Nayomi MunaweeraCritiques

In her literary debut, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, author Nayomi Munaweera gives us a story of two women on opposing sides of the Sri Lankan Civil War, one a Sinhala, the other a Tamil.

The book opens with the story of her Sinhala parents’ peaceful childhood, their arranged marriage and the birth of their two daughters. Raised in Colombo, Yasodhara and her sisters were brought up along side a Tamil family whose son, Shiva was their closest playmate. When violence erupted their family emigrated to America while Shiva’s family escaped to England. The two sisters return to Sri Lanka as adults hoping to help young victims of the war, they meet up with Shiva, now a doctor, who has also come to help his native country. But their lives were already linked with a young Tamul girl’s, Saraswathie. She lives in the war zone and although she hoped to become a teacher, she is kidnapped by Sinhala soldiers who rape and terribly abuse her. She then is given over to the Tamil Tigers and is trained to become a killer and eventually a martyr for the Tamil cause.

The author does a masterful job of describing the island with it’s vibrant colors, exotic tastes, and lively sounds making the violence and anger of the Civil War all the more jarring and shocking. Island of a Thousand Mirrors is a painful read, all the more heartbreaking when you learn that a hundred thousand lives were lost in this war.½

“Sometimes I get this breathless feeling that the war is a living creature, something huge, with a pointed tongue and wicked claws. When the tanks rumble past in the far fields, I feel it breathe; when the air strikes start and the blood flows, I feel it lick its lips. I’ve grown up inside this war, so now I can’t imagine what it would be like to live outside it.”

This book is about Sri Lanka’s Civil War between the Sinhalese and Tamils that took place 1983 – 2009. It is told from the perspective of the eldest daughter of two families, one from each side. One family migrates to the US, but they keep abreast on current events, and the vast majority of the book is centered around Sri Lanka. The other family stays and tries to evade the hostilities but ends up immersed in it. The author provides enough historic content to give the reader the necessary background. It examines the question of what leads someone to become a martyr to the cause:

“What could have led her to this singularly terrible end? What secret wound bled until she chose this most public disassembly of herself? Just moments earlier she had been just another nameless woman in the teeming crowd; now, blown to bits, she was either martyr or mass murderer, according to one’s taste. Either way she had attained instant immortality. But what had led her to that moment? This is a question that haunts me.”

The writing is lyrically descriptive, featuring many cultural elements – food, clothing, customs, religions, and traditions. It contains vivid images of the seascape surrounding the island nation:

“Farther out beyond the reef, where the coral gives way to the true deep, at a certain time of day a tribe of flat silver fish gather in their thousands. To be there is to be surrounded by living shards of light. At a secret signal, all is chaos, a thousand mirrors shattering about him. Then the school speeds to sea and the boy is left in sedate water, a tug and pull of the body as comfortable as sitting in his father’s outspread sarong being sung to sleep.”

It portrays life before the civil war, and how it changed. It is a difficult read in that it describes brutal violence, rapes, burnings, and suicide bombings. Even with all this violent content, the author manages to convey hope for the future.

A hard-hitting story about the physical, psychological, and cultural devastation of war.½

I registered this book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12549026

Two women grow up in Sri Lanka during the Sri Lankan civil war: Yasodhara grows up in a thriving Sinhalan community, privileged and forward-looking. Saraswathi, from a desperately poor Tamil family, works hard at her small school, hoping to replace the teacher eventually. Yasodhara ultimately leaves Sri Lanka for the United States, while Yasodhara suffers a fate that defines her life and that of others from then on.

I wanted to like this more than I did. It was hard for me to connect with any of the characters until I was well into the book, over halfway through. The story of Saraswathi begins well into the book as well, almost seems an afterthought at the time, and we don't get to know her as well as we get to know Yasodhara.

Although I didn't love the book I recommend it. It illuminates part of the conflict from the ground, making it clear that it is an age-old story. It further illustrates the point that it is hard to hate someone when you know their story.

Dark, beautiful, horrifying. I am damaged and forever changed.

Amma and Thatha are the parents of young Ganga, the narrator. Born in Sri Lanka, Ganga senses perhaps her parents are not as happily married as they would like Ganga and others to to believe. Amma spends much time sleeping during the day and Ganga hears muffled arguments coming from her parents bedroom. In Ganga's early teens, a tragedy compels Ganga and her mother to immigrate from Sri Lanka to the United States. Ganga anxiously navigates the challenges of being an immigrant, and even fulfills the American dream of graduating from college . Despite that seeming succeess, the secrets of Ganga and her family continue to follow and haunt her.

