The marriage and the novel are both brief; but the story is as long as civilization.

Behind the photos of refugees that we see in the news there are people trying to live lives. To do normal things. Big things like marrying. Small things like having a meal together.

The grief is beyond tears.

Read this book! I mean, LISTEN! ( )

Not surprising that a Sri Lankan author should choose to place a novel in the context of the civil war. But really that situation is as much opportunisitc as relevant. The book is a meditative one. The principal character, Dinesh, spends as much time in contemplation and meditation as much as in action. He is acutely aware of his body rather than his surroundings. It is as though the author is taking the first lesson of meditation technique as his plot. Breath in, breath out, be aware only of the breath entering your nostrils. And as you meditate inevitably the mind wanders a little and recalls events in your life or ponders problems and incidents you had forgotten. So the marriage and the war are incidental rather than the core of the writing. ( )

Four and a half stars.

This was such an excellent read. It was visceral and immediate, and although it dragged in a few small places, I highly recommend it to everyone (except maybe people with PTSD).

The one part I disliked immensely was the ending--Ganga dying instead of Dinesh. He spent the entire book acknowledging that death was only a few days or weeks away; the marriage proposal was the only thing in his life since leaving home that really shook him out of the fugue that developed as a result of the war and the constant death surrounding him.

We don't know if Ganga was resigned to dying. While I fully understand why the author killed Ganga instead of Dinesh, and accept that doing so really drove home the injustice of the world, the story had primed me to expect that Dinesh would die at the end. To have that expectation subverted disturbed me and, frankly, made me angry as only a reader who feels cheated can feel. ( )

This is a compelling storyline and there are some beautiful sentences here, but I did not enjoy the writing overall. I felt that there was too much exposition. The story was too close to the character, almost like a stream of consciousness narrative. ( )

*I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Very well-written with a keen attention to detail. Everyday activities that many take for granted, including personal hygiene and grooming, as well as various injuries, settings, and feelings, are precisely documented. The subject of the refugee camp during a tumultuous time in Sri Lanka is heavy material, but the author never lets the book get too depressing. There were a few times towards the end of the book where my flow in the reading was disrupted due to extremely long sentences that I had to read and reread a few times, but other than that, I really enjoyed this book. ( )

Recently I saw a quote by Virginia Woolf, from A Room of One's Own, about novels with integrity, and I realised it could also work as an accurate description of this book. This book affords its characters, especially the main character Dinesh through whom we see this war-ravaged slice of world, dignity. I think there is an ethics to this careful, precise, philosophical writing. That anyone who writes like this must consistently value the moral in process of creation and the responsibility that comes with it. I realise this is a slippery slope, to attribute some quality to the author of these words as though the author and the words are one. I remind myself that all art is artifice and language, especially when artfully constructed, can deceive us. But I also want to believe in the conscience at work behind truthful writing. Otherwise, what is the point of writing and reading?

A longer piece that I wrote for Pop Matters is available here. ( )

It took a while for me to recover after coming to the devastating end of this extraordinary short novel. I knew what was coming – it is called The Story of a Brief Marriage after all – and from the very first pages when Dinesh, a Sri Lankan evacuee during the Sri Lankan civil war, moves across a blasted landscape with a gravely injured child in his arms, I knew this story could not end well. But it is so exquisitely crafted, and the character of Dinesh so powerfully wrought, that the reader comes to share his tentative hopes.
Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, The Story of a Brief Marriage is Anuk Arudpragasam’s first novel. It tells the story of how Dinesh, over the course of a day and a night, moves from a state of numb acceptance of having lost everything, to a hesitant awakening. The story begins in a refugee camp, one of many which has formed as the civilians try to flee being caught between government forces and what is always referred to as ‘the movement’, which I take to mean the Tamil Tigers. As the conflict draws in, the refugees are crushed towards the coast, and although Dinesh seems not much more than a boy, there is a constant risk that – if he isn’t killed by the shelling – as an able-bodied male he will be captured and enlisted to fight for the movement.
‘Able-bodied’ is a relative term. He has not slept for days, and he has not eaten. He shed no tears when his mother was killed. But he is strong enough in body to help with bringing the injured to what little help is available. This is the confronting first paragraph, indicative of pages that made me put the book aside sometimes, to walk outside in the garden to hear the carefree laughter of the children next door:

