බූමාටු - රෝහිත බ්‍රහ්මචාරී

 මෑතක කිය වූ "පිටු පෙරළීමට" පොළඹවන" ආරේ ඉතා රසවත් නවකතාවකි. සයිමන් නවගත්තේගම ට අනන්‍ය වූ පරිසරයක් ලෙස අයෙකු දැකිය හැකි දෙමළ වන්නිය ආශ්‍රිතව මීට වසර හතලිහකට පමණ (අනුමාන වශයෙන්)  පෙර යුගයක් අලලා ලියැවුණු, යථාර්තවාදී රීතිය ඉක්මවූ, එහෙත් එක් පාදයක් ඉතා ස්ථිර ලෙස යථාර්තවාදයේ පිහිටා ලියැවුණු,  අප ජන සංස්කෘතියේ එන යක්ෂ-දේව-භූත ආදී අද්භූත අයවලුන් අලලා ලියැවුණු නවකතාවකි. එහි අවසන දෛවය සහ කල දේ පළ දීම ගැන යම් ඉඟියක් වූවද, නවකතාවේ සමස්තය එවන් ඉරණම ම උලුප්පන්නක් බව කීම අසාධාරණ වන්නේ, ලේඛකයා අතිසාර්ථක ලෙසත්, සංඝත ලෙසත් තම ආඛ්‍යායනය සම්පූර්ණ කොට ඇති නිසාය. ලේඛකයාගේ ශූරත්වය සහ පාඨකයා ඇඳ බැඳ තබා ගැනීමේ හැකියාවත්, ත්‍රාසය, සහ වරෙක භීතිය රැගත් ආඛ්‍යායනය හේතුවෙන් ඉතා කෙටි කලකින් කියවා හමාර කල නවකතාවකි.

පෙර කී පරිදි මෙහි එන අවසන එන පණිවුඩ ඉඟිය ට වඩා, මා වඩාත් රස වින්දේ පොඩි ගුරු ට මුහුණ දීමට සිදු වූ කැපකිරීමත්, ඒ කැපකිරීම උදෙසා ඔහු ඔහු සමඟම කෙතෙරම් දරුණු මානසික සටනක යෙදීමට සිදු වූයේද යන්න මත ය. මිනිසෙකු, පරාද වූ විට ඒ පරාජය බාරගන්නා එඩිතර බාවය ද, එම පරාජය බාරගන්නා එඩිතර බවට ඔල්වරසන් නගන්නට කවුරුත් නැති මුත්, තමන් තමන් ව ජයගැනීමට එය සත්‍ය වශයෙන් ම අවශ්‍ය බවටත්, එම තත්ත්වයෙන් පසු ව තව දුරටත් ජීවත් වන්නේ ද නැද්ද යන්න නොවැදගත් බවත් පෙන්වා දෙන ආකාරය අපූරුය. අප ට මේ පොත රෙකමදාරු කල අප මිතුරා කීවේ මේ පොත තමන් කිය වූ වඩාත් සාංදෘෂ්ඨිකවාදී පොත බවයි. අප ඔහු කියනා තරම් ම උස් තලයක මේ පොත තැබීමට මැලි වුවද, එහි සාංදෘෂ්ඨිකවාදී පදනමක් නිරායාසයෙන් ගැබ් ව ඇති බවට පිළිගත හැක.

