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gilnean's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide attempt, and Abandonment
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Pregnancy
apurvanagpal's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.5
It’s been days since I finished reading The Story Of A Brief Marriage but I absolutely can’t stop thinking about it! There’s still a lingering presence of Anuk Arudpragasam’s words, a quiet meditative and poetic quality that despite the tense setting let’s you embody his character’s space, defenceless against his vivid attention to detail.
Set over the course of a single day, nearing the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War, the story follows Dinesh, who’s living in a makeshift shelter near a refugee camp after he was forced to leave his home and lost his family moving between camps. On this particular day, an elderly man approaches him and proposes that he marry his daughter Ganga, thinking that it’d bring some kind of security to them both. Under the circumstances the suggestion though absurd, felt slightly reassuring to Dinesh, thinking about sharing space with another human being after so long.
What unfolds is a careful exploration of the human mind and body in the aftermath of trauma; how we perceive and survive when there’s death all around, how our thoughts become loud and we suddenly become too aware of the inner functioning of the body, detached from the outer world.
Words that lie unspoken between Dinesh and Ganga hang in the air above them like the inevitable danger looming at the end of every hour and it makes Dinesh lose a sense of reality, trying to hold on to the brief ray of hope, stuck between a past that seems too far away and a future that promises nothing but uncertainty.
As with my previous brush with Anuk’s writing in A Passage North, his stories draw so much from the political backdrop it’s set against, without letting that take away from the character’s line of story and I thought it was beautifully done and devastating at the same time.
The only thing that kept me from entirely loving it was perhaps how it ‘dragged’ a little in between, Anuk’s long sentences and his too precise account of every bodily sensation that Dinesh was experiencing.
Apart from that, it’s exceptional how it has managed to capture layers of tender and harsh moments intricately woven within a 24 hour time frame.
Heartbreaking, poignant and deeply moving!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and War