Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Houghton Mifflin
DDC/MDS
| 813.6 |
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML: Set in Malaysia, this spellbinding and already internationally acclaimed debut introduces us to the prosperous Rajasekharan family as its closely guarded secrets are slowly peeled away. When Chellam, the family's rubber-plantation-bred servant girl, is dismissed for unnamed crimes, her banishment is the latest in a series of recent, precipitous losses that have shaken six-year-old Aasha's life. A few short weeks before, Aasha's grandmother Paati passed away under mysterious circumstances and her older sister, Uma, departed for Columbia University�??leaving Aasha alone to cope with her mostly absent father, her bitter mother, and her imperturbable older brother. Beginning with Aasha's grandfather's ascension from Indian coolie to illustrious resident of the Big House on Kingfisher Lane, and going on to tell the story of how Appa, the family's Oxford-educated patriarch, courted Amma, the humble girl next door, Evening Is the Whole Day moves gracefully backward and forward in time to answer the many questions that haunt the family: What was Chellam's unforgivable crime? Why was Uma so intent on leaving? How and why did Paati die? What did Aasha see? And, underscoring all of these mysteries: What ultimately became of Appa's once-grand dreams for his family and his country? Sweeping in scope, sumptuously lyrical, and masterfully constructed, Evening Is the Whole Day offers an unflinching look at relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, the wealthy and the poor, a country and its citizens�??and the ways in which each sometimes fails the other. Illuminating in heartbreaking detail one Indian immigrant family's secrets and lies while exposing the complex underbelly of Malaysia itself, Preeta Samarasan's debut is a mesmerizing and vital achievement sure to earn her a place alongside Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, and Zadie Smith… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member wandering_star
Evening Is The Whole Day starts with the ignominious departure of a disgraced maidservant from the Big House, a blue-painted mansion on a quiet street in Ipoh, Malaysia. Her mistress is sitting at the kitchen table, spitting out angry and embittered words towards the two youngest children of the
The story then works its way backwards, unpeeling the onion-like layers of secrets, misunderstandings, suspicions, betrayals and petty inhumanities which have created this broken, unhappy family.
Although the events are increasingly harrowing, the lushness and beauty of the language stop this from being a depressing book.
Salman Rushdie's influence is clear, in the book's punning, multi-linguistic exuberance, the pungent smells and spiciness in the air, and the fact that many family milestones take place at the same time as significant events in the development of the country. But this is more a family saga than a Malaysian Midnight's Children, although along with the hints of family difficulties there are rumbling undercurrents of the country's racial tensions. (I am not sure if the resentments and suspicions, passed down the generations, are meant to be a metaphor for communal relations in Malaysia. It's possible, but this is not overplayed.)
This was a phenomenal read - fantastic writing, a vivid sense of place, and a powerful story.
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house, who are sitting as quietly as they can in the hope that no-one will notice them. The eldest daughter left the previous week, to study in the US. The father of the house is at his office.The story then works its way backwards, unpeeling the onion-like layers of secrets, misunderstandings, suspicions, betrayals and petty inhumanities which have created this broken, unhappy family.
Although the events are increasingly harrowing, the lushness and beauty of the language stop this from being a depressing book.
Salman Rushdie's influence is clear, in the book's punning, multi-linguistic exuberance, the pungent smells and spiciness in the air, and the fact that many family milestones take place at the same time as significant events in the development of the country. But this is more a family saga than a Malaysian Midnight's Children, although along with the hints of family difficulties there are rumbling undercurrents of the country's racial tensions. (I am not sure if the resentments and suspicions, passed down the generations, are meant to be a metaphor for communal relations in Malaysia. It's possible, but this is not overplayed.)
This was a phenomenal read - fantastic writing, a vivid sense of place, and a powerful story.
