BOOK REVIEW | spring 2008
Gail Tsukiyama
Love Marriage
By V.V. Ganeshananthan
Random House
IN SPARE, LYRICAL PROSE, V.V.
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. At the heart of the story
is American-born Yalini, 22, the only
child of Tamil immigrants. Her father
eventually becomes a doctor, her
mother a teacher; they
make their new life in
the United States.
Even so, Yalini feels
bound to “the laws of
ancestry and society.”
Born during “Black
July” of 1983, the beginning
of the civil
war between the
Tamil and Sinhalese,
Yalini is haunted by
Sri Lanka’s political
turmoil, caught between
the political
and social traditions of her ancestors
and the modern world in which she
lives. She can’t forget that in a Sri Lankan family there are only two
ways to wed, in an Arranged Marriage
or a Love Marriage, even though she
knows that “in reality, there is a whole
spectrum in between, but most of us
spend years running away from the
first toward the second.”
Uncertain what to do with her life,
Yalini takes time off from school and
travels to Toronto to help her parents
care for her dying Uncle Kumaran,
her mother’s older brother, who immigrated
to Canada. He was once a
militant Tamil Tiger rebel who killed
many people, including other Tamils,
and seeing him brings Yalini face to
face with the political strife in Sri
Lanka. With him is his 18-year-old
daughter, Jenani, who has chosen to
marry a Tamil operative in Toronto
and continue the struggle for a Sri
Lankan separatist state. While Jenani
is determined in her beliefs and goals,
Yalini still struggles to find her way.
Through conversations with her
uncle and parents, Yalini transcribes
the many stories of her family and
their political allegiances through each
generation of marriage. Doing so, she
begins to understand the spectrum
that fills the void between Arranged
Marriage and Love Marriage. She
learns of her Uncle Neelan, who espoused
the “enemy,” a Sinhalese girl
who protected him when the
Sinhalese-Tamil riots began; of her
Great-Aunt Harini, who was abused
in a marriage to a “wrong” man; of her
Aunt Uma, who was too “special” to
get married. Above all, it’s her Uncle
Kumaran, who found love “under the
strain of politics,” who helps her see
that she can only “cure the future by
knowing the past.”
Love Marriage covers the decades
of these family stories in brief vignettes,
a style that can feel fragmented
and cause some character
confusion. Still, this is a minor complaint
about an otherwise powerful
story. Ganeshananthan shows us that
most of us live in the “whole spectrum
in between.” While Yalini may
or may not find a love marriage, it’s in
understanding her family history that
she’s finally free to choose.
GAIL TSUKIYAMA’s latest novel, The
Street of a Thousand Blossoms (St.
Martin’s Press), will be out in paperback
in August.
Create and share your own reviews at goodreads.com |