Channa Wickremesekara's recent novel 'Tracks' is his fifth work of fiction. When I looked up his list of previous publications, I found that he is an expert on military history, and in particular the history of the Kandyan kingdom and its fight for independence against the British colonial forces.
Wickremesekara is based in Melbourne, Australia, and this novel is a work of young adult fiction, set amongst a group of teenagers who are about to graduate from high school. Wickremesekara's knowledge and insights into combat and aggression are very relevant here, because what he portrays is the war zone of adolescent life, in the suburbs of 'the most liveable City in the world', a phrase people often use to describe Melbourne.
Contemporary Sri Lankans have a strong presence in Melbourne: there is a vibrant and diverse community of immigrant people living in this City, and it is one of the most sought after destinations for Colombo students, for overseas education and further professional development.
It is a City of wonderful restaurants, shops selling food and clothing of every cultural and ethnic hue, of bookshops and vegetable markets and beautiful parks and old hotels and theatres. But on the edges of this beauty, as there are in every City, there are human lives lived in desperation. Shehan, the young protagonist of this story, and its narrator, has wonderful parents, Sri Lankan, broad minded, wise, compassionate, tolerant - and plain speaking:
'My dad thinks it was a tragedy we could not have avoided... There are people... trapped in lives they cannot escape from. Lives which are vicious holes of filth and violence. The only way you can escape them is through death'.
Sri Lankan parents, and of course most parents, generally shield their children from these kinds of dangers as much as they can. This story is confronting, because it shows how darkness encroaches into the everyday lives of people, and how it enters our lives through our longings and desires. When we send our children to cities like Melbourne, driven by educational imperatives, we sometimes do not think of the social context in which they will be living; of the sometimes chaotic lives their peers will have experienced; of the dark side of liberated Western lifestyle freedoms and the confusions and complexities these freedoms can generate.
Shehan's parents try to help their son as much as they can, not only by providing for him a home and shelter that he understands and appreciates, even when most stretched by his dilemmas, and offering his friend acceptance and support as well, but by withholding judgment of his choices, and not suppressing or attempting to control or censure him, or forcing him to comply with their preferred moral standards. They actually do what people say that parents should do, which is to let their child be himself. Or, to be more specific, to let their child try to really find out who he is. Their lack of anger and criticism is a remarkable example of loving-kindness, in the bleak emotional and moral world their son inhabits, outside their home.
Shehan is in love with his best friend, Robbie, a physically beautiful, charismatic but violent youth, the product of a violent and dysfunctional home. The novel shows how Shehan, assisted by his parents' loving and compassionate understanding, navigates this relationship and its ending, in his final year of school. This volatile situation is presented with subtlety and precision.
The idiom and vernacular for Shehan and Robbie are absolutely accurate. The terse, abbreviated syntax is completely believable.
The graphic, sensory matrix of young adults in Australia, and their unembarrassed physicality and often implicitly evoked emotion is realistic.
The story takes place at the most apparently recogniseable crisis point of young people's lives: the year they access their future via their ATAR (the mark accorded to their final university entrance exams) and decide if their previous choices are going to get them where they want to go, or not. This is the year that the outside world collides with everyone's personal lives and formative experiences and alliances. The neat, externally imposed academic barrier of the VCE (A-level exam) Shehan is working towards will qualify or disqualify him for life afterwards, and this measuring point throws into sharp relief the emotional and moral chaos & volatility that he is traversing.
His relationships with his group highlights in many ways his own wholeness and integrity. There is an infusion of personal pride in his description of the members of the group as all 'halfies': half 'Aussie' and (in a cross-section of the diverse ethnic spectrum typical of Melbourne) half Scottish/Italian/Islander:
'All teenagers and except me, all mongrels...Then of course there is me. One hundred percent Sri Lankan, second generation.'