"කලක් තම අණසක පැතිරුණු වහළය යටම ඒ අනෙකා සිය බල පරාක්‍රමය විහිදුවමින් නවමු සම්පත් හිමියා බවට පත්ව සිටින්නේය. ඒ සම්පත් හිමියාගේ ජීවිතය වෙනුවෙන් නැගෙන කන්නලවු සතර අතින් පොඩිගුරුට ඇසෙන්නට වන්නේය. තම එදිරිවාදියා වෙනුවෙන් ඉතිරිව ඇති හෝරා කිහිපයක ජීවිතය, කල්ප ගණනක සාරවත් අනාගතයක් ලෙසද තමා වෙනුවෙන් ඉතිරිව ඇති දශක ගණනක ජීවිතය, එකම නිස්සාර හෝරාවක් ලෙසද පොඩිගුරුට දැනෙන්නට පටන් ගත්තේය." ( 208 පිටුව)

කියවිය යුතුම සිංහල නවකතාවක් ලෙසත්, මෙය ප්‍රකාශ වූ 2020 වසරේ කිසිවෙකුගේ ඇස නොගැටී සියළු සම්මාන නිර්දේශ වලින් ගිලිහීම, ඒ සම්මාන කෙරෙහි ඇති විශ්වාසය දෙස ප්‍රශ්ණකාරී ලෙස බැලීමට හේතුවක් ම බව ද කියමින්, මේ සටහන අවසන් කරමි.

ශ්‍රේණිය: ****1/2
ප්‍රකාශනය: සරසවි (2020)

Love Marriage - V.V. Ganeshananthan

I wanted to complete reading 'Love Marriage', necessarily as 'get-to-the-author's style' kind of exercise before starting on the highly rated 'Brotherless Night', and I wanted to complete both books in 2024. But what I managed was only to complete the former. 

It is written from the perspective of a person, who is safely away from the calamity of civil strife in Sri Lanka, which lasted till 2009.  But only physically safe -if that, for one's roots have long reach, to change penetrate into your thin cocoon of distant mental safety.

There were two main ethnic groups involved in the long dragged troubles in Sri Lanka -  three if you are to be exhaustive in your interpretation, and the author presents from the perspective of the one who had to undergo and endure the most suffering - that is not to say that the other groups didn't, clearly. Some, the majority here call it a war against terrorism, while for others it was a war, a losing war always (as per the narrator here), but causing enough damage to take notice of the grievances and irreparable damage done to the other ethnic group.  I found the author's narration a reasonable one - a view more wider than what I found in 'A Passage North', for instance. In that itself I find the book relatively dear to me - the criticisms of the narrator's own ethnic group, the honest accounts of the caste systems, how damaging some of the more extreme diaspora based actions are, was appreciated - while never shying away from exposing  small mindedness of politicians of the majority ethnic group, the continuous suffering they had to endure starting from 1958, to 1983, and during the escalated war fare in the 1990s, and the 2000s.

While the above political account was like an unmistakable sound track that lasted across the book, it was not what the book was fully about. We have a four tier generation of people to handle, and at times the reader's mental faculties are challenged to keep track of who was who. Maybe there was no other way for VVG to tell her story, and am not even sure if I can call it a failing, but as a reader I can only mention the challenge I had to endure - and I know that I am not the only one.

In summary, it was a good book to read, as a reminder of what we as a country had gone through ( though not a day passes by, in which we who lived our younger days in a bomb exploding Colombo, where purely by chance we were always at least  300m-400m away, when some innocents never saw their loved ones again - and I personally have innocent relations who endure the darkness brought upon them, whose meaning to life was taken away during one fateful train journey). It is because the haunting is  too stark for many other countrymen, that VVG, ( and Anuk Arudpragasam) wrote their books. Maybe some of these authors will never write a book that will not have dark shadows of what robbed them a peaceful life with their community - and I can fully concur with that. And I will possibly read all those accounts, as my limited time allows me.

Rating: ***1/2

On the Road - Jack Kerouac

"Hey Jack Kerouac, I think of your mother
and the tears she cried, they were cried for none other
than her little boy lost in our little world that hated
and that dared to drag him down, her little boy courageous.
who chose his words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood.
Hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts.
they all spoke through you"
                     ( Hey Jack Kerouac - 10,000 Maniacs )

I read On the Road, stretched across 2024, like I was driving at a slow pace on the road for days - if not weeks ( but the reading dragged on for months). This was okay, for the book was to be savoured through where Sal (read as Jack), and Dean, was at the moment, or how they were travelling. There were characters that I wanted to keep track of and even kept a piece of paper with the characters scribbled from spark notes ( to avoid my picking up the phone to check on these characters - we all know where that leads to ). It is a book through which one attempts to grapple with the unrest of the main characters, their search for freedom, the risks they take to live their lives as they feel they ought to.

