Reviews with content warning for Suicide - A Passage North

A Passage North is a beautifully written reflection on trauma, grief, memory, and love, set largely within the mind of Krishan, a young professional, as he travels across Sri Lanka to attend a funeral in a remote village.
Arudpragasam's writing is wordy, but never unnecessarily so, such that it allows him to communicate complex, often difficult to express ideas with stunning beauty.
"What for lack of a better word was sometimes called love, he had realized that night, was not so much a relation between to people in and of themselves as a relation between two people and the world they were witness to, a world whose surfaces and exteriors gradually began to dissipate as the two individuals sank deeper and deeper into what was called their love."

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rosibook's review against another edition

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informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

3.75

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jayisreading's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

5.0

You can say so much about A Passage North, and not one word will be enough to describe how beautiful and meditative this book is. I should start and say that this book is absolutely not for everyone. It’s incredibly slow-paced, it meanders, a single sentence/thought can go on for an entire paragraph, and some may find it too erudite for their taste (which is completely fair).

The opening passage—a “mere” three sentences long that spans two pages—makes clear what’s in store for the reader in terms of pacing, approach, and writing style. And, for me, it was one of the most beautiful opening passages I’ve read in a long while. Arudpragasam writes in such a reflective and thought-provoking way that just stays with you from start to end. Reading this book is a moving experience told from the perspective of Krishan, the protagonist, whose thoughts wander off to philosophical ideas of being, death, desire, love, among other themes. Philosophical ideas themselves are difficult to tackle, and yet, Arudpragasam masterfully ties them to Tamil history to also reflect on their grief and trauma stemming from the Sri Lankan Civil War.

A Passage North is as much a philosophical lesson as it is a history lesson. It will make you pause and reflect on what you just read. And, really, it’s incredible to realize that so much thinking can take place in the span of a train ride, which is the case for Krishan, who was on his way north to his grandmother’s caretaker’s funeral. This journey was as poignant for me as it likely was for the protagonist.

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harshibuvan's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I found this book breathtakingly beautiful with the imagery and stories. At the same time it broke my heart reading the plight of the Tamil people that I would have been a part of it my parents hadn't left Srilanka. There’s something chilling about reading about murder in a book, with the sense that it was a part of history, that it happened way before you were born, and then talking about it with your parents who tell you they remember reading it in the newspapers when they were young adults.

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strabbyfieldz's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

a collection of thoughts, themes and ideas presented just like the echos of memory. loved the reference to mythological stories contrasted with the historical events that occurred.

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serinalovesreading's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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dinojah's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Perhaps he was wrong to think of lamentation in terms of sincerity or insincerity, that perhaps the crying and wailing and sobbing all around him was intended not as an expression of emotion but as a kind of service offered to the bereaves, a performance in some sense but a performance that, together with the drums and the rituals, was meant only to help the bereaves with their own lamentation, to ease out, like the calm rhythmic words and from kneading hands of a midwife during a difficult birth, the tears that the bereaves so often found impossible to bring out by themselves.

Even now he felt ashamed thinking about his initial reluctance to acknowledge the magnitude of what had happened at the end of the war, as though he's been hesitant to believe the evidence on his computer screen because his own poor, violated, stateless people were the ones alleging it, as though he's been unable to take the suffering of his own people seriously till it was validated by the authority of foreign experts, legitimized by a documentary narrated by a clean-shaven white man standing in front of a camera in a suit and tie.

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