An intriguing , well told story that is more focused on damaging family relationships than living in and immigrating from Sri Lanka. Highly recommended.

4 stars

If you're wondering how someone could possibly become a terrorist, this would be the book for you.

If you're wondering how someone could possibly become a terrorist, this would be the book for you.

If you're wondering how someone could possibly become a terrorist, this would be the book for you.

The long reach of the past and the unreliability of memory are two prominent themes of this novel. Our unnamed narrator, though in Sri Lanka she was known as baby Madame, is the main character and we follow her life from a young child in Sri Lanka to adulthood in the USA. From the beginning we know she has done something terrible but we don't know why or how. This is one of those books that I believe the less said the better.

So I will just say the descriptions are lush, the prose is amazing and the inner thoughts of our character is well displayed. Whether the reader will understand her actions is up to the reader, the author gratefully keeps her opinions away from the written page. This is both a sad and beautiful book. In Sri Lanka out narrator finds both beauty and terror, in the USA she finds how difficult it is to fit in when you are different. Here she will also find love and heartache.

This is a first rate novel from an author who keeps getting better and better. Would make for a great book discussion because I am sure everyone will have a different opinion of our narrator and her actions. Would be interesting to see who falls where.

ARC from netgalley.

“What Lies Between Us,” by award-winning author Nayomi Munaweera, is a dark and atmospheric tale of trauma, dissociation, obsessive love, and psychosis masterfully narrated in exquisite prose. It is a novel of perceptive psychological depth, a novel of satisfying forensic texture, and a novel of superb emotional detail. But most important, it is a novel that richly showcases the author’s considerable literary talents.

The novel opens with a prologue in the form of a parable. It is the story of a Himalayan moon bear that is driven to kill her cub in a most gruesome way. It is a brief, shocking, and gut-wrenching tale. The author starts the book with this unsettling story because she says, “it tells us everything we need to know about the nature of love between a mother and a child.” Wow, what an incredibly outlandish statement! From then on, I was riveted to the book. I just had to know what that was all about.

After the prologue, the narrator plunges us into the strange and atmospheric tale of her life. She tells it as a first-person narration in the form of a confession. She has already served fifteen years in prison for a “grotesque” and “unthinkable” act against her own child. We are not told the exact nature of the crime (yet the parable at the beginning gives us significant foreshadowing of what might happen in the end). The book is the prisoner’s attempt to explain herself and her crime, to help us understand not only what she did, but also why she did it. She starts at the very beginning, when she “was a child and not yet the mother.”

The narrator chooses to tell us her story in first person present tense. Think about that; it’s very odd and awkward to tell a story in retrospect all in the present tense! It means that at any time during the story, the narrator only knows what she would have known at that age and time. In this story, that is important. As a result, the story unfolds as a clinically accurate psychological and forensic portrait of the criminal from her birth through to the crime and beyond.

The narrator was born into a Sinhalese Buddhist family in Kandy, Sri Lanka. She emigrated to Fremont, California when she was a teenager and went to college at a major university not far away. She began her post-college years as a young professional living on her own in San Francisco. She married. She had a child. Eventually, she committed her horrendous crime. She was sent to prison. She has remained in prison for fifteen years. She writes this confession from prison. That is the rough outline. But the novel is all about the considerable psychological and emotional detail that makes up this woman’s life.

This is a story of trauma, dissociation, and psychosis. It is also a story about obsessive love—the extremely dangerous type in which the loved one becomes the whole of another person’s interior. The type of love where someone “calibrates [her] days around his presence,” where she weaves her “life around him,” where he breaks her “heart with happiness.”

Personally, I think the novel is a formidable tour de force. The story is heartrending and the characters seem—in every way—like they could belong to real people in real-life situations. It is a dark subject, but psychologically enlightening.

For me, the greatest reward of reading this novel was not the theme or the tale, but the opportunity to experience the author’s elegant prose.

This book will make a fine selection for a book club. There is much depth and detail in it that will lend itself to discussion. Also, book club members may enjoy sharing with each other specific passages that excited their literary sensibilities.

I knew that I would be emotionally wrecked by this novel from the story of the moon bear in the Prologue. Read those first two pages for a virtual map of the dark and sad story to come - a foreboding that lasts for the next 300+ pages. You know how this one is going to end before you start, and every page provides clues for the who, what, where, and why. The only thing you can't do is stop it from happening. Munaweera writes with raw and beautiful descriptions, and drags you along kicking and screaming to a bitter end. Although I have not read A Little Life yet by Hanya Yanagihara, I suspect those that loved that book will love this book. This story will also instigate wonderful discussions among book groups. Bravo!