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'”

There were certain parts which capture incidents with historical value, like how they live through the explosion of Jazz - between times of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis - and captures live performances of George Shearing. I found the description of their trip to Mexico city, and the journey across Mexico to reach there engrossing too.

I read two books with cultural value in important phases in recent history in 2024 - 1970s in London and its suburbs ( Buddha of Suburbia), and On the Road. These type of books have to enjoyed for the nuances they contain as documents of cultural history, and in that respect I am glad to say I enjoyed them both.

Rating: ****

Away from her (aka Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship,Marriage) - Alice Munro

 Alice Munro wrote 14 original collections of short stories in her distinguished career. And with, 'Away from her', I've read eleven of them - eleven books over eleven years, where I've never been disappointed with  any of the books. 'Away from her', which was originally titled 'Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship,Marriage', (HFCLM) was her tenth book. The story "The Bear came over the mountain", one of her more renowned stories, captured in at least one anthology, has been renamed as "Away from her", carrying the title of the motion picture produced by Sarah Polley, which was based on that short story, It is a moving narration of where a husband is required to institutionalize his wife of many decades of marriage due to her deteriorating state with amnesia. In classic Munro style, the reader is left to guess which actions of the wife is caused by her sickness, which by convenience, as she finds rather preferred company at her new 'home'. The reader is left to ponder even if this is 'get even' times for her with her husband. A further point that the reader may mull over is, whether in the overall scheme of thing, a life long love is proven by its sustenance despite temporary betrayals, and instances of giving way to temptation. In 'Away from her', Grant, despite his excesses stands by his wife in her most difficult times, when he was losing her in more sense than one. (Further, the foreword by Sarah Polley, is almost a short story by itself, as she recounts what the short story meant for her, how in a grander scheme of things, it resulted in finding her, her then husband.)

In "HFCLM", (a second title story for the collection, depending on which print you carried) is a story, where a prank by two girls, causes a union - a successful one at that - for Johanna, whom the two girls wanted to take for a ride. It is a projection of unexpected circumstances, that one may find herself or himself in, and how it may still work out for your favour, if you only grasp the opportunity - even when the odds are stacked against you. However compared to other stories in this collection, although the  plot is interesting, I find myself rating this story a couple of notches below the ones I enjoyed more.

About half of these stories center on an episode of a chance encounter of an infatuation. And, to a person, all such stories encounter a woman - be it the first chance of kissing  a married woman for a youth (as in 'Floating Bridge'), the passion of a bush doctor for a woman he meets at a funeral, which she experiences just one day in her life and which she  relives all her married life as a precious episode ( "What is Remembered"), or the chance meeting of her childhood friend, who when met as a young man holds a chance of passion which they get to experience very briefly ("Nettles"). Of these, "What is Remembered" made the most impression on me, as the details of her capitulation - which was not something that she had in mind - but upon experiencing it, her necessity of storing up in detail for future, made such a convincing case when caught in a long term marriage.

“The job she had to do, as she saw it, was to remember everything—and by 'remember' she meant experience it in her mind, one more time—then store it away forever. This day’s experience set in order, none of it left ragged or lying about, all of it gathered in like treasure and finished with, set aside.”

