Everything done can be denied.”īut much later, she capitulates: “Nothing is forgotten or finished. You could pretend certain things weren’t happening even when you had seen or felt them. That you could take the crumpled remains of something destroyed and smooth them into newness. And that reflection is often fractured, missing essential pieces.Įarly on in the novel, the narrator tells us “It was something I learned then. And how patriarchy fashions a woman’s sense of self as a reflection in someone else’s eyes. The novel also shines a light on how patriarchal and class-based cultures pressure women to make choices that follow others’ expectations rather than their own preferences. I had not known until I crossed into this new land what would be asked from me.

A person who has nothing to do with the person I was before. With her birth a new person is released in me. A strand that extends to a new baby girl, a strand that will come to break. It depicts the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship bound by a thin strand of desperation with the tensile strength of a spider’s web. This new novel explores the much more private trauma of sexual abuse, mental illness-including postpartum psychosis, and its impact on families. This latest edition includes information about Nayomi’s family (including photos), book group questions, recommended further reading, and a sneak peak at the first chapter of her new book, What Lies Between Us. The novel won the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize for the Asian Region, was longlisted for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, and was chosen as a Target Book Club pick this past January.

Nayomi munaweera