This remarkable book was a beautifully written story filled with profound sadness. It took me awhile to understand the double meaning of the word "lies" in the book's title.
The novel was written as the main character's confession for her unforgivable crime.The demons of her childhood in the hills of Sri Lanka follow her to her new life in California. Her story is a tragic one but filled the reader with much compassion.
I enjoyed her first novel,"Island of a Thousand Mirrors" and llok forward to enjoying Nayomi Munaweera's future work.

This book is set in beautiful Sri Lanka which is in the throes of a Civil War - between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Civil war does not even begin to describe the horrors that this tiny nation faced. It is the description of the travails of ordinary people and ordinary families that portrays the true nature of the tragedy. The author has described the scenario perfectly and captured the essence of the South Asian habits for example when one of the characters says, "It is only in absence that the true weight of love is felt" - a character who is describing an arranged marriage! A well-written book which is a must read.

Island of a Thousand Mirrors takes place in Sri Lanka during the civil war that began in the 1980s. It follows the stories of two families on opposite sides of the conflict. While it had all the makings of an excellent novel, somehow it fell short for me. I learned a bit about the island and history of the conflict, and the story kept me interested, but it won’t really stick with me. The characters, especially Saraswathi, the Tamil woman introduced in the second half of the book, weren’t as well developed as I would have liked them to be. I also found the writing at times to be a little overly poetic and flowery and trying a little too hard. Still, it kept me interested and I am glad I read it.

"This is so not an easy book as it clearly and in detail explores the unspeakable violence of the Sri Lankan civil war."
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/2015/03/island-of-thousand-mirrors-nayomi.htm...½

Nayomi Munaweera is a Sri Lankan/American novelist, and this is her debut novel, published in 2012. Island of a Thousand Mirrors tells a story of families and lovers over decades, caught in and torn apart by the Sri Lankan civil war. Tamil and Sinhala families, arranged marriages, lovers, heartbreak, terribly delicious cooking (it's one of those books that makes you hungry), swimming in warm ocean waters, clear beaches, markets, rubber sandals, life as immigrants in the USA, and the brutality of the Sri Lankan Civil War, pitting Tamil against Sinhala.

Dominated by strong female characters, it's a powerful and interesting read. Definitely recommended.½

Island of a Thousand Mirrors, published in the US in Sept. 2014, is the debut novel of Nayomi Munaweera, a Sri lankan native who now resides in the US. In 2013 it was long listed for the Man Asia Prize, won the Commonwealth Regional prize for Asia and was short listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature in 2014. Quite Impressive for a first novel!

The background of the story is Sri Lanka's civil war (1983-2009) between the Tamil minority (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and the majority Sinhalese (Sri Lankan military). The war resulted in 80,000 deaths.

Like all wars, there are no easy answers. A quote from one of the characters attempts to explain to American friends what is happening in Sri Lanka:
"There are no martyrs here. It is a war between equally corrupt forces. I see their eyes glaze over. I realize they do not desire a complicated answer. They want clear distinctions between the cowboys and the Indians, the corrupt administration and the valiant freedom fighters, the democratic government and the raging terrorists. They want moral certainty, a thing I cannot give them."

The main characters are 2 Sinhalese sisters (Yasodhara and Lanka), a Tamil boy (Shiva), whose family rented the upstairs of their house, and Saraswathi, a Tamil girl from the north of the island. We learn the stories of their families and how their lives become intertwined over the years. The brutality of the war is devastatingly depicted and I found that as the pace picked up in the last third of the book, I couldn't put it down.

Jasmine and Death: The Tragic Civil War of Sri Lanka Through the Eyes of Innocents
The evocative, powerful prose of author Nayomi Munaweera depicts the brutal senseless violence of the Sri Lankan Civil War through the eyes of innocent Tamil and Sinhalese families. These experiences of children, mothers, fathers, grandparents, sisters and lovers tell this tragic story of destruction and recovery.

Only 237 pages, this is an epic generational of the family of Yasodhara Rajasinghe, a Sinhalese girl, beginning at the time of British colonialism and ending with the killing of the leader of the Tamil Tigers and the aftermath of 80,000 lives taken by the Civil War. This contrasts with the unraveling of a Tamil family, living in the north. With an economy of words, Munaweera shows us the beauty of the island and its customs and culture so we can appreciate the losses. We see the flight of Tamils from Sri Lanka to refugee camps where they merely exist, and to the United States, with the transition from saris to blue jeans and American English.

Experiencing the strife on a personal level allows us to understand the ethnic struggle and the country’s suffering. The violence of the Sinhalese and Tamils devastates families. Children vanish to training camps and reappear as killing machines. Mobs slaughter loved ones. Centuries of irreplaceable history disappear in the riot that burned the books and ancient manuscripts of the Jaffna Library.