It is almost as if Alice wanted a collection of stories which focused on the temporary release of a long term bonding, read as marriage, in which the woman had no logical reason to end, but a one time relief, was most welcome. This mental balancing act is nowhere more clearer than in the short story 'Post and Beam', where our protagonist is prepared to compromise in her mental prayer of something precious to her, to be pardoned for her mistreatment  of a relation, who had made sacrifices on her behalf. And what does this barter amount to ? Giving up a young man in a debate with her mind, with whom a chance romance was blossoming. She gives up her chance of release in barter, in conversation with her mind, as long as the "worst" doesn't happen to her relation. Even when a marriage is life long, and is limited to one partner, there is at least one instance of an infatuation - as is the case with Nina and Ed, as we find in "Comfort" - where the materialist ideology of Nina's husband, Lewis, is so important to him, that she could possibly be looking for a momentary respite from the arguments between those for and against God.

"Family Furnishings" is another top story here, as Alice subtly leaves the building blocks around for us to construct the relationship between Alfrida and the father of our protagonist. Alfrida's daughter, of whom we don't come across till the last moment says this to our protagonist,  

"You want to know what Alfrida said about you?”
Now. I knew it was coming now.
“What?”
“She said you were smart, but you weren’t ever quite as smart as you thought you were.”
I made myself keep looking into the dark face against the light. Smart, too smart, not smart enough.
I said, “Is that all?”
“She said you were kind of a cold fish. That’s her talking, not me. I haven’t got anything against you.”

Years of bitterness, from the mother and the daughter delivered as a punch, to our protagonist, who wasn't quick enough to understand that she don't need hear it. A classic finish to a classic short story!

The collection concludes with "Quennie", a short story in which one step sister has a genuine affection and regard for the other, but whom she loses in her youth, as Quennie states that she cannot survive "without love". Another story which doesn't come quite close to the best stories here.

Overall out of the nine short stories found here, I could clearly say that most of them are quite excellent and for the eleventh time, I close a collection by Ms. Munro, awestruck with the details of human nature, failings of men and women which when taken in perspective are forgivable, and how in this journey called life, one can only be true to himself or herself. 

Rating: ****1/2

 

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

 I started reading Moby Dick, first, back in 2014 or so, I think. I got a physical copy from Jarir, (or was it the books section of Lulu), but read most of it using the kindle, as is my wont anyway. I read as much as near the 60% mark, before postponing its completion, day by day, and it got abandoned. I never thought that I abandoned the book decisively. But to be honest, there was so much of detail, that I couldn't bring myself to go through the many chapters - some which serve as introduction to all of the families of whales, its physiological system, the reference to whales in times gone by especially in ancient Art etc. and its inaccuracies, all of  which serve very little to the purpose of the book, as we may interpret it today. Back in the day, say one hundred years ago, equipped with a copy of Moby Dick, which was possibly going to be your only means of entertainment for the next month or so, the above detail may stretch your term of enjoyment through elastic means. I don't mean that this was the author's intent. The author verily believed that every word wrote, brought in a sense of enjoyment to his intended audience. But I read it - actually I listened to the unabridged audio book version as available in spotify - and that way I could afford to go through all those chapters which I read a good ten years or so back - and then those I had yet to read, while not shaving off my limited reading time.

So what did I find ? There are places which offer good entertainment - especially the initial chapters before Ishmael and Queequeg boarded the Pequod, the patter by Stubb across the book which I found very witty and was presented in such a manner that I couldn't help liking the character and of courses Ahab's tyrannical - at times philosophical, at other times obsessed, spitted out words. All these are as expected with works of literature from an earlier period - rhetorical, most times serving no purpose other than offer a moment of deep insight, shock, or for the reader to ponder over. Yet in the overall scheme, offer the reader good literature from a time gone by ( for example I still enjoy Charles Dickens immensely). But the swaths of digressing that I mentioned in the first paragraph are, on top of these traits of classical literature (which a reader expects if she so decides to turn to a book of the times), and their lied the problem with the book, and hence my modest rating.

