With a mother who didn’t acknowledge what happened, the protagonist recreated memories in which she minimized the devastating abuse she suffered. Sri Lankans, at least the older generations, attach way too much value to virginity and treat sex as a taboo subject, so I didn’t find it hard to believe the protagonist’s story would have unfolded the way it did. However, probably because the protagonist is a Sri Lankan girl, it hit me harder than I expected. The story looks into child abuse and the role of parental denial – themes that I’ve encountered in other books. Her childhood had been a fairly happy one until a personal tragedy shattered her life, and these shadows of her past continue to haunt her even after she moves thousands of miles away from “home.”Įven though What Lies Between Us is beautifully written, it was a difficult read for me. In this “confession,” the protagonist recounts her life from the time she was a little girl growing up in Kandy, an idyllic hill city in Sri Lanka as an only child of a doting father and a reclusive mother. This young woman remains unnamed for the most part of the novel, and the story is a confession of sorts told from the confines of her cell where she is incarcerated for murdering her toddler daughter. What Lies Between Us is a heart-wrenching story written by Nayomi Munaweera in which a young Sri Lankan woman living in the US is the protagonist.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |