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A review by archytas
Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
"Why, you ask, has no one heard of our nation’s greatest cricketer? Here, in no particular order. Wrong place, wrong time, money and laziness. Politics, racism, power cuts, and plain bad luck. If you are unwilling to follow me on the next God-knows-how-many pages, re-read the last two sentences. They are as good a summary as I can give from this side of the bottle."
This is a long novel, whose meandering is more the point than a distraction. Set in the 1990s, Karunatilaka channels W.G. Karunasena, a mid-60s alcoholic and cricket writer who is obsessively chasing down the story of the mysterious 1980s Tamil cricketer Pradeep Mathew, both out of a deep love of the game and its world and out of an inability to think about what else might matter. Mathew's story is deliberately mythic - the more W.G. digs the most fantastical the claims become - and his story almost, but never quite, becomes the story of the country itself.
The book is filled with references which bring joy when you use them to draw inferences - there is history, literature and even dense musical references. Much of the book is written in cricket, a language I am completely without. My father watched the Benson and Hedges 1985 World series in our living room - a key setting of the book - which at least means the names and rough roles of the players were familiar to me. But the significance of a double-bounce, or a ball on the line, which here carry much information about character and setting, were all too often lost on me. For cricket enthusiasts who also love literature, I strongly suspect this is the read of a lifetime. Even as a non-cricket-literate, it was pretty special.
This is simply because Karunatilaka brings his characters so deeply to life. These are not softened people - one of WG's closest friends may or may not be a pedophile, WG is a frankly terrible father and doesn't know it, racist and sexist jokes abound. But they are deeply human, and Karunatilaka extends that humanity to corrupt cricket officials, LTTE enforcers, match fixers and more (not, I will say, to Australian cricketers or commentators. These are pretty uniformly presented as arseholes - the second portrayal for me in so many weeks of Australian sporting dominance as a gross mix of wealthy country privilege and unashamed willingness to destroy the opposition). The Lankans here, and some of the (non-Australian) others, want their country to be better just as they want themselves to be. In the end, the inability to celebrate and nurture Mathew, a Tamil great, is the great tragedy of this novel. That so much joy is lived by those who defy that division is its triumph.
This is a long novel, whose meandering is more the point than a distraction. Set in the 1990s, Karunatilaka channels W.G. Karunasena, a mid-60s alcoholic and cricket writer who is obsessively chasing down the story of the mysterious 1980s Tamil cricketer Pradeep Mathew, both out of a deep love of the game and its world and out of an inability to think about what else might matter. Mathew's story is deliberately mythic - the more W.G. digs the most fantastical the claims become - and his story almost, but never quite, becomes the story of the country itself.
The book is filled with references which bring joy when you use them to draw inferences - there is history, literature and even dense musical references. Much of the book is written in cricket, a language I am completely without. My father watched the Benson and Hedges 1985 World series in our living room - a key setting of the book - which at least means the names and rough roles of the players were familiar to me. But the significance of a double-bounce, or a ball on the line, which here carry much information about character and setting, were all too often lost on me. For cricket enthusiasts who also love literature, I strongly suspect this is the read of a lifetime. Even as a non-cricket-literate, it was pretty special.
This is simply because Karunatilaka brings his characters so deeply to life. These are not softened people - one of WG's closest friends may or may not be a pedophile, WG is a frankly terrible father and doesn't know it, racist and sexist jokes abound. But they are deeply human, and Karunatilaka extends that humanity to corrupt cricket officials, LTTE enforcers, match fixers and more (not, I will say, to Australian cricketers or commentators. These are pretty uniformly presented as arseholes - the second portrayal for me in so many weeks of Australian sporting dominance as a gross mix of wealthy country privilege and unashamed willingness to destroy the opposition). The Lankans here, and some of the (non-Australian) others, want their country to be better just as they want themselves to be. In the end, the inability to celebrate and nurture Mathew, a Tamil great, is the great tragedy of this novel. That so much joy is lived by those who defy that division is its triumph.