I feel that most of those who read Moby Dick has awe for what Melville achieved. Awe, yes, I too have for the work that he had put in. But I can't shed my skin that of a modern man, who is in constant battle with time - read as slots of my life - and the lookout for return of investment is so deep grained, it is a constant battle to select what to read, and what to postpone for a day (if and ) when I have time to kill, and no one is after my time anymore. Hence, as this is my review, and I have to be true to my sentiments, I can only recommend this to those are into audio books, and may they absorb this in small doses, or as they deem digestible, if they want to explore what the fuss is all about this book, and why some call it the greatest (American) novel. For me, I'd rather spend more time on authors like Saul Bellow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or Cormac McCarthey etc., in my discovery of great American novels, than take on chapter after chapter that leads no where, interspersed with Ahab's megalomania, all the way to its almost abrupt end. But still I've competed it, after a couple of failed attempts. Thank heavens for the audiobook!

Rating: ***

2024: A Look At My Reading - Or Not Reading As The Case Maybe

 I had a look at my reading for 2024, and what is obvious to me is that during the last three or four months, I've been playing catching up. I scarcely made the 40 books. This result (for it is not achievement), is not that different to my results in other areas I was involved in, this year. So am going to give consistency priority this year, over every thing else. Maybe the reasonable time over the last 2-3 months I've spent on physical fitness, which is all about consistency, is starting to have an effect on other areas - I hope.

To get back to the reading:

Here's how it looks:

- Of the forty, I've read fourteen English novels, which include two audio books ( Moby Dick and The Longest Journey), and  a Y/A book (i.e. A Monster Calls) - a book I bought Thevidu, but one which I felt I need to read too, One Translation, and one novel from a Sri Lankan author (i.e. Vihanga). Of these fourteen, I think I enjoyed, Buddha of Suburia most, with Inheritance of Loss possibly as a runner up. The Prophet Song was very good too, and honestly a fear infusing read, but its dystopian nature nagged me from possibly holding it on a pedestal that other readers may keep it on. Is it just me, or are there to many modern dystopian novels about ? Is it a reminder of how we should not go back to a stage where a Nation was deemed more important than anything else - a notion which one can agree with - but are we having too much of a good thing ?  On the Road too was an enjoyable read, but if only that kind waywardness instills a sense of freedom and beauty in you, instead of a judgemental impatience. Fear of Gambling too has its attractions, as its self indulgent narration more often than not keeps the reader interested.

- I've read a total of seven novels, in my native Sinhalese, and honestly I don't rate any of them at a masterpiece level. Sudu Sevanali (සුදු සෙවණැලි) came the closest, while Girija, (ගිරිජා), and Hin Dhos Male (හින් දොස් මාලේ) could be rated next. The biggest disappointment was Thivanker Kathawa (තිවංක කතාව), since I seem to sense an inclination of one my favourite authors being self indulgent in his fiction writing of recent, resulting in aimless meandering, and far fetched semblances.

- Some excellent short story collection were read, which were possibly the most rewarding reads for me this year - Your Nostalgia is killing me, England and Other Stories, and Away From Her ( which also has the title Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage) were all excellent books.  I am truly glad that I read these, and it resulted in planning to include a couple of English short story collections going forward, besides the annual journey I have been enjoying with the late Mrs. Munro. On Sinhala short stories, although I read as much as five short story collections, I think the collections by Keerthi Welisarage and Ajith Parakum Jayasinghe were at a very high level. Eric, again showed signs of far fetched plots, while Amarakeerthi, for all his very readable writing carries a sense of the contrived, which one can't help noticing once one start to see it.

- Sinhala poems too had featured in a significant way in 2024,  since as many as seven poetry collections were attempted. I was most impressed with Wasantha Pradeep Hettiarachchi, and Priyalal Koggalage, while  Samitha B., and Bandujeewa's collections had sufficient rich moments to warrant their mentioning here.

Anyone interested in the reviews of any of the forty books I read in 2024, should be able to find them in these pages.

Here's to 2025 and consistency !