take this opportunity to question the judges for I believe they were single-handedly responsible for all sorts of drivel to be written up as Sri Lankan English. When in fact Sri Lankan English is merely English that is written reflecting the way it is spoken and written in Sri Lanka. Jagath is by no stretch of imagination our local James Joyce if that was the implication of the judges.

This latest book of his is neither sweet nor accessible nor does it make sense to me. But who knows perhaps it is a gem for other readers.

I am sorry, I hate giving bad reviews and wished I could give it a better review. But maybe it's just me. Perhaps others will love the book. Let me know.

That Deep Silence by Punyakante Wijenaike

My grandmother says that one of her favorite books of all time is Giraya by Punyakante Wijenaike. To be honest, I am not one for these old time stories, so I haven’t read it and somehow don’t feel like reading it yet. Perhaps one day.
Wijenaike is a prolific writer. This is her sixteenth publication in her writing life. She has won many prestigious awards, among them the State Literary award; she has been a Commonwealth Prize winner and a Gratiaen Prize winner. When ones hears this about an author, there is a certain expectation that needs to be met. And it was with this expectation that I took That Deep Silence to read.
To be frank Wijenaike is not my kind of author. Her themes can be seen as hack and overdone to the hilt. But when reading this book, I felt it was seeped in sadness, nostalgia and mourning and it is that which I will talk about. There is pathos in Wijenaike’s writing. It is a remembrance of times past – when all was good and well. However, instead of Wijenaike conveying that by retelling the stories of the good old days, she dwells on the horror stories of today. It is her focusing on the negative of modern life that forces you to realize that the past was glorious. Perhaps that is her technique. For instance, there is very little to be happy about in this book. All is doom and gloom. Is this what the conflict has done to at least one literary creator? Possibly.
Most of Wijenaike’s characters are middle or lower class members of society – some of them used to belong to the landed gentry but have now been reduced to virtual poverty. There is a lack of feeling between children and parents, there is a lack of communication and camaraderie between husbands and wives, there is plenty of conflict, abandonment, abuse, and murder.
Her war stories are trite – a soldiers widow, a child soldier. They have all been done before, in much the same manner. There is nothing different or exceptional in these stories. There are stories of sexual repression, that may have been apt in another era, and a story that deals with homosexuality in an uncomfortable manner. I am not sure of it being that relevant in today’s world with that impact. The story of cancer is stereotypical. Some of the stories like Living for the Day, seem to be inspired from newspaper reports and most of her stories remind me of those you find in the papers, in the creative writing section.
Wijenaike’s poetry is more from the heart, than being well crafted. They seem to be semi ramblings again on the themes of loss, sadness, displacement, conflict, death. The poetry comes out as being a genuine concern for what is happening to the country as well as the society. And yet, in her poetry, she is able to break out of her depression and write about a butterfly, an ominous rain cloud, which is a welcome respite from the heavy atmosphere she has created.
The whole book is like one big cry for help. It is in a sense as if Wijenaike, who is more at home writing fiction like Giraya, has through her desperation on the state of the country written this straight from her heart. How good it is, depends on how the reader takes it. If it is taken in the spirit that I think it is written in – an inability to stand by and watch as the world of the writer collapses, then that’s fine. However, if the reader expects writing of an excellent quality and is thus disappointed and unable to see the message of the writer, then more’s the pity.
Wijenaike’s nicest story is No grass for my feet. An account of growing up in the 1930s and onwards. Perhaps it is based on her life. If that is so, I hope her next book is her autobiography. It will be a book worth reading but I hope she can drop her ‘all is misery’ style and write the account as it is – sadness, happiness, hope and despair. After all a life is not just one emotion, it has its fair share of all. What we must remember is that after sadness, joy does come. I hope Wijenaike remembers that too.

Uprooted by Martin Wickremesinghe

Translated by Lakshmi de Silva and Ranga Wickramasinghe.

