<b>Evening Star</b>

Evening is the Whole Day,
Preeta Samarasan,
HarperCollins India, Rs 395
Preeta Samarasan brings Malaysia on to the world map of literature

Everyone is talking about this stunning debut. In literary circles, her novel is being compared to the high-profile ones of Arundhati Roy and Kiran Desai. The hype is well

deserved. Evening is the Whole Day is one of the most mature first offerings. Preeta Samarasan is an accomplished, confident writer who never stumbles in her story-telling skills.
Set in the author’s homeland of Malaysia, the book opens with a terrible secret. The matriarch Paati has died and her servant Chellam’s negligence is touted as the cause. But the truth is the family has already been under a dark shadow. This loss is just another blot on an already unhappy landscape. Her son Raju had been an absentee father for years, obsessed with law and a married Chinese woman. His wife Vasanthi, ashamed of her humble beginnings, gets more and more bitter when confronted with his infidelities. Their eldest daughter Uma has withdrawn into a shell and is counting the days before she leaves for the US. Suresh, her younger brother, uses humour to address the world — and to hide from it. And Asha, the baby of the family, sees ghosts and moves within her circle as silently as one. Woven into their lives deftly is the political situation of the time as well as the class/race divisions. The real beauty of the novel though lies in the lyrical, natural tone that the author uses. You are transported into the Big House at Kingfisher Lane in Ipoh with every cadence of speech.

But there are some classic first-timer mistakes. Samarasan’s sentences run into paragraphs, making it really hard to keep track of the thought she started out with. Of course, seven out of ten times she gets it right. But when she fails, it detracts from her talent. She is a master craftswoman at drawing you into her world. The tendency towards being too wordy snaps that connection.
The book is also relentlessly sad. Every time a character is introduced, you know their story will end in misery. When Raju’s younger brother — poetically named Uncle Ballroom for his choice of profession — enters the plot, you know he won’t have a happy exit. In fact, right at the onset of the book, the tone is set when you are told that Chellam will kill herself within a year of leaving the Big House. The problem with this unrelenting despair is that the sadness becomes rather predictable. The joylessness is so overwhelming that it comes in the way of appreciating what is actually a stunning book. Not only is she a great new voice, Samarasan brings Malaysia on to the world map of literature. In the most lyrical, sensational manner.

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