DesiLit Daily

Monsoon Dreams purports to be a novel about “an unusual journey from East to West, tracking down the last home”, which was the statement on its front cover. If the novel could have lived up to but a fraction of its ambition and advertisement…..and discussing the front cover, I may mention that it depicts a large, tall, curling wave, even though there is nothing in the novel about the sea or waves. (We can only hope that this front cover image was not any crass attempt to invoke the imagery of tsunamis.)

If I have spent a whole paragraph discussing the novel’s front cover, it may well be because the task of engaging with this novel once more is a rather distasteful one, but let me now steel myself and plunge into details.

The novel’s protagonist is Anushka, a Sinhalese girl growing up in an affluent household, attending a private Catholic school. The reader is hardly given a chance to know this character as an individual in her own right, because for large part, she functions only as a mouthpiece of the author, serving as nothing much more than a platform on which the author can stand while grinding her axes and striking moralistic poses.

Not only does much of what poor Anushka is made to say ring very false coming from such a character, the author seems insensible to the fact that her writing tones oscillate without rhyme or reason, taking no account of the positionality difference between herself and her characters. Let us take one example of the effect of de Silva’s shockingly reckless indifference to character integrity: on one page we hear the young Anushka apparently innocently in conversation with her mother,
“Amma, do you think that when I am married, I too, will have to live according to the dictates of my future husband’s family?”
Leaving aside the fact the wording of this dialogue is as improbable as hearing a cat quack, a few pages on, we read,
“Anushka was well aware that women were expected to unquestioningly accept their husbands’ word. In fact, they were not supposed to have an opinion at all about anything to do with their spouses. Their job was to bring up children, satisfy their husband’s carnal appetites, prepare meals and keep a tidy house.”
This type of writing leaves the reader wondering if this is what Anuskha thinks or simply what de Silva thinks.

That last quote was also one of many examples strewn throughout the novel of the author’s sweeping generalizations about women in Sri Lanka. It would appear de Silva assumes her readership is ignorant and naïve, and as careless of detail and subtlety she herself has proven to be. While there are some grains of truth in that in Sri Lanka, many women still may not be granted the same standing as men, it is hardly the case that the situation is as bleak as de Silva would have us believe, or that the situation for all Sri Lankan women is quite as pitiable. The real pity is that although de Silva’s subject matter is immensely interesting, her handling of the characters, storyline, dialogue, development, the novel as a whole, lacks depth, lacks careful thought, lacks substantiation, lacks consistency - let us not even mention style, charm, elegance, originality, sophistication of thought, and so on, these have nothing whatsoever to do with de Silva’s writing.

De Silva’s handling of the class structure in Sri Lanka is as lacking in nuance and subtlety as her handling of gender issues. Example: “She [Anushka] comprehended the cruelty of an existence that was little better than a doormat’s on which her country’s wealthy minority wiped their muddy boots.”

Not only does de Silva make sweeping generalizations about men and woman and Sri Lankan society, she is also prone to unwarranted melodrama and overstatement. I have no need to provide yet another quote for illustration – each one above has already contained ample instances of her habit of portraying situations and characters in black and white, in extremes. If de Silva overstates, exaggerates and generalizes with the intention of extracting sympathy and admiration for her protagonist, then meeting any discerning reader, de Silva is headed for disappointment.

Apart from her own many failings as an author, it would appear that de Silva had no competent editor, if indeed she had one at all. The novel is strewn with grammatical errors, for example: “Anushka became busy to carry on with the duties that her father had entrusted.” (Yes, I am afraid it is possible for de Silva to make more than one mistake in one sentence!)

Proper editing would also have saved the novel from being liberally sprinkled, nay, covered, with absurd contradictions – we are told Aunshka wanted to find a young man of the same class as herself to marry because she was oh so determined to restore honour to her family – and after 2 years of happy engagement to a perfectly loving and suitable man, and support from both families, Anushka decides she does not want to be trapped as her mother was trapped and breaks off the engagement. And this thought can hardly only just have occurred to Anuskha, because as per the earlier quote, even at a young age, Anushka was “well aware that women were expected to….” (italics mine).

Yet another problem with this novel – and believe me, identifying problems in this novel will win one no prizes because it is not much more difficult than identifying the presence of sand on the beach – is that the storyline moves erratically, the second half particularly fragmented and poorly constructed. The first half of the book was marginally preferable, containing interesting details of Sri Lankan life although (dis)coloured by lofty moralisings and the glorification of our wondrous protagonist who is the wronged innocent, but still oh so intelligent, exceptional, fair, courageous, generous, loving, not to mention very beautiful and slender, and apparently quite free from the faults and failings of her community…..

In the second half of the book, we read that Anushka goes to UK without visa or destination for her trip, is put in a detention camp for 3 weeks and deported back to Sri Lanka. She then goes back to UK a few years on (having thrown away her passport with “Deported” stamped in it and acquired a new one) to do a Masters course in Leicester University. One moment she is in Leicester, the next she is living in London, where she found housing with the help of one “William”, who we are suddenly told is not only her best friend, but apparently “virtually Anushka’s shadow right through the length of her stay in England”. Logic and good sense come seldom to trouble this novel. The novel’s concluding chapters tell us that Anushka meets a Swede, gets married, moves to Sweden to live, and has an apparently perfect family life with her husband and three children; one daughter and two sons. De Silva concludes the novel with Anushka flying back to Sri Lanka with her husband and children, and after being cast out, ostracized and despised by her Sri Lankan friends and family for 2 decades, they welcome her back with open arms and apparent delight, and she is feted and admired universally – no explanations provided.

We know from Sri Lanka’s Sunday Observer that Nilani de Silva grew up in Sri Lanka, studied in England, and lives in Stockholm with her husband and 3 children, yes, one daughter and two sons. Well, we can but hope against hope that the book was not in part a veiled version of autobiography – because that would simply render the ridiculous depiction and sickening glorification of the ‘heroine’ even more cringe-worthy than it already is.

I have always held that debut novels should be treated with greater leniency, and that debut novelists should be encouraged and supported. However, this must be the exception which proves the rule, because although many shortcomings may be forgiven, there are a few which simply cannot, not even with all the goodwill in the world, be overlooked; smugness, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and the utter and total lack of writing skill and ability.

It has been a long review, but a necessary one, in order that others are given fair warning and the chance to avoid suffering this novel. It would also be doing a disservice to contemporary Sri Lankan fiction in English if it was not made clear that this novel is hardly representative of the quality and standard of Sri Lankan writing and literature, much of which is highly commendable and written with talent and integrity, entirely unlike Nilani de Silva’s Monsoon Dreams.