The scent of jasmine carries us through Sri Lanka’s history.

• The house of Yasodhara’s mother in Colombo has an inner courtyard with an enormous trailing jasmine. “When the sea breeze whispers, a snowy flurry of flowers sweeps into the house so that Visaka’s earliest and most tender memory is the combined scent of jasmine and sea salt.”
• At the wedding ceremony of Visaka’s arranged marriage, she rides in a car “adorned in jasmine.”
• When flying to America to escape the violence, Yasodhara says good-bye to “the scent of jasmine so potent, it catches the attention of traveling poets and writers.”
• When the two young girls of the northern Tamil family, Saraswathi and Luxshmi, encounter a mob that has disemboweled a man, a street vender gives the girls a string of Jasmine so that they “[h]ave something sweet to smell today.”
• When Saraswathi is beaten and raped by Sinhalese soldiers, her mother brings her strings of jasmine.
• When Yasodhara’s sister phones her in Los Angeles begging her to return to Sri Lanka, “for a moment her words hand in the air like a possibility, the sudden scent of jasmine and sea air swirling in the room.”
• Saraswathi, given up to the Tamil Tigers, lives in a training camp “fragrant with the scent of jasmine trailing off the thick garlands that bedeck the portraits of the martyrs.”
• The young Tamil Tiger girl suicide bomber carries a jasmine garland to drape around the neck of her target, allowing her to move close to him.

I highly recommend “Island of a Thousand Mirrors,” an important book.

Some books, just by the nature of the subject and content are so incredibly hard to read. This was one such book. Portraying two families, caught up in the violence of Sri Lanka, one family leaves and goes to the United States, one family stays in what they consider their home.

Did not know very much about this subject before I started reading this book, but now know much more. That doesn't mean I understand it, I don;t think I will ever understand how one group of people can decide they are better than another, but it just keeps happening. The first part of the book is used to acquaint the reader with the beginning tensions in the country and to let the reader forge a personal relationship with some of the characters. The bewilderment of the family in the United States, their first glimpses of America and of course the culture shock and the struggle to fit in is brilliantly related. I really enjoyed that part and it rang so true.

The second part shows the full horror of the Tamil Tigers, and shows the violence against women, the hard cost to families and the deaths and cruelty of many. A very well written book about a hard subject. I applaud the authors unbiased writing and that she took the time to show the reader the full cost of these hostilities on regular families just trying to live normal lives. Bravo.

ARC from NetGalley.

Island of a Thousand Mirrors by Nayomi Munaweera paints a hauntingly vivid picture of the 25 year long Sri Lankan civil war that claimed over 80,000 lives. Told through the eyes of two young girls caught on opposite sides of the conflict, the book creates a personal story of war, destruction, and loss. This book will haunt me for a long time to come.

Read my complete review at: http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2014/08/island-of-thousand-mirrors.html

Reviewed based on a copy received through a publisher’s giveaway.

Island of a Thousand Mirrors is a good read that seems like an early unsophisticated draft of a Jhumpa Lahiri work. The poetic prose is there, the languid long descriptions, the emotionally vibrant family relationships, the heartbreak and lack of communication between characters. But something is missing; Munaweera spends a significant amount of time having detailing the lives of the previous generations, but there's a disconnect between the lives of the parents and the life of the narrator. The second part of the book, although shorter than the first part, is weighed down by a second narrative only introduced two thirds of the way through the novel - the novel would have been more well-balanced had the second narrative and other narratives been woven throughout from start to finish. Despite these flaws, Island of a Thousand Mirrors was a captivating and enjoyable book that introduced me to Sri Lanka, its civil war, and the resulting horrors and trauma.

Disclosure: I received this book through GoodReads' FirstRead Program.

ISLAND OF A THOUSAND MIRRORS by Nayomi Munaweera
I enjoyed the writing which was clear and moving. The descriptions of the island were wonderful, not just the physical beauty but the smells of food, people and nature. I felt like I really knew the characters. I hope the final edition has a “cast of characters” as it was difficult to keep the various families and generations straight, especially as they were seemingly unrelated as the narrative moved from generation to generation and Sinhala to Tamil and back again. I learned a vast amount about the Sri Lankan history of civil violence.
Book groups will find themselves discussing discrimination, arranged marriage, ethnic differences, education, parental desires for their children, the life of the immigrant in a new land, jealousy between siblings, soldier versus terrorist, the effect of violence on people and culture, and the sense of smell. Some groups may find the descriptions of sexuality (including violent rape) disturbing.
4 of 5 stars