Book Club – July
Mother and child preparing an exhibit at the Wendt commemorating Black July
There’s a book club meeting next Wednesday (6th) at Barefoot. The book being discussed is July, by Karen Roberts. I’m including a semi-review here and if you like you can get the book at the Foot or Yapa and come for the book club thing. Black July in 1983 is probably the defining moment in modern Sri Lanka, very much for the worse. In reaction to the LTTE killing 13 soldiers (now an almost daily occurence), people rioted in the streets – murdering, raping and robbing innocent Tamil civilians. If you could cut the tension before, this was the knife. However, this moment only occupies a slim chapter in ‘July’. The rest is the story of an average Colombo neighborhood with Sinhala, Tamil and Burgher neighbors. It’s the Sri Lanka that could’ve been, before Black July shattered the illusion.
Summary
Just for reference, Sinhala girl, Tamil boy, tragic love. Quite a few novels seem to go for the Romeo and Juliet pairing of Tamil/Sinhala couples (Road to Elephant Pass, for one). I think Ranjan Ramanayake (One Shot) even offered to marry Prabhakaran’s daughter to end the current conflict. I would vote for him just for comedic value. Anyways, there’s this couple at the core of the story. Getting in their way is the typical Sri Lankan family thing and a supporting cast of neighbors.
Themes
I don’t think the book is especially thematically original or anything, its main benefit is that it simply documents 1983. It does use a bucolic Toddy Tapper as a sort of role model for the young couple. He married a much wealthier woman and got his ass kicked in return, but they’re poor and happy together.
Forbidden Love
This isn’t as much a literary theme as just life in Sri Lanka. They can’t get together cause they’re Sinhala and Tamil (despite the parents being friends), but parents come up with similar objections based on caste, wealth, religion, etc. For better or worse, romantic love is less of a concept here and it is perfectly acceptable to match people through ads in the paper. I don’t think this is incorrect either, marriages fall apart for financial and social reasons much more than for love. Still, families meddle in everything and the particular manner in which the Sinhala girl’s parents try to fix her up is entertaining.
Violent Crescendo
This is another seeming standard in Sri Lankan novels, or at least, um, two of them. Distant Warriors also ambles along through normalcy to build to a violent and abrupt ending. I was also watching this Japanese film ‘Audition‘ which, in a similar way built up through normal trips to hotels and daily life to a deeply fucked up ending which had a man’s foot being sawed off, leaving me (literally) cowering behind the seat. I mean, I actually got out of my seat and kneeled on the floor so I wouldn’t have to see any more. But I digress. July is all normal family problems with sorta heavy-handed and one-dimensional hints as to who the final antagonist will be. I’ll quote from the general descriptions of the riots in ‘July’, cause I think they’re worth recording.
‘By noon, there were thousands of people on the streets. A few were workers trying to find their way home. The others were men intent on murder and mayhem. They carried sticks, knives, axes, lengths of cable, and containers – plastic cans, tins, bottles – of petrol. Most didn’t even know what they were doing there but were swept on by the hugeness of the whole thing. They prowled the streets in packs of fifty or more…
The streets were littered with empty cars, their fuel caps opened. They had been drained with hosepipes and greedy sucking mouths. Ammunition for the anger. In the distance, she heard a muted roar. Her steps quickened, as did her heartbeat. Just past the junction she stopped, afraid to go any further. About a hundred people crowded around something, screaming and cheering. Some laughing slightly hysterically.
Something – vulgar curiosity perhaps – propelled her into the crow. The wall of sweat-stained soot-blackened backs parted slightly to give her a glimpse of a man on his knees, who screamed for mercy, who called out to many unhearing gods to save him. She saw the wild fear in his rolling eyes, smelled the coppery odour of blood, which lay around him in a small but growing pool. He had deep slashes on his arms, his head, his torso, his back.’
Conclusion
I like July more as a historical document than a novel. As a novel I’d say it’s average. The family scenes are typical and the prose is the same, and the thematic webbing is non-daring. However, what it does do is picture a Sri Lanka that most Sri Lankans would know, that isolated cul-de-sac of sanity off a turbulent and eruptive street.
