Shyam Selvadurai, 2013 (July 2014)
As a metaphor for the decades of conflict in Sri Lanka, this story is tragic in many aspects, although ultimately resolved. As a reflection on the immigrant experience in Canada, or queer relationships in the 1980s, it is not uplifting. It all turns out painfully bad, in spite of the narrator Shivan’s somewhat passive attempts to make a life for himself. He is overwhelmed by the circumstances of his early life in Sri Lanka, having to choose between poverty for his family and affluence with a selfish, controlling grandmother. He escapes by immigrating to Canada, but finds that life as a gay student offers him only limited options, in part because of the damage he carries from his early life in Sri Lanka. He tries to make things better by returning to Sri Lanka to accommodate his past, but things get worse. Returning to Canada, he tries a new start which seems to succeed, but he finds his attempt to bury his past fails, and his only recourse is to give up what he has achieved and return to face his nemesis with unconditional compassion. The simplified message seems to be that for Sri Lanka to overcome its murderous civil war past, everyone has to be prepared to give up what they have won and face each other with forgiveness and compassion. Simplified though this is (and I don’t see much in the story that offers a more nuanced reading), it’s pretty inadequate as a political solution for Sri Lanka’s past.
What is really good about this book (and what I loved in his earlier books) is the beautiful writing, and Selvadurai’s ability to create a rich visual sense of the lush environment of Sri Lanka, and in this case its contrast with the dirty, grey, dusty, cold, barren Toronto suburbs (softened a bit by the scenes of UBC and the West End of Vancouver). And Selvadurai writes very effectively about their mental anguish. I can empathize with Shivan’s mother’s horror of life as an immigrant woman, and with Shivan’s wretchedness as a South Asian exotic object in the gay scene or his rage at his grandmother and everything she destroys for him. But this writing is undercut when Selvadurai repeatedly describes a character’s complicated reactions to words or events as if unable to make the characters understood without explanation. While it’s probably true that I would not get the complex interactions on a first reading, I found the repeated explanations intrusive.
More problematic is the unrealistic nature of many of the relationships – I often did not buy into the decisions that many of the characters made, Shivan in particular with his back and forth changes from hating his grandmother and Sri Lanka to adopting them, then hating them again and finally adopting them again. Yes, his character is drawn in many directions by powerful feelings of home, family, love, greed. But Shivan seems to barely think about his sudden changes of direction, he just feels he has to do it. Similarly, other characters, his family and his partners, jump to extremes of feeling without any intrinsic change. It seems that they are driven more by the needs of the plot and the need to fully illustrate the theme of compassion than by any internal sense. They act as if they are puppets more than people (and to an extent they are, driven by the forces in their lives).
So this raises a question of style and authorial intent. In places, I found the style clunky, awkward and repetitive, and I found myself wondering what happened to Selvadurai’s editor. But I know Selvadurai to be a careful and thoughtful stylist and I don’t remember these issues in his previous books. So are the intrusive explanations and repetitive style deliberate, an attempt to recreate in an English novel the ritualistic story telling of more traditional literatures? Selvadurai recounts a variety of Buddhist stories and aphorisms to illustrate the message of compassion. He shifts from Shivan’s present hostility to his emotive narration of the past and then his final resolution. And he frequently shows how books and stories are a key elements in Sivan’s youth and adult life. (Thank you buriedinprint for pointing that out.) I found the writing irritating in places, but if this is really supposed to work as a metaphor for something else, than perhaps it serves a purpose that the writing should call attention to itself, forcing the reader to step back and ask what’s going on here. I cannot say that it made me appreciate the story more, although perhaps it brought out its meaning. As someone else noted, readers care about the characters, not about a metaphor, so it’s the characters who have to work, not the metaphor.
What is really good about this book (and what I loved in his earlier books) is the beautiful writing, and Selvadurai’s ability to create a rich visual sense of the lush environment of Sri Lanka, and in this case its contrast with the dirty, grey, dusty, cold, barren Toronto suburbs (softened a bit by the scenes of UBC and the West End of Vancouver). And Selvadurai writes very effectively about their mental anguish. I can empathize with Shivan’s mother’s horror of life as an immigrant woman, and with Shivan’s wretchedness as a South Asian exotic object in the gay scene or his rage at his grandmother and everything she destroys for him. But this writing is undercut when Selvadurai repeatedly describes a character’s complicated reactions to words or events as if unable to make the characters understood without explanation. While it’s probably true that I would not get the complex interactions on a first reading, I found the repeated explanations intrusive.
More problematic is the unrealistic nature of many of the relationships – I often did not buy into the decisions that many of the characters made, Shivan in particular with his back and forth changes from hating his grandmother and Sri Lanka to adopting them, then hating them again and finally adopting them again. Yes, his character is drawn in many directions by powerful feelings of home, family, love, greed. But Shivan seems to barely think about his sudden changes of direction, he just feels he has to do it. Similarly, other characters, his family and his partners, jump to extremes of feeling without any intrinsic change. It seems that they are driven more by the needs of the plot and the need to fully illustrate the theme of compassion than by any internal sense. They act as if they are puppets more than people (and to an extent they are, driven by the forces in their lives).
So this raises a question of style and authorial intent. In places, I found the style clunky, awkward and repetitive, and I found myself wondering what happened to Selvadurai’s editor. But I know Selvadurai to be a careful and thoughtful stylist and I don’t remember these issues in his previous books. So are the intrusive explanations and repetitive style deliberate, an attempt to recreate in an English novel the ritualistic story telling of more traditional literatures? Selvadurai recounts a variety of Buddhist stories and aphorisms to illustrate the message of compassion. He shifts from Shivan’s present hostility to his emotive narration of the past and then his final resolution. And he frequently shows how books and stories are a key elements in Sivan’s youth and adult life. (Thank you buriedinprint for pointing that out.) I found the writing irritating in places, but if this is really supposed to work as a metaphor for something else, than perhaps it serves a purpose that the writing should call attention to itself, forcing the reader to step back and ask what’s going on here. I cannot say that it made me appreciate the story more, although perhaps it brought out its meaning. As someone else noted, readers care about the characters, not about a metaphor, so it’s the characters who have to work, not the metaphor.