Most children have two whole legs and two whole arms but this little six-year-old that Dinesh was carrying had already lost one leg, the right one from the lower thigh down, and was now about to lose his right arm. Shrapnel had dissolved his hand and forearm into a soft, formless mass, spilling to the ground from some parts, congealing in others, and charred everywhere else. Three of the fingers had been fully detached, where they were now it was impossible to tell, and the two remaining still, the index finger and thumb, were dangling from the hand by very slender threads. They swayed uncertainly in the air, tapping each other quietly, till arriving at last in the operating area Dinesh knelt to the ground, and laid the boy out carefully on an empty tarpaulin. His chest, it seemed, was hardly moving. His eyes were closed, and his face was calm, unknowing. That he was not in the best of conditions there could be no doubt, but all that mattered for the time being was that the boy was safe. Soon the doctor would arrive and the operation would be done, and in no time at all the arm would be as nicely healed as the already amputated thigh. (p.1)

(I could not read this book at night at all. I read Rod Usher’s light-hearted Poor Man’s Wealth instead. More about that later).
It is in this calm, detached tone, that Arudpragasam relates a story that most of us cannot possibly imagine, even though we see images from war zones on our TV screens all the time. As the shelling of the camp continues, an old man approaches Dinesh, asking if he will consent to marry his daughter Ganga.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/01/18/the-story-of-a-brief-marriage-by-anuk-arudpr... ( )

Review originally published on my blog Musings of a Bookish Kitty: http://www.literaryfeline.com/2017/02/bookish-thoughts-story-of-brief.html

The Story of a Brief Marriage by Aunk Arudpragasam
Flatiron Books, 2016
Fiction; 208 pgs

The Story of a Brief Marriage first came to my attention when it arrived in My Lit Box subscription the end of last year. I was able to fit it in as my last book read of 2016, and what a read it was! In the novel, Sri Lanka has been in civil war for decades and the army has pushed the Tamil minority up against the coast. Dinesh, one refugee among many, has been on the run for so long that he barely remember his life before--and yet, what he does remember is worlds away from where he is now. It was as if he had been a different person. So much has changed. Now, he is numb and surviving the best he can. He is going through the motions.

Something inside Dinesh awakens when he is approached with a marriage proposal. When was the last time he had family of his own? He longs to be needed and the desire to protect and care for another human being grows in him the more he considers the proposal. Ganga is reluctant to marry Dinesh. She had just lost her mother and brother two weeks before. Dinesh wonders at the father's motives for wanting to marry off his daughter, but in a way, he understands.

We really do not get to know Ganga's full story, which I wish we could have seen more into. This is all Dinesh's story, however. At the start of the novel, he is helping an injured boy--we see over the course of the novel that Dinesh is a caring and thoughtful human being. There is a scene with a crow that offers the reader a deeper glimpse at Dinesh's mindset over the course of the novel. Ganga's reaction is how I might have reacted, but Dinesh offers a different perspective, about life and holding onto it as long as we can, no matter how painful.

I can't even imagine being in a situation like Dinesh and Ganga. In a scene near the end, there is a boy standing and staring, not reacting in the middle of a missile attack, and I thought of the photo of the little boy in Aleppo, numb and not crying, that was all over the media last year. Like him, so many in this situation are numb to what goes on around them, having to always live in fear. It comes down to just trying to survive: to eat and sleep and even relieving oneself.

Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage is beautifully written. It takes place over a 24 hour time period and is just over 200 pages, but is not a quick read. It is detailed and contemplative. The novel is an experience more than it is a story. I felt the numbness and desperation of the characters. I felt raw inside. Everything we do and have--what we often take for granted--how easy to forget how many advantages we have. How little we really need. How unimportant it all is, especially when in situation like Dinesh and Ganga, where survival is all they can focus on. The Story of a Brief Marriage is a reminder of how fragile we all are, and yet how resilient we can be. It is also the story of how war can rip us bear and leave us raw. We keep going, surviving in the worst of circumstances because we have to. ( )

This is pretty short - less than 200 pages - but a powerful read in those few pages. The Sri Lankan author sets his novel at the end of the recent conflict in the country. Dinesh is a young man (around 18) in anew informal refugee camp between Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state army who are on the point of overrunning them. It's clear the situation is hopeless. The question is not if death will come but when. The first scene, where Dinesh witnesses a brutal amputation as the doctors have run out of medical supplies, sets the tone for the book: if it had been a film I would have looked away consistently throughout. Despite this brutality, the novel is beautifully written: the author shows the numbing effect of pain and loss, as well as the desperate circle around the drain of refugees forced by war into progressively more awful circumstances.

This quote is taken from near the end of the novel, where the author seems to take a step back and acknowledge the artificial nature of the writing process, trying to recreate the horror of young men and women's experiences,
"There were events after which, no matter how long or intimately one has tried to be by their side, no matter how earnestly or with how much self-reproach one desires to understand their situation, how meticulously one tries to imagine and infer it from one's own experiences, one has no choice but to watch blindly from the outside." ( )

short, depressing book about Sri Lanka civil war. Author appears to be a wealthy, self-serving ("getting a degree in Philosophy at Columbia, but he's not really interested in philosophy--just a way to remain a student) user of other people's miseries towards his own ends. ( )

A beautifully written story about the life of a refugee in Sri Lanka. I'll admit that for the first couple of chapters I was not really feeling the book. The author takes what most people would consider a simple action and turns it into paragraph after paragraph of description. But then something just clicked and I felt a real connection to the main character and his journey. I highly recommend to give this book a chance if you aren't enjoying it at first.

Dinesh has had everything taken from him including his family, home, and possessions as war takes place in his country. While at a refugee camp he is introduced to a father that asks him to marry his young daughter. This book takes place over the course of one 24 hour period.

I wish I was as good of a writer as the author so I could better describe how much beauty this book possesses despite also showcasing the horrors of war.

I won this book in a giveaway and that is my fair and honest review. ( )

This compelling story of love and death among Tamil refugees during the Sri Lankan Civil War is told in a time defying style that makes the reader momentarily forget what a short period of time actually passes. Stunning.

Free copy from publisher through Goodreads First Reads program. ( )

This sparse yet meticulously elegant debut novel allows the reader walk in Dinesh’s shoes, a Tamil evacuee of the Sri Lankan Civil War for twenty-four hours where life span is measured in minutes.
Three words came to mind when I finished the last page – unflinching, scathing, heart weary.
Unflinching as the author did not allow me from the first page to look away from the intricate steps to perform basic human functions. As I was snuggled comfortably in my bed with my connecting bathroom, I read what goes through Dinesh’s mind as he goes about wanting to have a bowel movement – he needs to find a perfect spot that will not make him a target for violence, needs to prepare the spot and then hope that his body remembers how to defecate as he has not eaten but a few grains of rice in a couple of days.
Scathing in that bombing are a constant several times a day – have dehumanized humanity into a cycle cowing and silence as the author brilliantly uses Dinesh as an “Everyman” to touch the reader’s heart and soul.
Heart weary in that this storyline is being replayed in too many times and places.
I was captured by Arudpragasm’s quiet meditative tone and poetic language that contrasts with the horrific and despair to deliver a powerfully poignant testament to the human spirit.
The Story of a Brief Marriage is an impressive debut and I look forward to reading future works by the author. ( )

Eerie. Brutal. Devastating. Quiet. Hypnotic. Intensely physical. Philosophical. Hyper-aware. All these words describe The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam. The writing is wonderfully detailed in its physical descriptions but is definite not for the squeamish. This bleak book about death set in the Sri Lankan civil war leaves me with a reminder of how precious life is and of how much we take for granted.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2016/09/the-story-of-brief-marriage.html.

Reviewed based on a publisher’s galley received through NetGalley. ( )