Every month we get together with a few fellow readers to chat about our monthly bookclub book. It's a vastly mixed group - which we love - and never fails to bring both lighthearted thoughts and in depth questions to the last Sunday evening of every month.
This month we read The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasm. We covered Arudpragasms second book, A Passage North, in an early bookclub in 2023 when it was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The Story of a Brief Marriage is Arudpragasms debut novel, written in 2016 while completing his PhD in philosophy in New York
The book won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Internationaler Literaturpreis
This book came highly recommended by one of our regular bookclubbers, Philip, who rated it as a “mini-masterpiece” (as did the Financial Times.) Based on that claim, we thought we better have a read!
Whats it about?
The Story of a Brief Marriage follows 24 hours in the life of Dinesh, a Tamil evacuee residing in a refugee camp in the midst of the Sri Lankan civil war. Having lost everything Dinesh is seemingly numbed to violence and in initial stages of trauma. An older gentleman approached Dinesh and proposes he marry his daughter, Ganga. Accepting the offer, we follow the young couple rediscover intimacy and human connection amidst devastating trauma and terrifying dependency.
What we thought?
Conversation throughout the evening was adorned with unanimous admiration and respect for the book and author.
The exceptional and standout element for everyone was the writing style; the long and detailed descriptions, the sentiment in the reflections on humanity and the metaphors used to explain scenes which one would believe to have no words to describe. The group found the harrowing telling of a human experience in war real, moving and for some, triggering. It made us think of those who have lived through wars, some felt significant empathy for those caught up in war today - in many ways, it could have been any war.
We felt that the detail the author gave to small, meaningless tasks, such as having a shower, bought humility to indescribable destruction. In contrast, the authors skipped over quite harrowing scenes of war, spending just a few sentences on the death of the protagonists mother, or the sight of families violently losing children. In doing this we concluded he is acknowledging that there are no words for such events.
A comment from one bookclubber pointed out that one can pick this book up at almost any point and lose themselves in the imagery and description. This also nods towards the fact there is very little plot, which we all agreed was not important here and the books short length contributed to keeping one engaged without storyline development. The author indicates the ending in the title and so its not something your waiting for throughout.
Characterisation also plays a fairly minor role in that we learn very little about any personalities. What we do get the sense of, through the behaviour and thoughts of both Dinesh and Ganga, is how people deal with and processes trauma. The author makes the irrational behaviours and choices of characters understandable through the lens of trauma.
In Conclusion
This books foundations are cemented with philosophy and structure is built by evoking vivid imagery. The result is a moving and touching story. We think that the book would be appreciated and loved by anyone looking to be in awe of a distinctive and visceral writing style