The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam

Published by Flatiron Books on September 6, 2016

Like any account of war, particularly a civil war that arises out of ethnic conflict, brutal images dominate The Story of a Brief Marriage. Dinesh is in a refugee camp with other Sri Lankans, including children and adults who have lost limbs to shelling and mines. Bombs have flattened the hospitals, so doctors without surgical instruments or anesthetics perform swift amputations with kitchen knives. Dinesh transports the wounded and buries the dead. Staying in the camp, he hopes, will help him avoid involuntary recruitment by the movement.

The camp’s de facto administrator is a former school principal who lost his wife and son in the war. Since life is precarious, he feels a duty to arrange the marriage of his daughter, assuring that someone will take care of her in the event of his death. He decides that Dinesh has the intelligence and character to make him a good match for Ganga. Dinesh is not certain that he is in a position to take care of anyone, but he swallows his reservations and accepts the marriage as a matter of duty.

Humans are capable of astonishing horrors. It is always worth reading books like The Story of a Brief Marriage to be reminded of the senseless, wasteful, and tragic nature of ethnic conflict. The novel is relatively short, which I appreciate when the subject matter is so depressing. It is nevertheless important for people who have no personal exposure to ethnic conflict to gain an understanding of those conflicts from the personal accounts of others, fictional or otherwise.

Unfortunately, the atmosphere created in The Story of a Brief Marriage is stronger than the story it tells. In fact, the title tells the story -- more an incident than a story -- and much of the book’s content seems like filler as the reader waits for the inevitable end to arrive.

Some of the author’s choices of content are strange. The pages devoted to Dinesh’s effort to take a satisfying dump, like the pages devoted to Dinesh’s memories of a dying gecko, I could have lived without. A long stretch during the middle pages, during which Dinesh walks around in the dark and washes clothes while thinking about his life, is inexplicably dull. This is followed by two chapters that are only slightly less dull as Dinesh lies next to Ganga and wonders about their future. Writers can use soaring prose to make contemplative passages memorable, but the simple elegance of Anuk Arudpragasam’s writing style isn’t enough to overcome the weakness of the storytelling.

Any honest book about ethnic content (and The Story of a Brief Marriage is undeniably honest) is enlightening, to a degree. I am tempted not to say anything bad about a novel that addresses such an important subject. Still, this novel struck me as less enlightening than others of its kind. I can recommend the first half for its compelling atmosphere but the second half failed to sustain my interest.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS