Brixton Beach: Book Review

 

Book title: Brixton Beach

Book author: Roma Tearne

Set in Sri Lanka and England, Brixton beach is a book about a family migrating to England from Sri Lanka during its years of turmoil. Alice Fonseka, born to a Tamil father and a Sinhalese mother spent a great deal of her childhood in the blue coastline of Ceylon, in a sea house, under the tropical sun. On a gloomy ship, destiny brought her to another part of the world, where the sun is not as bright, and the sea was gone from her sight. But it remained in her heart.

The nine year old grows up in a foreign land. Her parents, each struggling with their own issues. Home, Ceylon, was out of sight, not quite out of mind. The stories of home reach their new home in London, bit by bit, via censored letters, half broken telephone calls. It’s almost always news of loss. When the family gets used to the norm of once left home, the news still finds them with a new level of shocks. The tantalizing story of the turbulent time of Sri Lanka, its people’s grit to overcome the man-made turmoil and a family’s endurance to carry on life amidst all — glued the story together.

Loved Tearne’s writing as she always traps the essence of Sri Lanka in her writing. This book, seemed to me as her autobiography in parts, carried both the breeze of Sri Lankan coasts and her time in London when the yearning for a long left sea gave birth to an artist inside her. Thanks to Barbara for recommending this book to me! I enjoyed my read, partly read on a trip to Sri Lanka. Discovering the book’s references in the streets of Sri Lanka was an extra joy to my trip!

My highlights and notes from the book