I admit it is not unusual for me to select a book because it is written by a South Asian writer. Munaweera is one such, an American-Sri Lankan (who had also lived in Nigeria), before settling on Oakland, California. What Lies Between Us is her second novel; her first was Island of a Thousand Mirrors. I had read her first 2 years ago, and confess I retain very little memory of it – it failed to make much of an impression on me, but I was certainly willing to give her second novel a try too.
Both Munaweera’s novels feature protagonists who are Sinhala Buddhist girls who are from the upper-classes, and thus privileged in both class and race terms. Both end up migrating to the US. (Not unlike the author herself, really!) What Lies Between Us tells the story from childhood of Ganga – although she is not named in the novel until the very end – in fact, the author goes to great lengths to avoid naming her, such as when she first meets the man she falls in love with: a friend introduces here,
“But my name is swallowed up by the music and the voices. I feel my face flare up. He turns to look at me, says, “What is your name?” And I lean into him and whisper it as a secret, and he looks and me and nods; some recognition sparks in both of us”
p158-9
and so the novel continues to avoid naming her. It is not clear why the protagonist’s name is only revealed in the penultimate paragraph of the novel; we learn that her mother named her for the River Goddess – but that doesn’t explain why the entire novel avoids using her name.
The protagonist loses her childhood and country when her father dies, supposedly in an accident. She is in her puberty by then (having already ‘attained’), and her mother’s sister, husband, and daughter (Dharshi, the protagonist’s cousin), return to Sri Lanka from the USA to bring their bereaved relatives back to the US to start a new life. The protagonist tells the usual cliché stories of feeling she does not fit in with the other white schoolgirls, of not knowing basics like shaving her legs, of having English that is too British, or wearing non-hip clothes because her folks expect her to dress modestly. Dharshi, being the American-born, 2nd generation migrant child, leads the way and teaches the protagonist the American way of doing things, and for awhile, the two cousins are close friends, and even explore their sexuality together. None of this is dull, but none of it is original either.
The author may want to consider expanding her vocabulary – some of her word choices are not always appropriate and too repetitive. For example, she seems overly attached to the word ‘smashing’ – which is used in a whole host of places, and does not always seem the best choice of term. It is understandable to use the word when recounting the legend of the mother who was forced by a cruel Kandyan king to “smash the heads of her children” (p8) in a mortar and pestle, but the same word is also used to vegetation, weather, food: “smashed leaves” (p42)“, “Rain smashes down” (p130), we sink our fingers into the food, smashing together rice, silver-skinned fish […]” (p30-31), and even, “I can feel it [her abuser’s penis] smashing up against my flesh, grinding against my buttocks” (p66). Such very different and varied actions and descriptions surely would merit better descriptive terms than the same ‘smash’ over and over? Unless of course, the author means to regularly convey a certain level of aggression, but while ‘smash’ may well be appropriate for acts of violence in sexual abuse and murder, but doesn’t seem to be so appropriate for the pleasurable experience of eating with hands. But then again, the writing style, although it crams in a lot of exotic imagery and sentimentalities, is not actually any particular pleasure to read, being rather pedestrian although it does try to be lyrical.
The storyline chugs on of how the protagonist grows up, gets a good job, keeps to herself until she falls in love, then marriage and child birth, the discovering of herself, the continued trauma of her childhood with its migrant experiences within her which resurface sometimes in daily life in US; in fact, nothing very remarkable or noteworthy. By no means untrue or without interest, but nothing original is said, and nothing is said in an original way. The point of the story I suppose is that childhood trauma (which is in part the responsibility of the parents in this case), leaves the protagonist so damaged she in turn inflicts great damage on others – and thus in a sense, shifts the blame onto the parents (in part at least, and no small part either). It also is the novel’s way of justifying the wrongs done by the protagonist, of excusing her and being sympathetic to her despite her misbehaviour and crime.
Lack of originality can be forgiven, but sentimentality is much harder to excuse. The sentimentality of that kind of reasoning which justifies acknowledgedly unacceptable actions in the name of having been traumatised in childhood, is compounded by the treacly sentimentality of using legends and old stories to justify contemporary criminal action: of the moonbear which kills her cub, of the mother forced by the cruel king to crush her children’s heads, and even casual little mentions like,
The kittens in their turn are silent when left by their mother […] No matter how long she is gone, they will not call out. Only at the edge of starvation, weeks later, will they cry out, desperate for salvation
p254
it is unlikely kittens can last for weeks with no food, and most kittens abandoned by mother cats are in fact found precisely because they do cry out in hunger – so even the casual story doesn’t hold together; but then, logic has very little place or priority in this novel, elbowed completely aside by sentimentality. The protagonist is full of ridiculous sentimentality of throughout, for e.g.:
“I will be called by these sacred names: wife, mother. I will be fixed, stable, and held in place securely between them”
p215
given this novel itself tells of roles/positions of wives and mothers which are a long way from sacred, which are in fact traps and abuses, as experienced by the protagonist herself, the sentimentality clearly is not very helpful even to the protagonist herself.
It is difficult to enjoy a novel where the first-person narrator is not just unreliable (and not as an writing device, which would have been great, or at least, not as a device which works), but sentimental in rather sloppy and cloying ways. If the writing had been any great shakes, that would have redeemed it. As it is, when Munaweera publishes her next novel, I would still want to support South Asian writers working in English of course, but sincerely hope she will have lifted her game a few gears.
Recent Comments