Before listening to this audiobook, the only things I knew about Sri Lanka came from a strange experience I had several years ago…
Back in 2011/2012 I was studying for an MA in Early Childhood Education and Care. The class was all women and we all worked in the early years sector as teachers or childcare workers, and one module on the course was about international perspectives on early years provision. One day in a sort of discussion group/tutorial, a male student who we hadn’t met before turned up. He was Sri Lankan, and he dominated our discussion with terrible stories of atrocities meted out against women and children in his homeland. We normally talked about topics such as ‘learning through play’ or ‘positive reinforcement of good behaviour choices in under fives’ and that days discussion was about rape and beatings and false imprisonment. It was as if someone had put a baby dragon into a nest of kittens. We didn’t know how to respond.
So, I guess I wasn’t surprised by the similarly terrible things described in this book set in Sri Lanka.
I liked the structure of the book – the magical realism element of the story being told from the perspective of a recently deceased young man who finds himself in a kind of Limbo or Bardo – a waiting room for the newly dead, queueing to speak to the officials seated behind rows of desks. He is told he has seven moons (ie seven days) to effectively be a ghost and work out what happened to him and how he died, so it’s kind of murder mystery.
I did find the book a slog to get through though. There are a lot of characters, and a lot of Sri Lankan politics and it just seemed very long. I’m kind of glad that I listened to the book, because it had it’s moments and it feels sort of worthy and important, but that said, I was glad/relieved when it was finally over (like how I felt at the end of the discussion group with the mysterious and disturbing Sri Lankan).
Sarah Wray Writer 