Treasured island

With its backdrop the worsening civil war in 1970s Sri Lanka, Brixton Beach takes the form of a family saga tracing the lives of three generations, presided over by a loving patriarch, Bee Fonseka, through violence, loss and displacement. Recent events give poignancy to this story of a country in a state of emergency, polarised by Tamil nationalism in the north and that of the Sinhalese in the south. Arrests, riots, assassinations, strikes are commonplace and, as the novel progresses, they spread throughout the island.

At the beginning of the story, the protagonist, Alice Fonseka, is a precocious nine-year-old living in a idyllic southern coastal town on the cusp of being destroyed by the tensions raging in the country. To Alice, her grandparents’ house means happiness, a place where she can hear the sea and “see the stars blink in the vast tropical sky”. But she is the child of a Sinhalese mother and Tamil father who suffer the ultimate loss when their second child dies at birth because of a prejudiced Sinhalese doctor’s neglect.

Perhaps inevitably, parallels will be drawn between the character of Alice and the author, who is also the child of a Sinhalese mother and Tamil father, and a child emigrant to London. Tearne writes with passion about the beauty of Sri Lanka, in contrast to the stark descriptions of cold, grey London. The centrality of Sri Lanka persists even when her characters move to London, with frequent shifts back to the characters there as their world disintegrates.

There are some lapses into caricature, parti­cularly with the male characters. Alice’s father, Stanley, is increasingly unconvincing in his heartlessness towards his wife and daughter: when heartbroken Sita and Alice arrive in the UK at his bidding, he treats them with cold contempt. He reacts to Sita clinging to him and weeping on her first night in London with alarm: “Oh no! What does she want of me? Not more children?”

The relationship between child and mother, however, is more carefully crafted. Alice’s constant energy irritates Sita, while Alice hates her mother’s “tricky moods” and constant tiredness. Later in life, affected by the crisis in Sri Lanka and her difficult experiences as an immigrant, Alice comes to resemble her withdrawn mother. Marriage and motherhood rouse feelings of empathy in her: “Lately Tim had begun to make her feel hopeless. Was this how her mother had felt for years and years?”

A belief in the redemptive power of art and memory pervades this tale, which is otherwise bleakly drawn. Alice finds comfort in making art from the stuff of her childhood, eventually turning her home in London, Brixton Beach, into something resembling that of her childhood.

Unfortunately, the formulaic plot – Alice’s story intersects with the events of 7 July 2005 – entraps a potentially captivating story. The day of the London bombings is etched so vividly in the collective British psyche that any novelist using it risks becoming predictable. Brixton Beach is unremarkable as a saga of family love and loss, but its distinction lies in its lovingly crafted evocation of Sri Lanka’s landscape, and in the way it captures the emotional meaning of home, which can be carried anywhere.

Brixton Beach
Roma Tearne
HarperPress, 408pp, £14.99

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