I loved this story. I feel guilty that I have never heard of this civil war in Sri Lanka or the plight of the Tamil people. It is a story of what happens when a minority group is treated as second-class citizens. It's similar to what's happening in Myanmar, Palestine, the Sudan, and many other places worldwide. This particular story focuses on women and their roles as civilians while being related to terrorists and resistance fighters. This book would be an excellent choice for a book club.

This was a great book about a topic I've not read anything about prior. Emotional, tense, sad, and informative, it gives a unique portrayal of life in a time of a brutal civil war, exploring the tough choices people, especially women, have to make every single day. While I really liked the writing style and certain narrative techniques used, it also contributed to certain parts of the book not having as big of an emotional impact on me as I'd expect given the subject matter!

Current Women's Prize 2024 Fiction Shortlist rankings:

1.  Brotherless Night
2. River East, River West
3. Soldier Sailor
4. Restless Dolly Maunder

This was an intense and evocative look into the Sri Lankan civil war from the perspective of one woman, whose life and family were torn apart by it.

The narrative takes a journalistic approach to storytelling, to the point that I felt I was reading a factual eye-witness account of the horrors of the past. Despite the first-person POV, the narrative is pointedly lacking in human emotion and reaction. The recounting of events is direct, so no facts or details are hidden or sugarcoated to protect the reader. This makes for a heavy read as things go from bad to worse, with little reprieve. These aren’t criticisms — in fact, I felt it was a deliberate and powerful choice to convey the story in this way. The narrator experiences unspeakable losses within her own family and witnesses many more atrocities of war. The only way she can tell the truth — which is her aim from the beginning — is to remove much of the heightened emotion she must be feeling.

There is less dialogue than I would expect to find in a novel, but the nature of the plot allows for it. I’m not sure this narrative style is necessarily for me, but it’s refreshing to read something different. I learned a lot about Sri Lanka’s recent history and politics which I found really interesting. The novel spans about 30 years, but follows the narrator and the decisions made by those around her, rather than taking a wider lens to the world at the time. It was particularly poignant then when the author brings in the United Nations towards the end of the novel — after so much ‘avoidable’ conflict and death, the UN’s ambivalence towards civilians’ lives was the final nail in the coffin of what was a horrific and drawn-out war. I was shocked to discover the conflict was still going on in 2009. An informative read if your history education was as white-washed and colonised as mine.

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy Moth by Melody Razak for similar tone of voice and the depiction of war through one family's experience.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free e-arc in exchange for an honest review

TW: war, death, murder, child death, rape, violence, sexual violence, fire, blood/gore, injury detail, kidnapping, torture, genocide, grief, suicide, animal