Death and destiny collide

No Country is many narratives in one. A literary parallel to the Yeatsian gyre of history and transcendence. A narrative held together as much by the fragments of ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ — from which it also borrows its title — as it is by a sprawling filigree of human tragedy. One that spans five generations, three continents and 551 pages.

Grappling with the inexplicability of the twin murders of an Indian academic and his doctor wife in New York City on the very first page, author Kalyan Ray barely allows the reader to come up for air. Five pages later, he rudely cuts across to Ireland 150 years ago, challenging the written word to walk apace as he weaves his epic tale in a changed register, in bucolic, sea-kissed County Sligo, where the main protagonist, Padraig Aherne, is caught in the embrace of the love of his life. “A clandestine affair” that — as the sleeve of the book suggests — “sets in motion a series of unforeseeable, irrevocable events”, which lead Padraig to his future in Bengal and his (yet) unborn daughter Maeve to North America, putting many seas and many fathoms between them. But by the end of the book, rudely buffeted by the winds of fate, the descendants of the once lovelorn boy and his benefactors in India and Bangladesh find themselves on a common “terra incognita, its geography yet unexplored”.

First read over a weekend, it is only in the second reading of No Country that the breathlessness of the first is replaced by a heightened awareness of details. It is another kind of joy, working backwards on a puzzle, deconstructing the larger picture, pausing at every turn of phrase, every image, to admire the pieces individually. And such a deep engagement with the same text within a week is only afforded by a story of this scale. An operatic, over-the-top drama that is so brazen, so improbable that you, against your better sense and judgement, begin to believe it’s true. And this is where Ray succeeds. In forcing his readers to willingly suspend disbelief, to submit to his alternative universe, where death and destiny collide ad nauseam, compelling his characters to watch and report from the frontlines, all in first person.

From the Irish famine and political upheaval in the mid-19th century to the fire at New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911, the colonial rejection of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the narrative constantly rams into local and world-shaping events and changes direction like a motion-sensing toy car. The borders of ‘public’ and ‘private’ are constantly breached; free will (fiction) reined in by history (non-fiction). But of the many such episodes, none is perhaps so poetic or poignant — quietly cinematic in its sweep — as the one where Mr O’Flaherty, Padraig and his best friend Brendan’s teacher, sits dead on a chair, a copy of Cicero on his lap, floating on an iceberg, until the ‘receding’ Atlantic withdraws him from life.

Ray sketches some of the characters, especially in the beginning, in great detail, while dismissing other equally important ones unceremoniously to keep his fragile, often contrived, narrative structure from collapsing entirely. And while the rootless, absent or wandering men like Padraig or his granddaughter Bibi’s Italian boyfriend, Frankie, find a foil in the likes of dependable Brendan and Mr O’Flaherty, the women, including Padraig’s ma, the feisty Maire, and Bibi, are almost always anchored in person or spirit to the ideals of home and hearth.

In isolation, the skeins of each of the smaller universes Ray creates are tightly coiled and well wrought — be it the rural Irish setting, Naxal Calcutta, the Anglo-Indian milieu in the city, the migrants from Bangladesh, pastoral Canada or the working-class catchments of New York. So much so, that at times, as a reader you resent being torn away from one only to be propelled into another. Two-thirds through the novel, however, the story begins to loosen its grip, sagging in the wrong places. And this is the fatal flaw of No Country : it gets carried away by its own ambition. Like a ball of wool unspooled too far before it’s gathered up again to knit a symmetrical end.

The one motif that defines the novel and gives it direction throughout is journeys. Planned or unplanned, and always fateful, they are undertaken to arrive at new destinations in search of that ever-elusive beast: closure. But of all the closures, it is the final one — coloured by blood that bears the traces of families and histories, unknown in their entirety even to those whose hands are tainted by them — that comes closest to the promise of a resolution.

Despite the obvious talent of the author and his ability to imbue words and settings, no matter how ‘foreign’, with a certain luminance, it’s hard not to compare Ray’s prose to that of others (in plural) who went before him. Several scenes are so vividly illustrated in fact, they are bound to remind one of resonance on paper and on celluloid. But to judge a novel so compelling — despite its failings — as a product of imitation and impressions would be grossly unfair. Both to the author and to prospective readers. For what work is truly original anyway?

COMMENT NOW