HUGE SPOILERS!
My blurb for this book: Life getting you down? Stressed out? Step into this world, you'll forget your own...
I was a
bit wary of this one, as it had a beautiful cover and looked to be one of those
epic family stories of far flung and long gone times that can be brilliant and
can be crap. I was worried it would
suffer the flaws the genre can do sometimes, of overly posh characters that I feel
nothing for; a lingering on terrible deep pain…for instance: this genre always has a SECRET at
its core. 9 times out of 10 this
unimaginable [ha!] secret is always a love affair between unsuitable people and/or a
missing, given away or dead child. In this case, a given away child. Sometimes these books can be outrageously morbid
and intense.
This one wasn’t. It started a little stilted and I was worried for the writing style. But it changed and settled and flowed beautifully. The main character was neither stupid, nor naïve, nor horrifically melancholic nor self-sabotaging: she was just a young woman in increasingly difficult circumstances trying to do her best. I read a Lucinda Riley a while back, with a given away child – and it caused me great pain and I felt that part of the plot was dealt with with such intense and dwelt on agony – poor child without its mother, and the suffering of the mother [no matter how successful and kindly the child grew up to be, as if that was some sort of sop, at the end], I felt that somehow enough emphasis had not been placed on the situation – even though the whole book revolved around it. I was left saddened and upset and despite the book being very good, felt it had fallen into melodrama more than once, and that this particular truly painful situation had been explored…wrongly somehow. [There was a transgender issue in the book that was handled far better, for example.] These vast sweeping generational epics need careful handling, or they can veer into something quite dark, sometimes.
This book was perfect for how the given away child angle was dealt with. We felt for the heroine, felt with her – and she was in terrible pain often [e.g. the scene where she tries to find the village in the rain and realises she can't and must turn back, so sits hugging herself as if it were her child...how much this scene could have been overwritten; how much it was not, and done perfectly]: but somehow it was contained enough to bear reading about and I understood her every action. You felt it more for feeling it less – isn’t that interesting? So though she had to give poor Liyoni away and later the child died, and it was terrifically sad, with the last line of the book showing the heroine still not forgiving herself for the years of self-enforced separation – despite that…it was all understood, all made sense and none was too much. It was wise and gentle, and vivid.
The subsidiary characters: Verity, the troubled and child-like sister; Hugh, Gwen’s other child; Savi Ravsinghe, handsome painter suspected of crimes he did not commit; Christina, the provocative and beautiful American; McGregor, the buttoned up overseer; Fran, the wild cousin and best friend of Gwen – all marvellously painted. The era of turn of the century to 1940’s Ceylon as was, was marvellous. You felt the immersion in the privileged culture of the ex-pats, and of Gwen’s determination to understand the tea pickers and their families; the political backdrop and increasing needs for independence are a steady hum in the background. The constant barrage of sensory descriptions and smells in particular: wonderful.
Also, at bottom this is a book about racism, and feeling other races are subhuman - and the damage this inflicts not only on those oppressed, but on the oppressors, caught in their own twisted 'moral' system. It's an incredibly evocative portrait of a time when mixed marriages were not encouraged anymore, and a 'dark' baby was a shame. It shows the pain and stupidity of judging humans as lesser for such delineations. The heroine is a kind and gentle person, brought up to be kind to all, and at several times in the book she outwardly clashed with the mores of the time and fights back against them, as she can't understand why we just aren't kind to one another; but she suffers almost more than any of the other characters when the 'morals' of the time with regard to race catch her badly. And she ends up suspecting a kind and civilised man of a terrible crime, when its genetics that are the culprit. Its a good exploration of time dependent morals, racism and consequences... Bound up in a whole painting of a period. Intense, beautiful and hopeful, at the end.
This one wasn’t. It started a little stilted and I was worried for the writing style. But it changed and settled and flowed beautifully. The main character was neither stupid, nor naïve, nor horrifically melancholic nor self-sabotaging: she was just a young woman in increasingly difficult circumstances trying to do her best. I read a Lucinda Riley a while back, with a given away child – and it caused me great pain and I felt that part of the plot was dealt with with such intense and dwelt on agony – poor child without its mother, and the suffering of the mother [no matter how successful and kindly the child grew up to be, as if that was some sort of sop, at the end], I felt that somehow enough emphasis had not been placed on the situation – even though the whole book revolved around it. I was left saddened and upset and despite the book being very good, felt it had fallen into melodrama more than once, and that this particular truly painful situation had been explored…wrongly somehow. [There was a transgender issue in the book that was handled far better, for example.] These vast sweeping generational epics need careful handling, or they can veer into something quite dark, sometimes.
This book was perfect for how the given away child angle was dealt with. We felt for the heroine, felt with her – and she was in terrible pain often [e.g. the scene where she tries to find the village in the rain and realises she can't and must turn back, so sits hugging herself as if it were her child...how much this scene could have been overwritten; how much it was not, and done perfectly]: but somehow it was contained enough to bear reading about and I understood her every action. You felt it more for feeling it less – isn’t that interesting? So though she had to give poor Liyoni away and later the child died, and it was terrifically sad, with the last line of the book showing the heroine still not forgiving herself for the years of self-enforced separation – despite that…it was all understood, all made sense and none was too much. It was wise and gentle, and vivid.
The subsidiary characters: Verity, the troubled and child-like sister; Hugh, Gwen’s other child; Savi Ravsinghe, handsome painter suspected of crimes he did not commit; Christina, the provocative and beautiful American; McGregor, the buttoned up overseer; Fran, the wild cousin and best friend of Gwen – all marvellously painted. The era of turn of the century to 1940’s Ceylon as was, was marvellous. You felt the immersion in the privileged culture of the ex-pats, and of Gwen’s determination to understand the tea pickers and their families; the political backdrop and increasing needs for independence are a steady hum in the background. The constant barrage of sensory descriptions and smells in particular: wonderful.
Also, at bottom this is a book about racism, and feeling other races are subhuman - and the damage this inflicts not only on those oppressed, but on the oppressors, caught in their own twisted 'moral' system. It's an incredibly evocative portrait of a time when mixed marriages were not encouraged anymore, and a 'dark' baby was a shame. It shows the pain and stupidity of judging humans as lesser for such delineations. The heroine is a kind and gentle person, brought up to be kind to all, and at several times in the book she outwardly clashed with the mores of the time and fights back against them, as she can't understand why we just aren't kind to one another; but she suffers almost more than any of the other characters when the 'morals' of the time with regard to race catch her badly. And she ends up suspecting a kind and civilised man of a terrible crime, when its genetics that are the culprit. Its a good exploration of time dependent morals, racism and consequences... Bound up in a whole painting of a period. Intense, beautiful and hopeful, at the end.
I will definitely read the author’s only
other book. And hope she comes out with
another soon. This is wonderful escapism where you
learn history too, at its best.
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