Capturing the life trajectories of females
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The Atrophied Wife, authored by M.T.L. Ebell, is a narrative of two sisters—and inevitably!—of females. The novel follows the trajectories of the two sisters, Minuri and Suni, as they negotiate school, home, partners and children. Watching them as they negotiate life is the socio-political-economic commotions of the nation, from the early seventies to the Easter bomb attacks.
Both sisters are drawn into their existence via their interaction with students and teachers at school, where they discover social preconceptions that will make or break them as well as the identities that eagerly await their subjectivity and participation as they leave school. Family politics and adult conflicts moderate and shape the worldview of the sisters as they are ushered into the world of grand performance, intense ambiguity and ethical pandemonium. It is in this world where the sisters find themselves struggling with events whose socially accepted and approved meanings collapse into nothingness, at times without a warning; it is in this world where the sisters need to find solace and comfort to keep their sanity as they are tossed and thrown about by events of their creation and events imposed upon them; it is in this world that the sisters have to learn how to be ‘in’ the world and ‘not in’ the world at the same time.
The novel offers a flawless narrative of the lives of the sisters and their parents and partners. Time flows with ease between the pages as a reader is granted panoramic views of their lives—the novel captures the essence of time and space on the lives of the two females with simple and effective language that seems determined to move the narrative forward. This is one of the biggest merits of the novel: it tells the story and makes every effort to move the plot towards an order (or disorder!).
Yet, at the same time, this plot-moving skill of the novel is what restricts its scope. Firstly, the characters of the novel are largely dissociated from the socio-economic-political events of the nation that shaped the psyches of some of those who experienced it. This same absence has flowed into its characters, in the sense that we hardly get an inner account of their thoughts, wills and intentions. For example, Suni’s husband Michael is ethically destructive, sexually perverse—and the author does not probe deep into his dark and disturbing psychosis and prefers to take these attributes for granted. Moira moves between sanity and borderline insanity – the author leaves her as herself. A metaphorical probe into humanity is what makes a novel stand out as an individual work of art and disrupts the consciousness of the reader. The novel needs a blurb, so that a potential reader knows what to expect.
At the same time, Sinhala syntax spoken by people need not be reproduced verbatim –Lankan writers have demonstrated how they could be portrayed using an English language of our own. Also, this Eurasian family featured in the novel needs a powerful cultural context to make them ‘real’ so that as sensitive readers we can feel their heartbeat.
Despite these concerns, this novel is a beautiful attempt to portray the life trajectories of females as they go through laughter and lacks, and as they deal with their condition of existential ‘atrophy’ – as the author declared at the beginning, the events that are seemingly shocking are culled in from a ‘reality’ – and the novel makes a brave attempt to portray how two females negotiate such harsh realities.
The Atrophied Wife is available at Vijitha Yapa, Barefoot and Sarasavi bookshops.
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