I read the beginning of Preeta Samarasan’s Evening Is the Whole Day, skimmed the rest, and quickly realized this is not my kind of fiction — deliberately-paced, for the most part microscopically focused, more earnest than funny. Predictably, the parts I liked best were the historical passages about how the Tamil family’s patriarch got his start in Malaysia when the British left, and the race riots of ‘69. Those segments contain drama and grand historical sweep:

[The book] traces the story of the Rajasekharans, an Indian immigrant family grappling with its troubled past as the country they have made their home is slipping into chaos. It is also a painstakingly detailed portrait of the post-colonial history of a society where Indian immigrants, Malays and Chinese are jostling to claim their legitimate space… Samarasan paints a scathing portrait of the creme-de-la-creme set [which]wines and dines [its] evenings away as the country implodes. [Link]

The Asian Review of Books disliked exactly what I (briefly) appreciated. Flourishes need to be original and need to flow, of course, but some reviewers are incredibly puritan about the texture of a text. Unlike poor Florentino in Cholera, reprimanded for turning out lovesick prose, this is a novel, not a business letter:

Samarasan can stray into the dangerous territory of the ornate: “…her heart hammering like a wedding drum, elemental words blistering her tongue like beads of hot oil.” Adjectives are packed sky high: where one will do, there are often two or more. Seemingly channeling Rushdie and Roy, Samarasan’s pages are heaped with generous dollops of linguistic tics: inexplicable capital letters (’Big House,’ ‘Slippery Slope’) and italics as common as mushrooms after a shower. It would be unfortunate if post-colonial literature came to be identified with these jaded gymnastics. [Link]

For those with a different temperament and an attention span longer than that of lepidoptera, the book seems competently written, and I’d love to hear your thoughts. I abandoned M.G. Vassanji’s latest for similar reasons of pace; fittingly, Vassanji blurbed Samarasan’s book.

Like Red Earth and Pouring Rain, the title comes from a classical Tamil poem:

… Then is evening
when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say.
But evening is the great brightening dawn
when crested cocks crow all through the tall city
and evening is the whole day
for those without their lovers.

– Kuruntokai 234, translated by George L. Hart

The end of the book refers to the cycle of diaspora — India to Malaysia to America — but also shouts out to a certain presidential candidate who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia:

In America, he says, his voice low with wonder… anything can happen. You can go there a nobody, a no-name orphan, and tomorrow find yourself a United States senator…

It keeps good company at least.

Previously: Sister double happiness