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LibraryThing member AMQS
In 1980 in Ipoh, Malaysia, a few jarring events sweep over 6-year old Aasha: the dismissal of an 18 year-old servant in shame and disgrace, the departure of the oldest sister to university in America, and the recent, troubling death of Aasha’s grandmother Paati. The ensuing story is a portrait of
The book is too depressing for an unqualified recommendation, but I do admire Ms. Samarasan’s storytelling skill. The family story is too complicated and intricate to assign blame. The Malaysian history is fascinating, and intimately, subtly told, and the language is simply captivating, right from the first page:
“There is, stretching delicate as a bird’s head from the thin neck of Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its beak in the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird’s head is a springless summerless autumnless winterless land. One day might be a drop wetter or a mite drier than the last, but almost all are hot, damp, bright, bursting with lazy tropical life, conducive to endless tea breaks and mad, jostling, honking rushes through town to get home before the afternoon downpour. These are the most familiar rains, the violent silver ropes that flood the playing fields and force office workers to wade to bus stops in shoes that fill like buckets. Blustering and melodramatic, the afternoon rains cause traffic jams at once terrible -- choked with the black smoke of lorries and the screeching brakes of schoolbuses -- and beautiful: aglow with winding lanes of watery yellow headlights that go on forever, with blue streetlamps reflected in burgeoning puddles, with the fluorescent melancholy of empty roadside stalls. Every day appears to begin with a blaze and end with this deluge, so that past and present and future run together in an infinite, steaming river.
In truth, though, there are days that do not blaze and rains less fierce. Under a certain kind of mild morning drizzle the very earth breathes slow and deep. Mist rises from the dark treetops on the limestone hills outside Ipoh town. Grey mist, glowing green hills: on such mornings it is obvious how sharply parts of this land must have reminded the old British rulers of their faraway country.”
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a family whose dysfunction and secrets insidiously consume all of its members, with a narrative that slowly moves backwards to reveal past wounds in layers like geologic events told in rock strata. I found this book to be unrelentingly sad, particularly as it chronicles the experience and interpretations of the family’s children and a very vulnerable servant. Aasha, whose companions are the household’s ghosts, is watchful and vigilant, trailing her silent and closed older sister Uma like a shadow in the desperate hope that she might catch a glimpse of the old Uma, the one who played with her and doted on her, before she loses her to America forever. Uma’s exclusion of her sister and emotional distance from the family is selfish and unforgivable, until the reader reaches the Uma layer and gains insight into her cold self-defense. Other characters are likewise excavated and explored: mother Amma’s bitterness and cruelty, grandmother Paati’s manipulation and willful decline, Chellamservant’s wretchedness, and jovial but perpetually down-on-his-luck Uncle Ballroom. Perhaps most complex of all is father Appa -- we trace his path as he navigates the toxic family dynamic, his children’s adoration-turned-guardedness, and his politically idealist hopes and dreams for the nascent nation of Malaysia, a diverse patchwork of Malays, Indians, and Chinese struggling with identity, belonging, and racial and class issues following independence from the British Empire. These interweaving elements are told with wildly playful and humorous language, breathtaking, visceral descriptions of Malaysia, and a distinct Indian-Malay music and rhythm.The book is too depressing for an unqualified recommendation, but I do admire Ms. Samarasan’s storytelling skill. The family story is too complicated and intricate to assign blame. The Malaysian history is fascinating, and intimately, subtly told, and the language is simply captivating, right from the first page:
“There is, stretching delicate as a bird’s head from the thin neck of Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country called Malaysia. Where it dips its beak in the South China Sea, Singapore hovers like a bubble escaped from its throat. This bird’s head is a springless summerless autumnless winterless land. One day might be a drop wetter or a mite drier than the last, but almost all are hot, damp, bright, bursting with lazy tropical life, conducive to endless tea breaks and mad, jostling, honking rushes through town to get home before the afternoon downpour. These are the most familiar rains, the violent silver ropes that flood the playing fields and force office workers to wade to bus stops in shoes that fill like buckets. Blustering and melodramatic, the afternoon rains cause traffic jams at once terrible -- choked with the black smoke of lorries and the screeching brakes of schoolbuses -- and beautiful: aglow with winding lanes of watery yellow headlights that go on forever, with blue streetlamps reflected in burgeoning puddles, with the fluorescent melancholy of empty roadside stalls. Every day appears to begin with a blaze and end with this deluge, so that past and present and future run together in an infinite, steaming river.
