She has grown up in a war zone and knows no other life but that of soldiers, barbed wire, and young men that never return to their families. I wish her section was not started so late in the book. Much later in the book we hear the voice of Saraswathi. We had not imagined such munificence was possible, that there were so many ways one could clean a countertop, so many specialized ways of wiping an ass." Ha! How true is that?! But Yasodhara and her sister, Lanka, or La, are not satisfied with life in America and will eventually return to their home to help those left stranded and orphaned by the war. On their first visit to the supermarket, Yasodhara proclaims "At the supermarket what riches greet our eyes! What mounds of dew-dripping, perfectly formed vegetables… Mountains of tangerines, sparkling red onions, bloodless meat.
The author’s portrayal of their efforts to understand and assimilate into the American culture is well done – often moving and sometimes quite humorous. Yasodhara’s family will opt to leave their homeland and escape to America where they must try to fit in. We meet Shiva, the Tamil boy that lives upstairs from the Rajasinghes his family lives in fear as the conflict between groups escalates outside the safety of the four walls of their home. We glimpse forbidden love and perhaps squirm at the custom and sorrow of arranged marriages. But before this happens, we learn a lot about Yasodhara Rajasinghe and her parents and grandparents. We quickly learn that the two ethnic groups clash, ultimately leading to war. The story is narrated by two daughters, Yasodhara the Sinhalese and Saraswathi the Tamil. I was then jolted into the shocking scenes of brutality and often graphic violence of the war. As a reader, I could easily envision the bright colors, the sounds and the mouth-watering market smells of the island.
A remarkable debut by Nayomi Munaweera, this novel is beautifully written, juxtaposing the stunning landscape of this island country with its ravaging horrors of a civil war. Island of a Thousand Mirrors is an intense and vivid portrait of a piece of Sri Lankan history that I was relatively unfamiliar with before reading this. 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." "Sometimes I get this breathless feeling that the war is a living creature, something huge, with a pointed tongue and wicked claws.
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