Barefoot Book Club thing is next Wednesday (the 6th) at 6pm. Feel free to read the book and come
I recently wrote about gay marriage, which is not even on the radar in Sri Lanka. But we have another type of marriage discrimination here as well. Foreign marriage. If you marry someone non Sri Lankan, they can never become a citizen. Their lives and their rights to even be in the same country as their children are permanently unstable, and it’s patently unfair.
When 
I started off not really liking General Sarath Fonseka, him being part of the aggressive war effort. I didn’t support the war (largely cause I thought it would fail), and I thought Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Fonseka were gleefully stomping everything. Fonseka even came out and said “I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese but there are minority communities and we treat them like our people,” in 2008 (
General Sarath Fonseka was arrested on a bunch of trumped up charges, but mainly for daring to threaten Mahinda in a Presidential election. Despite his poor health, Fonseka was arrested in February 2010 and sentence to three years. Word on the street now, however, is that he’ll be released soon. Like any day now. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has told 
Ranjan Ramanayake did what?
That piece of news made my day. Holy shit.
Mine too!! ;oD The size of some egos.. Where’d you GET this??
eh..July was not the greatest book. Emotive but then thats due to the subject material…but there was just something ‘flat’ about it. I’m assuming Ranjan Ramanayake is trying to be the Ali G of Sri Lanka?
geez man ur just as fucking dumb as ranjan ramanayake.
the conflict did not start in 1983 and it’s not gonna end if some vijaya-wannabe marries miss prabhakaran. there’s no alternate history that could have been if the so called black july didn’t occur because a black august or a september was bound to happen. the important point you naive guilt trippers are missing is that there was no black month, july or otherwise after 1983. in fact, tamil civilians still live in the south where they were supposedly subjected to “murder, rape and robbery”. could the same be said about sinhalese or for that matter muslims in the north. who are the true victims of the black july then.
This book is really hard to find. VYB? nah, Sammana? Never heard of it. OK I’ll give another try on my way home at SBS. Lucky if I could find it.
Anyway, what’s the exact place the club’s gonna meet? I felt like peeping in..
The book should be available at Odel or Barefoot bookshops, though it’s worth calling ahead since they get out of stock easily. The book club will be in the bar area or thereabouts of the barefoot garden cafe, look for people around a table with books – feel free to peep in.
july is freely available everywhere, any decent bookstore has it.
not a great book at all, niether is roberts’ other one, the flower boy. its all highly melodramatic and romanticized. anyway, i have a bias against these ex-pat english writer types that sensationalize sri lanka and the conflicts within beyond comprehension.
interesting read for facts and context, though. she rebuilds that time pretty accurately, though i daresay it’s not completely without a few voids here and there.
electra,
who would you know if her depiction of 1983 was accurate… you weren’t born…
y’all shoud read:
When Memory Dies
or
Cinamon Gardens
by the way electra which “these ex-pat english writer types” don’t you like… Michael Ondaajte? any others?
if you don’t like the ex-pat english writes which do you like…?
the crap – Colpetty People… or david’s fantasy – a cause untrue…?
just curious
[...] I don’t think I can give a full review of the book here, although I’ve studied Lit at school :-) Indi has given this nice semi-review of it on his blog: read it if you’re interested. That’s where I also got to know about the book. [...]
i like michael ondaatje, anil’s ghost isn’t as great as the english patient and is overrated simply because of its authorship. i think romesh gunasekera is highly overrated too…he must have written ONE good book, and those were the short stories, the monkfish moon and other stories. heaven’s edge was such a disaster! karen roberts, jeanne thwaites, who reads that stuff if not for light entertainment?…shyam selvadurai is great as long as he’s writing about stuff that’s close to his heart ; cinnamon gardens wasn’t as good as funny boy or his new book, swimming in the monsoon sea. what about michelle de kretser and the hamilton case? ugh.
-would you know if her depiction of 1983 was accurate… you weren’t born…- hm, yeah. its not like most of the adults in my life weren’t in the thick if things at that time, either.