In truth, though, there are days that do not blaze and rains less fierce. Under a certain kind of mild morning drizzle the very earth breathes slow and deep. Mist rises from the dark treetops on the limestone hills outside Ipoh town. Grey mist, glowing green hills: on such mornings it is obvious how sharply parts of this land must have reminded the old British rulers of their faraway country.”
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LibraryThing member Rosareads
A different culture--Malaysia--but the family that's in trouble could be anywhere. The author reveals character slowly and the story evolves unusually as the author returns to an earlier time with each chapter. I found the book engrossing from the first sentence. The author shows exceptional
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creativity in her writing. Show Less
LibraryThing member janeajones
The review by bibliobibuli is so comprehensive and intelligent that there is really nothing I can add except to say I thought that EVENING IS THE WHOLE DAY is a lovely, but ineffably sad book.
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
This novel begins and ends with the departure of Chellam, the doomed and disgraced servant girl the wealthy Rajasekharan family of Ipoh, Malyasia had hired the previous year to care for the demanding Paati (grandmother). During the year of Chellam's stay we come to know and care for the family, and
Central is Aasha, the 6-year old daughter, who, having accepted her mother's rejection and disdain of her, now has to contend with her beloved older sister Uma's withdrawal of her affections and imminent departure for college in the US. Aasha watches and observes her family, with her only companions the ghosts that only she can see and hear. Suresh, Aasha's 11 year old brother, like 11 year old boys the world over, provides comic relief. Then there is Appa, the brilliant Oxford-educated attorney who, to his mother's (Paati's) dismay chose to marry a simple poorly-educated girl, rather than a more modern woman. The years pass, Appa regrets his decision, and is more and more absent from the home. Amma, the mother, has been transformed from a sweet, caring young woman to a social-climbing harridan, with no empathy for plights of her daughters, or for Chellam or Paati.
This beautiful, sad and hopeful book can be characterized by Tolstoy's line that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Samarasan brilliantly tells this family's story against the backdrop of newly-indpendent Malaysia.
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its flawed and damaged members. Central is Aasha, the 6-year old daughter, who, having accepted her mother's rejection and disdain of her, now has to contend with her beloved older sister Uma's withdrawal of her affections and imminent departure for college in the US. Aasha watches and observes her family, with her only companions the ghosts that only she can see and hear. Suresh, Aasha's 11 year old brother, like 11 year old boys the world over, provides comic relief. Then there is Appa, the brilliant Oxford-educated attorney who, to his mother's (Paati's) dismay chose to marry a simple poorly-educated girl, rather than a more modern woman. The years pass, Appa regrets his decision, and is more and more absent from the home. Amma, the mother, has been transformed from a sweet, caring young woman to a social-climbing harridan, with no empathy for plights of her daughters, or for Chellam or Paati.
This beautiful, sad and hopeful book can be characterized by Tolstoy's line that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Samarasan brilliantly tells this family's story against the backdrop of newly-indpendent Malaysia.
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LibraryThing member kaitanya64
This book is actually set in Malaysia, but the main characters are an Indian family. The story involves the death of an elderly woman in the family, and the subsequent dismissal of a servant girl who is held responsible. Through the eyes of the six year old protagonist, Aasha, and occasionally
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other characters, the book swoops backward and forward through time to show the subtle and complicated threads that tie together families in love, loyalty, hatred and deceit. While the book particularly illuminates aspects of its particular setting in time and place, the complications of a postcolonial world, it also examines the complicated division of loyalties within families, particularly immigrant families who feel a special insularity. Show Less
Subjects
Original publication date
2008
ISBN
061887447x / 9780618874477