Love Marriage - Softcover

Ganeshananthan, V.V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 029785318X ISBN 13: 9780297853183

Publisher: W&N, 2008

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'In this globe-scattered Sri Lankan family, we speak only of two kinds of marriage. The first is the Arranged Marriage. The second is the Love Marriage. In reality, there is a whole spectrum in between, but most of us spend years running away from the first towards the second.

'Among the categories that bleed outside these two carefully delineated boundaries: the Self-Arranged Marriage, the Outside Marriage, the Cousin Marriage, the Village Marriage, the Marriage Abroad. there is the Marriage Without Consent. There is the Marriage Under Pressure. There is even Marrying the Enemy, who, it turns out, is not the Enemy at all.'

Reverse a family tree and branches of blood are whittled down to one person - in this case, the young female narrator, Yalini - composed of all the women and men who came before her; the result of many marriages. Parents want nothing more than to prevent their children from colliding with inevitability: that in a different world, there is a different kind of marriage. Yet Tamil and Sinhalese parents - particularly after the great ethnic violence in Sri Lanka in 1983 - watch helplessly as their children cut themselves free of the need to please their ancestors. They walked out of the country to give their children opportunity, but this was not the opportunity they intended them to take: Western marriage.

'We live by our own wits, our own hearts, and our own histories; there is no other way to survive here, and some have learned to love people who do not worship our gods, eat our food, share our blood.'

For Yalini and her generation, they are the children of their parents, but have entered other countries in which the rules of marriage - Love Marriage, Arranged Marriage, and all that lies in between - dramatically do not apply.

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Review

Ganeshananthan mixes up the sequence, tossing before the reader shards of memories which look like pieces of broken bangles. But when we look at those broken bangles through her kaleidoscope, her twisting of the lens reveals patterns that make it possible to understand aspects of the conflict, even if the horrors cannot be excused (THE INDEPENDENT)

'The prose is beautiful - elegant, elegiac, precise...This is a very classy novel' (4-stars) (THE BOOK BAG.CO.UK)

This story is written in a series of many short extracts, fragmented parts of the whole and it works really well. This is how events happened and it's that useful imagery of the patchwork or the jigsaw that prevails sa slowly all the gaps are filled...A beautifully written story (DOVE GREY READER)

An unusual and accomplished first novel...Sadly topical and widely relevant, but also an assured piece of writing and a commentary on a situation many of us know little about (CORNFLOWER)

Sri Lanka's civil war forms the backdrop to a powerful debut novel that explores the diverse possibilities of different marriages....Moving and intelligent (METRO)

Innovative...this is an amibtious family drama about an underreported part of the world, filled with well-shaded characters (and) gorgeous flourish...Buy it (NEW YORK MAGAZINE)

In spare, lyrical prose, VV Ganeshananthan's debut novel tells the story of two Sri Lankan Tamil families over four generations who, despite civil war and displacement, are irrevocably joined by marriage and tradition...Powerful (MS MAGAZINE)

A haunting debut written with great finesse, this is a beautiful novel (WATERSTONES BOOKS QUARTERLY)

Ganeshananthan has created a slow-burning and beautifully written debut in Love Marriage. It is an evocative examination of Sri Lankan cultural mores, and the way one family is affected by love and war (FINANCIAL TIMES)

The book is at times witty and always beautifully written (IRISH TIMES)