"The jury and judge are on someone's secret payroll," thinks Appa as he opens the case for prosecution. "They agreed on Shamsuddin's guilt before today, before the trial began, before Shamsuddin was dangled by his feet before them, a rabbit out of some unseen magician's hat." But he proceeds regardless, and the boy is convicted and executed.
The details here are important. There's nothing in this book as simple-minded as privileged Malays, rich Chinese and victimized Indians. Injustice is everywhere prevalent, the author is implying, and the sickness that perhaps she sees as at the heart of the country is simply replicated in miniature in the family she chooses to focus on.
And this even-handedness and avoidance of stereotype applies to the characters as well. Amma, for instance, isn't some victim of class prejudice but a genuinely unpleasant woman, albeit possibly as a result of her abused upbringing and loveless marriage. Saints and sinners, in other words, are far from Preeta Samarasan's way of seeing things. This is both a profound, and a profoundly disturbing, novel.
The book proceeds in a strange fashion, moving backwards in time more often than it moves forwards. But, surprisingly, nothing in the way of readability is lost by this. And there are some stunning chapters that are, in several cases, mini-masterpieces in their own right.
One of these is the chapter describing Kuala Lumpur's anti-Chinese 1969 race riots, during which Amma gives birth to her first child. Another, even finer, is the study of Amma's lonely domestic existence, one of the finest studies of married desperation I've ever read, matched only by George Eliot's portrayal of Gwendolen Harleth in Daniel Deronda.
It's easy to start wondering how much there is of personal reminiscence in a novel of this kind. Is Preeta Samarasan in some way the talented daughter who makes it away to Columbia? (She herself studied creative writing at the University of Michigan). If so, she's admirably self-effacing, because the girl in question isn't short of skeletons in her own cupboard either.
This book's central virtues are sympathy and understanding, combined with a tough-minded refusal to deny cruel truths. Yet it still manages to be witty, inventive and high-spirited, tossing brand names and popular songs into its rich evocation of provincial life in Malaysia's Ipoh. It succeeds superbly, and must surely be one of the finest novels published in English anywhere this year.
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