Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala

There is something about reading a book that is talked about so much. Everybody asks me, wherever I go, if I have read this book. It comes highly recommended and so it travelled to the top of my 'must read' list. I was a little frightened. Would the book make me so sad that I would get depressed and think about it all the time? Would I cry? Would I be able to finish it? etc etc.
Wave, is a book by a tsunami survivor. An expat Sri Lankan who was on holiday in Sri Lanka and was in Yala with her husband, her two young sons and her parents. They had been staying for four days in a hotel just outside the wildlife park and had even met a friend there. A young woman who lived in America and would teach Sonali's young boys the violin whenever they visited the home country together.
The book starts with the tsunami. You are taken straight to the event. That morning, when they saw the wave and began running. Running past her parents room, running, running. Getting into a jeep and finding her music friend and her father also in the jeep there. You understand, the panic at the moment, when she talks about the music friend's mother unable to clamber onto the jeep, being left behind, and the father jumping out to be with her. All seems well, there is no water in the car park, the hotel is as it should be. But soon after the jeep is in water, water in the jeep, up to the chest, then it turns over.
She next wakes up after it is all over. When she is rescued she is all alone. No husband, no children, no friend. She is found and taken to the ticket office at the entrance to the park. Then later to the hospital.
From then on, Sonali relates the events that followed and what happened to her and her life on the loss of virtually her whole family. She gives you in blinding detail her thoughts, her feelings, her suicidal wishes, her support system, her inability to cope with the loss and how some nine years later, it is still raw, still painful, still horrible. She is still alone. She writes well, and she write honestly. There is even humour in this book, and that is an amazing feat. She is a very brave woman, I thought, at times. She is so open about her feelings. She is so frank and wishes to portray it as it is, no whitewashing here.
I had feelings, when I was reading the book. But I don't want to talk about them now, I will mention them later in this review. At the end of the book, I closed it and continued to sit on the chair by the window, looking out at the street below, watching cars and people walk by and thought of Sonali and her tragedy.
But now, here is my secret, I just didn't like the book. I was moved, I was sad, I thought it the most horrible thing to happen to a person, but what did it teach me? What was left when I finished the book?
I have read any number of personal tragedy stories, all quite different from Sonali's, some to do with gang rape, others of wrongful imprisonment, of torture, of hostage, of losing family under different circumstances, of war, natural disasters etc, but I was drawn to each of those books, because the survivor (because you have to be a survivor in some sense to even write about the event) has come to some resolution. Despite all they have gone through, they have come to a point in their life, where some peace, some enlightenment, for lack of a better word has entered their soul. And then I realized, that is what has happened. When Sonali lost her family, she lost her soul. The entire book is an ode to herself. It is to some extent self-centered in a way and there is a refusal to change. She is unable to change, move forward, understand what has happened. She lives continually in that moment, unable to see anything or anyone else.
I thought about the hundreds of other women on the North or East Coast who endured first war, then the tsunami and lost many family members. I thought of those on the South Coast who were poor and then the tsunami came and took everything including family members. If they wrote their story, how would it be, what would their lives be like, their mental state etc. And yes, they didn't, so we have this story to show us, what perhaps thousands of others have gone through and are possibly going through. But, somehow, I know, that there is a different story out there, of someone who came out of it and would show me through her example, through her loss and resolution, what it is to be a greater human being. Someone who can teach me how to be a better person. How, after going through the most horrible loss, can still come out of it and show me, teach me, what is to be human. And you know what? I have discovered, that there are others out there, who also didn't like the book for the same reasons. It seems almost heartless to not like the book, but there you have it. I too have to be honest about a book I read.

The Rolled Back Beach by Neluka Silva and Simon Harris

There are some things about a ‘tsunami’ book that make you jump to conclusions. First, that it is dated, this means that if you are reading it in 2009, you know it is all about 2004 December 26th. Then you know it will be sad. Then you know that it will be written most probably by a person who wasn’t even caught in the tsunami and who will employ pathos and emotional blackmail to make you feel really bad about not being caught in the tsunami. And finally, you wonder is it worth it?
When I got The Rolled Back Beach by Simon Harris and Neluka Silva as a gift, all those thoughts went through my mind. And I am happy to report that I was proved quite wrong regarding the last conclusion. It is worth reading.
First I was jolly pleased that I got a book as a gift, it’s such a rare thing these days. My mother remembers being given books ad nauseoum when she was a child. But not any more. Today, most people give you silly clothes that don’t fit, or ugly things for your home. A book, in my opinion is the best gift of all. You can read it and then if you don’t like it you can give it to someone else!
Anyway, I am straying. So I got this book and thought it must be the first time that I saw a book of fiction that had only two authors. And then I began to read. Now here is a note of caution for writers. When there is an obvious difference in the style and standard of the writing between two authors it can be a difficult thing to review a book. Most often you would probably like some stories of both in somewhat equal proportions. But what do you do if you like one author much better than the other. Well that is what happened to me. In this collection, I liked all the stories of Simon Harris (except for Beth’s Bear,) and while Neluka Silva is not a bad writer and is quite creative, her stories kind of paled next to Simon. So let me explain why.
Simon Harris writes with a style that is restrained, pared down, and evokes much description from a few sentences. In fact in my mind typically English. And let me hasten to add that is not a bad thing. Let me illustrate, his first story has this: “It was as if all life had been sucked from the night air and replaced with an oppressive stillness that clawed at the old man’s throat as he laboured down the hill beckoning beyond the darkness, barely remembering as a boy how he had raced the same route from Sunday mass to the pebbled beach beneath the watchful gaze of a lighthouse, dormant at the far end of the fort.” Ok that is a really long sentence. But it is like a movie. You can just imagine the scene. His story Comic Relief, another example of beautiful, funny and evocative description that is still sharp, not maudlin and mushy,and in four pages describes rather accurately the bureaucratic nightmare that exists in Sri Lanka.
So, you get the picture about Simon’s writing. Now onto Neluka Silva. If I had read her stories on their own, in her own little collection I might have been charmed. She writes in a typically Sri Lankan way, using a lot of conversation, colloquialisms, charming mannerisms and very local. Perhaps her stories are too local. They remind me a bit of Elmo Jayawardene’s stories. Anyway, what the stories are about for both of them is no surprise. They deal with various aspects of the tsunami – heroisms, shame, fundraising, relief work, grief, regret, and I suspect many of the stories must be true.
So my final word is that it’s a nice book to have and I look forward to more of their writing. But here is a word of advice. Publish separately.