Familiar people living extraordinary lives
View(s):Anthea Senaratna’s latest collection of short stories, The Flash of Red and Other Stories can be considered a series of fictional sketches of familiar people living extraordinary lives. Flashes of red touch most of the stories in some form of human frailty. So at the outset it appears that the book is full of the grimness of contemporary lives, but the stories cover an emotional spectrum that ranges from dystopian hopelessness to the life-affirming.
Suburban characters dominate the stories, some ordinary, some extraordinary. The trials of the aged and their carers is a recurring concern, presented with sensitivity and understanding that rejects the kind of judgment that is often meted out by social attitudes to both groups. So we have Charlotte resigned to her humdrum existence caring for her mother, Shirley’s stoic acceptance of her duties and her sister’s callousness, and the eponymous Bertie’s reconciliation with his own situation which he realizes is “not so bad after all.” Underlying the stories is a strong sense of morality, the need for simple kindness and understanding for the dependent and the helpless.
Humour in its many forms – playful, ironic, and wicked – is present in the portrayals of the middle-class characters that inhabit most of the stories, from the endearingly stubborn Bertie to the obstreperous Hector who learns his lesson from the most unlikely quarters in “A Tense Situation”. The grimmer stories are fewer but compelling. There is the dystopian “The Scavengers”, in which the comfortable suburban setting is left behind to delve into the lower depths of the city, with its municipal dumps, drug addiction, gangs and violence. More subtle in its grimness is “A Wee Tot”, which gives an ironic twist to the familiar narrative of alcoholism, in which a family is torn apart by the psychological suffering caused by a mother’s addiction.
“The Lost Cousin”, one of the two stories related to the war, refuses to conform to the conventional Sri Lankan war story that focuses directly on violence and death. Instead, it is a refreshingly subtle sketch of how the war affected suburban lives far away from the conflict zone. Of lesser originality is “Lament”, which rather overstates its tragedy.
The writer takes a detour in the countryside for the longest story in the collection, “Crossroads”, which has all the ingredients of a rural tragedy in the evils faced by impoverished farming communities such as drought and crop failure, brutal middlemen and the eternal lure of the distant city. But the story surprises in its refusal to conform to the predictable. Similarly, “The Blue Mug” too, startles the reader with its juxtaposition of revenge, retribution and relief.
Anthea is clearly impatient with the excesses of the super-rich, holding up a couple of rich brats both old and young to ridicule in “Birthday Bash” and “A Tense Situation”. The humour is tempered by the suffering they cause to other people around them, and the stories cleverly bring out the arrogance and the emptiness that excessive wealth brings. However, while “Birthday Bash” certainly does not lack verisimilitude, the portrayals of the haves and the have-nots border on caricature.
The surprise ending is clearly favoured by the writer, and she puts it to use with playfulness in “Caught in the Rain”, and with more traditional seriousness in “Discovery”. This collection might lack the layered subtlety of “The Mango Tree”, the award-winning story in her previous collection of the same name, and there is a vague sense of rushed incompleteness in many of the stories, and a reluctance to make more creative use of the genre. However, Anthea writes with a lively confidence that translates well into a robust story-telling style, presenting an impressively broad spectrum of contemporary lives.
Book facts
A Flash of Red and Other Stories, by Anthea Senaratna. Reviewed by Dinali Fernando