Work that enhances Life

A work that bows to the greats that have gone before, but stands upright in its own space.



In these days of compromised blurb-writing, comparisons with Rushdie and Roy on the back-cover (from Booker nominee Peter Ho Davies) are enough to alert the antennae of all but the most unsceptical of readers. But Evening Is The Whole Day, Preeta Samarasan’s stunning debut novel, is that rare gem: A work that bows to the greats that have gone before, but stands upright in its own space.
In fact, why stop at Rushdie and Roy? The core of Malaysia-born, U.S.-bred and France-settled Samarasan’s story is eerily similar to Ian McEwan’s Atonement, the many-roomed, ghostly mansion where it plays out reminds one of similar rambling adobes in Isabel Allende’s early novels.
The coming-of-age theme, of course, has been examined by any number of authors, ranging from J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye) to David Mitchell (Black Swan Green) to Abha Dawesar (Babyji), as has the child’s eye view, frequently in tandem. But few authors, if any, have had such a child as their centrepiece.
The first time we encounter Aasha, she is “only six, (and her) heart cracked and cried out in protest” at her sister Uma’s departure for further studies in the U.S. Vulnerable and vengeful, aching for love yet prickly, imaginative but sequestered by her own inexperience, Aasha is someone you have empathy for, but cannot sympathise with.
As the narrative plays out like a memory, un-chronological and fragmented, we come to see why this juncture in family life — hard, but hardly unprecedented — should be the moment when things finally fall apart and the centre ceases to hold.
Ideal immigrants
To their neighbours at Kingfisher Lane, in the small Malaysian town of Ipoh, though, Aasha’s family is the ideal immigrant Indian unit: “top lawyer” Raju (Appa), homemaker Vasanthi (Amma), and three children, including the Columbia University-bound Uma. They have their share of sorrows, to be sure — Paati, Raju’s mother, has died suddenly, after years of gradual decline — but then, that’s a part of life, isn’t it?
The bigger tragedy for Aasha, though, is the demise of her elder sister as she knew her. From surrogate mother, teacher of songs and co-conspirator in a hundred childish pranks, Uma, 12 years older, has morphed into a sullen creature who prefers her own company, barely opens her mouth at the dining table and asks her little sister to mind her own business. And now, as she leaves for the U.S., Aasha is convinced that it is because she is driving her away. If this is life, Aasha wants no part of it.
Life, and all its parts, is Samarasan’s ambitious ambit in Evening.. (the title comes from a Tamil film song, which Appa translates as ‘Evening is the whole day for those without their lovers’) and, as the layers peel away and we are forced to confront the horrors that nestle inside appearances, the story takes on larger resonances that include society and state.
As masterfully as Samarasan weaves together the multiple layers of her tale, it is when she focuses on the home unit that she comes into her own. In rich, colloquial, comma-scorning prose, she captures Amma’s innate insecurities and sense of injustice, Appa’s weak-kneed idealism and search for succour, Paati’s self-serving love for Uma and the children’s quest for a semblance of balance. Her observation of the tiny, wilful cruelties perpetrated by family member upon family member is spot-on, the atavistic closing of ranks against Chellum, live-in servant and Paati’s care-giver, terrifyingly familiar.
Bleak world view
In fact, it is this grasp of the workings of the Indian family system — some behavioural traits refuse to die on overseas journeys and alien lands — that allows Samarasan to make her own a theme that McEwan explored so convincingly in Atonement. Her world-view, though, seems even bleaker than McEwan’s: For Aasha, there is no redemption, only relief in a single, brilliant smile from her sister as she walks towards the aircraft.
Samarasan is a talent to watch out for: One hopes in the future she casts off the ghosts (of magic realism as well as of authors who have gone before) to further distinguish her own voice.