The Far Field : A Novel of Ceylon

Rating:
Summary: A Book for Any Season
Review: Finally - a solidly good read! What a relief. I had thought I would have to forever decamp to nonfiction. But here is a fascinating tale, deftly woven. Thank you!

Rating:
Summary: good effort
Review: However, it is not what it's cut out to be. The use of Buddhist scripturtes to signal the start of different parts of the novel and so-called thematic unity was quite irrelevant to this novel. Comparisons with Melville or Gaddis are quite misleading as they are authors of exceptional power, complexity and difficulty. In the case of Ms Meidev you see the triumph of creative writing programmes (which one suspects she graduated from) which allow you to imitate the superficial characteristics of great writers who have no need for such programmes because they are gifted in the first place. This is not to say Ms Meidev has no talent, she does, but it is not the same; it is like saying Stephen King is as good as H.P. Lovecraft. Which is why though having been published myself and having taught creative writing, I don't think I ever want teach it again. This is a work that is a product of pure market forces: someone needs a Ondaatje read-a-like but with a different twist and so the publisher's list if fulfilled when they find one. The book is a good first effort, but there it remains. There is no serious character development, hardly any ambiguity that isn't forced and very little understanding of the people in Ceylon/Sri Lanka and what Buddhism means in their lives. This is more a work of an expatriate who lives in the East for awhile and returns to the West to write about their sojourn hoping to dispel the Occident's "easy" catgorisation of the Orient, but thereby ironically reinforcing that lack of understanding and empathy. Read Melville, Conrad, Green, Gaddis or Toni Morrison for a more authentic go at this.

Rating:
Summary: Original Epic!
Review: Ms. Meidav's debut novel is a great book by a young promising author. As she takes you on this journey, and though she hints all along at the main character's trajectory, you are drawn into not only his world but into the inner lives of the villagers she depicts so successfully. Rather than romanticise the virtues of the east, Meidav trains her eye at a wide range of three-dimensional characters so that we come to see both aspirations and hypocrisies within American, English, and, yes, Sri Lankan culture. In this way, she truly gives another culture its due. Perhaps we find ourselves in many of the characters, all of whom I found engaging and rich in their human passions, all of whom I found true (if this is a useful word to apply in fiction) to a certain kind of subcontinental life, one that I was born into but which I have never seen so fully explored. Meidav's novel is a novel in the biggest sense of the word. It offers old-fashioned pleasures, a real world to enter, but with a contemporary pacing. It also lets the reader explore new ideas (about desire, grasping, human connection, cultures meeting and clashing) and does this all in a new style, something I have never quite seen before. Reading it, I thought about the truism that all original work will in its own time get scorned by those who are most interested in upholding convention. The book will appeal to those who have some interest in the East or Eastern culture, but also to those with an interest in what it means to be born within a certain culture and to travel away from it/toward it. It's not a history of Ceylon nor a scholarly study of Buddhism, but rather what struck me as an exploration of how hard it is for humans to connect and see one another across many divides, whether that of culture or of character. This is art, as the word artifice suggests. Picasso says art is the lie that makes us see the truth; this is how Ms. Meidav uses her art, to develop her characters, and yes, indeed we come to know the main character in his full depth as well as his auxiliaries. We know the protagonist's desires and dreams, as well as his inner conflicts. We may not like the protagonist, but like any great and memorable fictional character, he has a life beyond mere psychobabble. His true motives, like most of ours, contain their conflicts. I am looking forward to other work by this same author. I am a great fan of diving into a world as complete as the one which this novel offers us. Reading this book for me was a life-changing experience, a journey that makes me want to travel it one more time.