Evening Is the Whole Day: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Preeta Samarasan (Author) "THERE IS, stretching delicate as a bird's head from the thin neck of the Kra Isthmus, a land that makes up half of the country..." (more)
Key Phrases: tiger balm, char kuay teow, fifty ringgit, Uncle Ballroom, Big House, Kooky Rooky (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Set on the outskirts of Ipoh in Malaysia, Samarasan's impressive debut chronicles another bad year in the Big House on Kingfisher Lane. With the death of Paati, the grandmother, and the disgraceful departure of Chellam, the family's servant girl, the wealthy Rajasekharan family is in shambles. Skillfully jumping from one consciousness to another, Samarasan moves back in time to reveal the secrets that have led to the family's unraveling. Father Raju's dreams have been stifled by his unrealized political ambitions, and his home life is no consolation. Vasanthi, his wife, bristles at reminders of her lower-class roots and wouldn't mind seeing Uma, their oldest daughter, "destroyed by an endless string of disappointments." Uma all but disconnects herself from the family in anticipation of escaping to Columbia University, and her six-year-old sister, Aasha, whose desire to recapture Uma's love is a primary focus of the book, must settle for interactions with a ghost only she can see. There's little familial tenderness, and the few instances of compassion displayed (by Raju's visiting brother) are mistaken as perverse. Though the narrative is occasionally unwieldy or claustrophobic, the language bursts with energy, and Samarasan has a sure hand juggling so many distinct characters. (May)
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Six-year-old Aasha sees ghosts, but her unhappy mother seems to look right through her and her funny brother, Suresh, and smart sister, Uma. All Chellam, a much-abused servant, wants is a pair of glasses, while in spite of her cataracts, Paati, the malevolent old matriarch in a family that redefines the term dysfunctional, is as mercilessly watchful as a vulture. Questions of perception abound in this psychologically acute and boldly plotted tale of descendants of immigrants from India living in material comfort and emotional impoverishment in ethnically complex Malaysia. At the root of their misery is Paati’s successful lawyer son’s decision not to marry one of the worldly women in his circle but, rather, to wed his cruel neighbor’s desperate daughter. Instead of the worshipfully grateful wife he envisioned, she turns out to be stone-cold and small-minded. As the story begins, in 1980, Chellam is leaving in disgrace, while Uma has become uncharacteristically uncommunicative. Shocking secrets exert a malevolent force, and all are slowly revealed as Samarasan repeatedly loops back in time. Extraordinarily incisive, Samarasan provocatively links the sorrows of one distraught family to Malaysia’s bloody conflicts in a surpassingly wise and beautiful debut novel about the tragic consequences of the inability to love. --Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 061887447X
• ISBN-13: 978-0618874477
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #409,178 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars `Even noon is evening to she who waits..', July 18, 2008

By	J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is a hauntingly beautiful novel. Simultaneously filled with hope and despair, Ms Samarasan gives us characters who are never just stereotypes (although sometimes the accurate depiction of certain characteristics comes dangerously close to a stereotypical presentation). No, what Ms Samarasan has delivered is a novel peopled with individuals who are generally disappointed in the past and present and occasionally hopeful for the future.

The story finishes in Malaysia in 1980, but circles through the family history, aspirations, hopes disappointments and secrets of the Rajasekharan family since Appa's grandfather emigrated across the Bay of Bengal in 1899. We view the present through the eyes of Aasha, the youngest of the three Rajasekharan children. Aasha is secretive and far from impartial: she doesn't want her older sister Uma to leave Malaysia for the USA and is reacting to tensions and other secrets within the family that, at 6 years of age, she can observe without necessarily understanding. By contrast with the relative life of privilege of the Rajasekharan family, is the sad tale of Chellam: the exploited, underprivileged and wronged servant girl who is the same age as Uma.

This novel is primarily about family: secrets, relationships and aspirations. But it is also about life in Malaysia over a century which encompassed independence, race riots and significant migration. Each of the Rajasekharans struggles to find his or her own happiness in a world which is changing rapidly. My favourite character was the 8 year old son, Suresh. He brought a perspective to the story and a hope, perhaps for a collective future that was less apparent from the views of the other characters.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars worth staying up all night to finish, June 4, 2008

By	amiriams (Brooklyn, NY United States) - See all my reviews

In this gorgeous debut (by turns heartbreaking and deeply funny), Samarasan tells the story of both one ethnic Indian family and the whole country of Malaysia, reminding us that History is the individual people it happens to. This is a tale of layered mysteries and secrets, of misunderstandings and the assignations of blame -- among family members in a divided house, and between Malay, Indian, and Chinese citizens in a country where race determines a person's legal rights and social identity.

It's 1980 in Ipoh town, and the prosperous Rajasekharan family (Appa, Amma, and children Uma, Suresh, and Aasha) is forever changed when grandmother Paati cracks her skull in the bath and dies. Was she pushed, and if so, who did it? What did six-year-old Aasha see? As in Ian McEwan's _Atonement_, a child makes a terrible, irreversible mistake in the name of love. The effect is exhilarating: we love and sympathize with lonely imaginative little Aasha, even as we recoil from what she sets into motion. Chellam, the family's eighteen-year-old servant girl, is blamed and dismissed the same week that Uma, their oldest daughter, leaves for college in America. Meanwhile, Appa (the father) is prosecuting -- in a highly publicized, racially charged trial -- a Malay defendant who might have been scapegoated for the rape and murder of a Chinese girl.

The novel's narrator is big, lush, and Rushdie-esque, panning in and out. Samarasan gives us access to a cast of characters across three generations, moving around in time to show us how Amma and Appa's emotional landscapes were formed, and how colonization, independence, and race riots helped shape Malaysia's future. The central narrative moves backwards in time, ending the book on a high note. In less deft authorial hands, this might make the reading experience *more* painful because we know what will come to pass; but here, Samarasan reminds us of the strong, cyclical nature of hope in both society and family.

Hope hums beneath the surface of this novel, like the somber beauty of the Simon and Garfunkel tapes Uma plays and Aasha listens to outside her door: "Who will love a little sparrow?" Longing is an acute form of hope, and it undercuts these characters' pain and isolation with moments of discovery and connection. Hope may sometimes lead to disappointment, but it also puts _The Wind in the Willows_ in Aasha's hands and Uma on a stage. It offers Paati the sigh-worthy pleasures of warm water and surprises Uma's face with a smile -- one too real for photographs -- as she boards the plane.

I highly recommend this novel; it's a great book club pick - much to discuss, relate to, and learn from.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lush and evocative family drama, June 3, 2008

By	Mr. Books "Read!" (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews

Evening is the Whole Day stuns with a unique combination of rich prose, fully realized characters, and dark humor. Samarasan's tale of the house on Kingfisher Lane is a stunner, mixing the mournful realities of the characters with a baroque and poetic style.