Love Marriage - V. V. Ganeshananthan

A young woman tells the story of her "globe-scattered Sri Lankan family" through a collage of fragmentary narratives which focus on 'Marriage' and the different experiences her ancestors have had of it. As her reasons for needing to explore her (Tamil) family's history become clear, we are drawn into the story of the "unofficial war" in which "no one would be right, but ... some would be more wrong" and the terrible impact it has had on her family's lives. Coming to this as someone with practically no knowledge of Sri Lankan history or politics (shamefully, I had thought the conflict was much more of a historical one than it emerges here), I found the subject matter fascinating and shocking. I was particularly interested in how the conflict continues to influence and disrupt the lives of emigrants, and a note in the acknowledgements section about preserving the anonymity of those who helped with the research brought the reality of the situation home to me. I was also interested to read a piece by the author in which she discusses the difficulty of being perceived as the spokesperson for a whole community's view of an under-reported conflict.

The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry

This book, with its twin narratives about the same life, raises some unsettling questions about the nature of memory and identity. An elderly woman attempts to write "some kind of brittle and honest-minded history of myself", and even after the factual accuracy of many of her memories is called into question, this still seems more compelling and authoritative than the facts uncovered by the detective work of the psychiatrist who must assess her to establish whether she can be "put back into the community" as the asylum where she has lived for many years is being dismantled. The characters are engaging, particularly Roseanne herself, and the book contains plenty of interesting historical context about the Irish civil war and its aftermath. The casual judgemental cruelty of a woman whose own shaky claim to respectability makes her unable to tolerate any impropriety is particularly well portrayed, as is the pain of living as an outsider in a small community. My only complaint is that - as so often happens - the book's back cover blurb dropped a hint about the story's conclusion which led me to anticipate the way that the narratives would converge and so reduced the impact of the final revelations.