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 New York Times best-selling author review Jan 27, 2006
By Ann
In a world of shifting political climates, cultural clashes, and changing gender roles, there seems to be no shortage of films and novels offering in-depth treatment of these issues. Nowadays "Bollywood" is a household word; the concept of bride price is anthropology old-hat; and stoning and female circumcision are the rues of the day.
Despite this surfeit of cultural exchange, rare is the novel that offers true insight and a clear-eyed view into a world most of us will never know. Monsoon Dream is just such a book.
Monsoon Dream is the story of Anushka, a teenage girl in Sri Lanka who, after being disowned by her family and encouraged to kill herself, leaves her native country in search of a new home and a new way of life in England. Through various and quite gripping flashbacks, we learn the story of her past, a tale that is at times part ethnography, part mythology, and part sheer poetry.
As its lyrical title indicates, Monsoon Dream is dripping with evocative imagery, composed of intricate scenes spurred by emotion and wrought in a vermillion lushness so intimately rendered as to be palpable to the senses. Ljunggren's prose is sparse yet bursting with understated elegance. Exact in her depictions, elegiac through simple language, she tells a bold story with the subtle directness of Hemingway and the feminine force of Maya Angelou.
Readers will discover a world view of immense sadness and soaring hope and glimpse the unthinkable tempered with the inevitable triumph of an unbowed spirit. This is a book that belongs in every multicultural literature course in the country...and it will be no surprise to see it there. Bravo.
- New York Times best-selling author Ellen Tanner Marsh
 Surviving abuse from a sadistic father in Sri Lanka Feb 16, 2006
By Sena
"Monsoon Dream" is a unique and fascinating book written by a Sri Lankan woman who migrated to the West. It is the story of Anushka who, in an age in which economic migration is frowned upon, is a true refugee. She is a refugee not from political persecution but from the perverted morality of a society which has condemned her to death by suicide for daring to flout its norms. Her father has explicitly told her, "Your family will be better off if you kill yourself".
It seems to me that the book is autobiographical to a considerable extent and, as autobiography, it is a resounding success in depicting the triumph of the human spirit over despicable cruelty. However, it claims to be a novel and as a novel it must be judged. Here I have to say that it is somewhat unsatisfying due to its inability to look objectively at the personality of the father who subjects his daughter to horrifying physical abuse between the ages of 6 and 12. Anushka too easily accepts the "explanation" her society would give: "She recalled how she herself had felt like a frog trapped in the well, trapped by her father's iron fist, how she had come close to death, so that her father might feel reassured that he was preserving the honour of the family" (my italics).
It is left for the reader to speculate as to what kind of man would beat his little daughter regularly, probably weekly for five years, so severely as to cause laceration and bleeding, sometimes leaving her in a pool of her own urine unable to get up, and then forbid her mother to give her any comfort. He would beat her with a cane or with a length of wire, the latter being feared more by Anushka. We are told that the father was a devout Roman Catholic, highly respected by his Church and by his neighbours, well-educated and from an upper middle class family. He had four daughters and one son, and it was mainly Anushka who was singled out for "special" treatment. The son had also been beaten a few times, but then the father had decided that the son was "weak" and had stopped beating him for fear that he might cause permanent damage.
Why was Anushka singled out in this way, apart from the obvious explanation given by Anushka herself that she was "rebellious"? I can think of two possible explanations, which may overlap with each other. The first is that Anushka's father was sexually sadistic. Anushka is not given to singing her own praises, but she hints that Nature had blessed her with a somewhat exceptional beauty. It seems likely that her father was sexually attracted to her. Perhaps he felt that beating her would prevent him from giving vent to his sexual desires, or perhaps he just "got off" by beating her until she wet herself.
The other explanation is that, in her father's mind, Anushka represented psychological aspects of himself which he had "disowned" and repressed. These aspects may have been the love of freedom and the ability to enjoy life and Nature without guilt. Of course he would have been completely unconscious that this is what Anushka represented, and he would have been both attracted to these aspects and also intensely fearful of them. As he was a religious man, Anushka would have represented the "devil" tempting him with her beauty.
Having said this, Monsoon Dream is a very well written book and makes for a gripping read. The sad thing about the physical abuse of children is that it is still condoned in Sri Lanka, especially if the perpetrator is an upper class male. If Anushka had complained to her teacher she would have been reported to her father rather than her father being reported to the Police. Apart from the book being an indictment of her father it is also a critique of a sick society. Unless this society is able to look objectively at its own sickness it will not be able to heal itself. This book should be read by every Sri Lankan (I hope it will soon be translated into Sinhalese and Tamil), and by anyone interested in Sri Lanka.
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