Barbed repartee

Reading Ferrey is often like sitting with an especially observant and articulate friend poised to fill you in on the best cuts of gossip

Reviewed by Ann Scowcroft

For writers who have had the kind of success Ashok Ferrey has experienced with his first collection of short fiction, Colpetty People, there might be no act braver than publishing a second book.

Between its fifth and seventh printing, approximately 7,500 copies of that first collection are presently in circulation, which is something of a triumph for English language fiction in Sri Lanka.

The Good Little Ceylonese Girl thus comes onto the literary scene in much the same way a second child follows a high-achieving older sibling into the world: bound for comparison.

As any good parent or wise reader knows though, it is best to regard that second child or book in its own light rather than in the shadow of the first, knowing that "successful" comes in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and inclinations.

While The Good Little Ceylonese Girl explores much of the same psychological territory found in Colpetty People, it does not do so using exactly the same stride or perspective, and for that it should be commended.

Fans of the arch wit that was the hallmark of many stories in Colpetty People will not be disappointed: the hypocritical, living and dead, still walk the pages of The Good Little Ceylonese Girl, and still often get their comeuppance in highly gratifying ways.

Birds crap on shallow church matrons and statues of proud statesmen with dubious histories, a wealthy woman wears a sari of shot silk that makes her "look like a sort of wayward, postmodern traffic light," greedy, abusive relatives are denied proof of their inheritance.

Reading Ferrey is often like sitting with an especially observant and articulate friend poised to fill you in on the best cuts of gossip; his characters often say or think the kind of things we would like to be quick or brave enough in real life to blurt out ourselves.

When a crew of over-cooked egos descend to film a television commercial in "The Indians are Coming," they introduce themselves with the fey diminutives "Batty" and "Pimply." The narrator of that story is quick to contribute himself: "'I'm Avanka Wanninayake' I said. 'Call me Wanky.'" And beautifully, the irony is lost to all but the reader.

The barbed repartee that Ferrey is recognised for is not the only element of interest in the Good Little Ceylonese Girl though. To use the metaphor of siblings again, that trademark humour might well be regarded as the ebullient and clever elder sibling in whose shadow a quieter, deeply moral younger sibling observes the world.

We can laugh at a church matron who gets crapped on by a stray bird during Sunday service precisely because laughter is the only tithe that might be extracted from the damage she and her friends have wrought in the name of propriety rather than faith.

Some of these stories have a good laugh at the expense of characters for the sake of laughter and remind us gently of our own folly; some suggest laughter is a private weapon used to keep a character's hope from stagnating in social hierarchies that thrive because the powerful have secured their positions on a foundation laid upon the backs of the less powerful.

In fact, power is one of the most prevalent themes in this collection, and the dances to obtain, control or surrender power are what Ferrey is most gifted at observing. Of particular interest are the Diaspora stories, which chronicle quiet corners of Sri Lankan ex-patriot life in the U.K. and elsewhere.

Characters in those stories live just under the smooth surfaces they are often engaged to maintain or create.

A labourer happily squats in a building under construction and accumulates only what he needs to survive: a sleeping bag, a gas burner and the black market wages that will allow him to return home where he will no longer be perceived as 'Asian,' "trouble free: he did what he was told, he was at your beck and call. He was your creature."

A student walks unnoticed through high-end suburbs because everyone assumes she is a cleaning lady. A spa worker recognizes the bargain he has made with the devil masquerading as a U.K. wage: he must become a stereotype of himself in his adopted country. He also recognizes the protection in that guise though, because "as long as there is a little part of you they can't reach, you are safe."

Ferrey's characters sometimes long for access to that world of beautiful facades they help to maintain, but ultimately are held in check by a resistance to jettisoning their identities wholesale. A clerk meets a wealthy couple in a jazz club who invite him to Madrid: He looked at their shining eyes, their expectant lips. And for a moment hi s happiness rose absurdly, like a scrap of paper surging forward on the tide of their goodwill.

But life was beckoning to him from behind the closed doors of Ambrose House: it shook its struggling locks at him, and rattled its war medals, and in the background you could almost hear the hushed fizz of Elephant House ginger beer bottles.

That pull towards acknowledging identity is what saves the souls of the characters who walk the pages of these stories, even if it does not make their journeys easy. The title story is perhaps the most ambitious one in the collection, and is told in retrospect by a character remembering her loss of innocence.

The "good" in "The Good Little Ceylonese Girl" becomes synonymous with "silent," or perhaps "compliant," and the story pivots on the main character's choice between being good and righting a wrong.

The decision she makes haunts her adult life, which she lives in a kind of permanent present tense in order to avoid considering her past. It is the darkest narrative in this book, told in carefully observed prose that builds tension upon tension to a surprising finish. One hopes for more such stories in Ferrey's future endeavors.

If there is any criticism to be made of the apparently effortless writing in this collection, it is in what might be described as sibling rivalry: the two dominant narrative voices that run through these stories will occasionally vie for attention.

Sometimes a pun or a good joke proves too much for Ferrey to resist even in the quieter stories, and sometimes this is disruptive. But "sometimes" is the key word: most times this is a tightly knit, intelligent collection of fiction very much worthy of its Gratiaen nomination.