There’s a deceptively simple scene in Amma, the debut novel of Saraid de Silva, that says much about relationships, family history and all their complex dynamics. The gentle unfolding during a meal of Sri Lankan takeaways reveals (among other insights) that nobody in the family has picked up any culinary skills from Josephina, the Amma of the title: she always shooed everyone out of the kitchen when cooking.
Amma never learnt how to cook from her own mother but she did from Inesh Uncle and Suji Aunty, two siblings she boarded with when she arrived in Colombo in 1968. They gave her a sense of security she never felt from her parents, conveyed through their cooking sessions.
“The siblings are teaching her how to cook. Every afternoon when Josephina returns home, she ties her hair with a scarf, washes her hands and face and goes to the kitchen where Inesh Uncle and her carer Ranil are waiting.”
Told from the perspective of Josephina, her daughter Sithara and granddaughter Annie, the overarching narrative stretches around the circuitous stitching and unravelling within whakapapa, of what reverberates and remains of three generations of one family and of what scatters in the storm.
Josephina’s parents are determined to marry her off at the age of 14 and tacitly allow a rapist free rein during what they consider a promising transaction.
Sithara endures a bleak childhood in Invercargill where she suffers the loss of her beloved father at an early age and later falls into a relationship with a violent husband.
Annie struggles with her family’s propensity for secrets, their attitudes to her as a young queer woman, and how much she has lost in not having her uncle Suri, who is also gay, alongside her while growing up.
The diaspora experience is multifaceted and exploratory, its characters continually examining their shifting identity as they move between continents. Although Josephina’s husband Ravi is a restless spirit, the civil war in Sri Lanka adds a significant ingredient to the decision to leave.
“Ravi finds Karnan’s trust in their government embarrassing. Josephina suspects Karnan would like her more if she weren’t Tamil. But all of them join in on complaining about the British.”
Sithara longs to escape the stifling confines of Invercargill; in 2018, Annie does just that, departing for London to start afresh.
De Silva’s mostly clipped sentences and economical dialogue lend a sharp immediacy to the narrative, though at times the pithiness bursts into technicolour bloom, such as, “Josephina has light eyes that are the exact same colour as a pile of gold. She has full lips that curve upwards and eyebrows that are a world unto their own.” If it’s unclear that these descriptors are there to determine the reaction of people in Josephina’s midst or not, a phrase slapped on to a minor character leaves us in no doubt: “She is like Amma – someone whose beauty undoes the world she moves through.”
More detail in other areas instead would have been welcome, such as Annie’s formative time in London or the aftermath of a (presumably fatal) car crash, an incident that ends abruptly and is barely referred to again.
Ultimately Amma is about finding your inner being through its skilful examination of intergenerational relationships and the impact of geography on identity. In one crucial moment in Sigiriya in 1978, Josephina makes a terrible choice that destroys one person’s life and forever damages her relationship with her son Suri.
Josephina’s core shift in her later years, reveals itself in a way that is evident when Annie comes out to her. It’s a satisfying and nuanced change of heart for her and a marked contrast from Suri’s brutal experience.