I didn’t know this book existed until I read that the Hi book club was featuring the book. So of course though I wouldn’t be caught dead at the book club, I trotted off to get the book. So my first complaint is that it should have had much more publicity than it got. My second complaint is what’s with the cover? Its godawful! Certainly not one to encourage a reader to pick up. Boring covers will turn off readers. So I wish they had taken the trouble to give me a nice bright cover.
Having studied in English, and my Sinhala being shaky and all, I had not read any of Martin Wick’s work. while I was growing up. It was only recently that I read Madol Duwa, in translation. I had heard about Martin Wicks, and they seem to make a big deal of him and all that, and the literati think that he is the greatest of any of our writers, so I was keen to read him. Therefore, a thank you is in order for those who made it possible for me to read this. And a message that I would like to see more translations of our Sinhala and Tamil writers out there.
Now onto the book. Firstly the translation cannot be faulted. It was wonderful to read such a beautifully translated book. I remember the awful translation of Madol Duwa, that ruined a good book for me. Translation is an art and the combination of Lakshmi de Silva and Ranga Wickramasinghe (a relative of the authors?) gave the novel an authentic feel. They obviously know their subject and author well and that is the key to good translations.
I really liked this novel. Is it a different story? Is it told in a unique manner? No and not quite are the answers. It is a sweet story, nicely told. But to me not gripping. Perhaps I am jaded by my twentyfirst century outlook. So I tried to put myself in the place of a reader of 1944. My grandmother was ten years old, my grandfather was twenty years old. Perhaps he would have read the book, but honestly my ten year old grandmother should have managed the book as well. It is simply written, the language is not innovative or beautiful, but it was written well. Was this a startling story of the time? Not really, I should think. If it was startling at all, I suppose it was the fact that children, young people and adults of that time were reading stories of Western heroes and heroines and here at last was a story for the Sinhala people. But wait a minute, this was written in Sinhala, so it was a different audience that Martin Wicks was writing for. He was writing for the Sinhala reading man and woman and child. This is a story that I feel they could have very well lived. A traditional family living through changing times, fallen fortunes, upwardly mobile young men and impoverished genteel women looking for security through marriage.
In the introduction, I am told that the novel is an imported art form. So perhaps that is why Martin Wick’s is so lauded, it is because he introduced to the Sinhala reader a mode of reading and therefore thinking through the form of written story telling.
For me some of the behaviour of the characters were not in keeping with their character, for instance, I was not sure why Nanda’s mother, who initially was so vehemently opposed to Piyal marrying Nanda would even encourage her second marriage to him. In my experience of the older generation, they are loathe to forgive and change and would carry grievances and tradition to the nth degree. Was Martin Wick’s like modern Hindi films trying to show the Sinhala society how they should behave, as opposed to how they actually behave. Who knows?
Today, when Sri Lankan literature especially in English is having a period of revival, it would have been lovely to have had the opportunity to meet Mr Martin Wicks, have him featured at the GLF, but alas! I believe he is no more.
While I was reading the book, I couldn’t help but make comparisons. Martin Wick’s published this book in 1944, Ulysess by James Joyce in 1922;The Great Gatsby by Fitzgerald in 1925; Gone with the Wind by Margeret Mitchell in 1936; 1984 by George Orwell in 1949; Lolita was published in 1955. My critics (and there are so many, as we discovered when I reviewed Colombo Streets) may say these writers wrote in English, they had an advantage. So let’s take a look at some non-English writers of the same period and what they were writing. Maxim Gorky had already died by 1936, as had Lorca who was assassinated in August 1936 by Franco’s nationalists. Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali in 1913; Herman Hesse published Sidhdhartha in 1922. In 1928 Ting Ling had published Miss Sophie’s diary about the sexual fantasies of a Chinese woman infatuated with a young man; In 1929, Rilke published Letter to a Young Poet; Astrid Lingren wrote Pippi Longstocking in 1945, Solzhenitsyn published One day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. I have heard of every single one of these writers and read their writing (with the exception of Ting Ling, but was intrigued when I read about her and her writing, so had to include it, to strengthen my case). So what is the point you may ask?
While I liked Martin Wick’s Uprooted a lot. I don’t think it comes close in quality of writing or subject matter to any of the works I have cited above. If these writers many of them Martin Wick’s contemporaries were writing such edgy, thought provoking, socially relevant commentaries, how is it that Uprooted in my opinion doesn’t compare.
This is just my opinion, I am sure that many out there, will jump to the defense of Martin Wick’s and quite justifiably so. But we have to be realistic. We are a small country that is yet to produce a world standard of anything from anyone who has lived in this country. I had to add the disclaimer or else I would be inundated by examples of Sri Lankan born writers living out of the country. That doesn’t cut it for me. Martin Wick’s is a good writer but is he a great writer? Is he Sri Lanka’s greatest writer from the twentieth century? If yes, then I am disappointed. But to end on a good note. I await the translations of the second and third books of the trilogy with eagerness. Truly, I can’t wait to read them.

Colombo Streets by Thisuri Wanniarachchi

A recent trend in Sri Lanka is to start writing books at a young age. A few years ago, a fourteen year old boy wrote a thriller. It was well written if somewhat gruesome and disconcerting from one so young. The latest book in this trend is from a fifteen year old school girl. Colombo Streets, has a catchy title and a distinctive cover. The production of the book is good and inviting to the casual reader. And after seeing the launch in the newspaper I was intrigued and picked the book up. But I was soon to decide that if there is any reason to ban children from writing books, this is it.
After having read the book, and expressed my displeasure to my friends, I honestly had no intention of reviewing the book, as I thought this blog had dealt too much with bad writing and was looking around for a good book of Sri Lankan literature. But after reading the interview that Thisuri Wanniarachchi gave to the Nation newspaper, I felt that I had to write a review on both her interview and her book.
First the interview: She claims that she doesn’t like to read much and she hates reading. She implies that reading is a waste of her time and she may as well spend that time writing. Here is a piece of advice: You can’t be a good writer, unless you are a good reader. She has the audacity to admit that she has a weak vocabulary because she doesn’t read much and that people have called her writing style ‘simple’. She is under a misconception. Her writing style is not simple, it is simply bad.
Her interview goes on to say much more that is silly and trite and I wont dwell much more on that. Now onto the book.
The gist of the book is as follows: A young Tamil girl from Kilinochchi is adopted at the age of ten by a Sinhala grandmother who lives in Colombo. Favoured by the grandmother, cheekily called J- Lo, her Sinhalese adopted sister Sarah feels jealous of Indeevari. Sarah, a champion swimmer begins to feel ill and to everyone’s shock and disappointment she is diagnosed with cancer. She moves to Singapore for treatment and after some time she is sent back to Sri Lanka with no hope for recovery. Eventually, after being introduced to a charismatic Buddhist priest she is healed.
It should have been a feel good book but it wasn’t. Why was this?
According to Thisuri’s interview the ultimate message of the book apparently is to leave people with cancer a message of hope. But there were so many other messages found in the book that reduced her primary message. For instance, there were many complicated situations that needed to be handled delicately – the issue of displacement, cancer, ethnic conflict, generation gap, adoption etc. The book seemed to breeze through not tackling any issue with the sensitivity and delicacy that was warranted. In fact, the book almost trivialized all the issues it dealt with.
Unevenly handled, the book glosses over Indeevari’s situation of displacement, conflict, and adoption. The book also handled the subject of cancer carelessly, which is a disservice to those stricken with cancer and who know first hand what it is to go through a serious illness.
I would like to end on a positive note, therefore I would say that Thisuri’s use of language was modern and young and reflective of the age of the narrator.
A word of advice to indulgent parents: Encourage your children to read first, buy them books, rather than publish their book. They will thank you for it, when they are ready to write their novel as adults.

Stable Horses by Vihanga Perera

According to C.S. Kaushalyan, the protagonist in the novel Stable Horses, the Salalihini Sandeshaya nor the Hansa Sandeshaya are epic poems. Consider his statement in Vihanga Perera’s new Gratiaen shortlisted novel: “To say the least, none of the Lankan writers had ever – ever - versed in epic formats.” But perhaps he didn’t know of our epic poems existence and for that he could be forgiven in making such a broad statement. But I do hope that statement is not a reflection of Vihanga Perera’s personal opinion.
Just weeks after the Gratiaen Prize shortlist, I picked up a copy of the book.
The very first sentence, the very first paragraph was unfortunately replete with akwardness, missing articles, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes that are so numerous, they cannot be listed. The sentence construction of the whole novel was also clumsy and graceless but that could be a particular style and I could get used to it, if it was consistent. Think Animal’s People by Indra Sinha or Londonstani by Gautam Malkani. The point was that it wasn’t. Even though the blurb at the back says: “It is the story of his entering a literary competition. With the necessity of winning. With the urge to rhyme it to the top.” The novel itself other than for the introduction is nothing about the literary competition but rather about the complexities of life and growing up.
Perhaps Vihanga Perera is writing for an uber intelligent reader. And that I confess, I am not. For us average readers, this book was confusing in the chapter arrangement, confusing in the presentation of ideas, confusing in the use of language, confusing in the theme. I admit that it was a tough read for me. The book begins with informing the reader the book is to be submitted to the prestigious GoldenFoot prize. Everybody and their grandmother knows that this is a reference to the Gratiaen Prize. Ok, so the judges may have had a little giggle at that ‘clever’ reference. Then the ‘novel’ but it really is a series of interconnected short stories, with pompous and vague titles, stumbles through a series of themes: A young man working unhappily in an advertising agency, arranges to meet a young woman later that day. We are then taken into a chapter that delves on an attempt at writing poetry or song, I am not sure which. To tell you the truth it is not that good. But perhaps that is point the author is trying to depict. Then there is a little aside about saving drowning ants in the loo, a little pseudo- philosophizing and then we are moved abruptly onto a lover’s parting. Perhaps one of the better chapters. After that a school teachers funeral, a rambling on the last year of school, and then onto another good chapter on rejection at love again. Then more bad trite chapters and a good chapter. It goes on and on.
Oh dear! I am rather upset. Here I am, an amateur reviewer who has not read the winning submission at the Gratiaen and is reviewing now the second Gratiaen shortlist and its not going well either, I am beginning to wonder if something is wrong with me! Perhaps I cannot appreciate good writing by our good Sri Lankan authors. It must be me because the alternative thought that the Gratiaen judges could be wrong, is too disturbing.
What really bugs me about this book, is that the author spent a few weekends in his newspaper column complaining about the difference between Sri Lankan English and Standard English and then I find that this book is nothing but Sri Lankan English and written badly at that!
Don’t get me wrong Vihanga Perera has potential. His writing has moments of being funny, clever, witty, etc but to get there you have to wade through numerous hours of pure rubbish. So in the end, I don’t think its worth it at all. At this rate, I have to take back my previous review on the Gratiaen shortlist and say that Anthea was much better! Trite, but much better.

The Mango Tree by Anthea Senaratna

When the Gratiaen shortlist was announced and I noticed this book among the six, I went out and bought it. Dressed with a nice attractive cover which is also quirky, Anthea Seneratna presents the reader with 16 stories in 121 pages. I read the book in one evening as it is a very easy read. I found some of the titles of the stories rather intriguing: Two Pieces of Chicken; Wednesdays and Weekends; Shut –ins; Rainburst etc.
Let me digress for a moment to set the stage before I comment on the book per se. Imagine yourself driving down Arnold Coomaraswamy Mawatha on the weekends, looking at the paintings hung all along the park boundary. Imagine yourself evaluating the paintings. While there are some extremely talented artists to be discovered here, most of them are pleasant, entertaining, nicely done but absolutely ordinary. They have talent but it is like a drawing room talent – certainly not art gallery talent.
When a book is shortlisted for the Gratiaen, you expect it to be art gallery talent not drawing room talent. Unfortunately, The Mango Tree while sweet and nice and pleasant and nicely written with good English and no grammatical errors, is eventually a mediocre book. It is definitely drawing room talent.
Now onto the stories:
It’s amazing how many middle class writers are obsessed about the poor, the underprivileged, the seamy side of life. A life that they know nothing of, can hope to know nothing of and they certainly would not want to know anything of and it shows in their writing. I call it the guilty middle class woman syndrome. So they will write about poor illtreated housewives, they write about soldiers injured in the war and unable to fit into ‘normal’ life. They write about unhappy women, unhappy situations far removed from their own experience.
For a book to grip you, to hold you spellbound, there has to be an element of truth and reality in it. Good writers, and I am not talking about great writers, but merely good writers have that ability of taking you through the most mundane of situations but holding you spellbound. When Arthur Golden wrote Memoirs of a Geisha, I am sure most readers completely forgot the writer was not a geisha, not a woman, not a Japanese. In Sri Lanka we have a few writers who can do this, but not many. Among the younger writer’s however, I can see a different breed who write about what they know, in their own style, and that makes all the difference.
For the first time since I started this blog, I am stuck. I do not quite know how to finish this review. I am not sure if I can say any more. But I will try. For a light read, this is certainly a good book. The English is good, the grammar is correct, some stories are amusing. The ones that stand out for me are: Tuition Class, Freedom Bound. Some stories had no point or were an indulgence for the writer. Perhaps if it hadn’t been shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize I might have been kinder. But because it was, and because I expected so much more, in all fairness to those who read, I cannot. However, I hasten to add, that I am sure there will be many people who will read this book and like it. It may sell well, and I do hope so. But in the end, in my opinion the book is a self indulgent exercise that has been offered to the public as literature.