His use of the word 'mongrels' here is significant, conveying from the outset his unacknowledged awareness that his friends are in many ways comparatively debased and dispossessed individuals. Robbie, son of a criminally violent father and emotionally damaged by an abusive home life, quarrels like an animal for territory, and is ruled by survival instincts; and in the end dies as a result of retaliatory violence in response to his own actions, 'killed like a dog'.
Shehan discovers how socially and emotionally isolated Robbie was, only after his death:
'...I know the hospital got in touch with Dad because he had my number in his phone. There had been only two numbers. One was my mobile. The other was my home number... He had no one else. No family. No friends'.
Shehan's social life & his family life are binary opposites: his parents are functional, and co-operative and despite their predictable stability, progressive. His friends are violent and destructive, and despite all their violent activity, stuck in an arid and desolately futile situation of passive resignation & frustration.
Shehan when we first meet him is enmeshed via his obsessive love for Robbie in a demeaning connection, led by his emotions & physical attractions, unaware of his own increasing moral disquiet, which convincingly escalates, in seemingly repetitive but subtly differentiated crisis spirals, until the final catharsis of Robbie's death.
Contemporary Sri Lankans have a strong presence in Melbourne: there is a vibrant and diverse community of immigrant people living in this City, and it is one of the most sought after destinations for Colombo students, for overseas education and further professional development.
It is a City of wonderful restaurants, shops selling food and clothing of every cultural and ethnic hue, of bookshops and vegetable markets and beautiful parks and old hotels and theatres. But on the edges of this beauty, as there are in every City, there are human lives lived in desperation. Shehan, the young protagonist of this story, and its narrator, has wonderful parents, Sri Lankan, broad minded, wise, compassionate, tolerant - and plain speaking:
'My dad thinks it was a tragedy we could not have avoided... There are people... trapped in lives they cannot escape from. Lives which are vicious holes of filth and violence. The only way you can escape them is through death'.
Sri Lankan parents, and of course most parents, generally shield their children from these kinds of dangers as much as they can. This story is confronting, because it shows how darkness encroaches into the everyday lives of people, and how it enters our lives through our longings and desires. When we send our children to cities like Melbourne, driven by educational imperatives, we sometimes do not think of the social context in which they will be living; of the sometimes chaotic lives their peers will have experienced; of the dark side of liberated Western lifestyle freedoms and the confusions and complexities these freedoms can generate.
Shehan's parents try to help their son as much as they can, not only by providing for him a home and shelter that he understands and appreciates, even when most stretched by his dilemmas, and offering his friend acceptance and support as well, but by withholding judgment of his choices, and not suppressing or attempting to control or censure him, or forcing him to comply with their preferred moral standards. They actually do what people say that parents should do, which is to let their child be himself. Or, to be more specific, to let their child try to really find out who he is. Their lack of anger and criticism is a remarkable example of loving-kindness, in the bleak emotional and moral world their son inhabits, outside their home.
Shehan is in love with his best friend, Robbie, a physically beautiful, charismatic but violent youth, the product of a violent and dysfunctional home. The novel shows how Shehan, assisted by his parents' loving and compassionate understanding, navigates this relationship and its ending, in his final year of school. This volatile situation is presented with subtlety and precision.
The idiom and vernacular for Shehan and Robbie are absolutely accurate. The terse, abbreviated syntax is completely believable.
The graphic, sensory matrix of young adults in Australia, and their unembarrassed physicality and often implicitly evoked emotion is realistic.
The story takes place at the most apparently recogniseable crisis point of young people's lives: the year they access their future via their ATAR (the mark accorded to their final university entrance exams) and decide if their previous choices are going to get them where they want to go, or not. This is the year that the outside world collides with everyone's personal lives and formative experiences and alliances. The neat, externally imposed academic barrier of the VCE (A-level exam) Shehan is working towards will qualify or disqualify him for life afterwards, and this measuring point throws into sharp relief the emotional and moral chaos & volatility that he is traversing.
His relationships with his group highlights in many ways his own wholeness and integrity. There is an infusion of personal pride in his description of the members of the group as all 'halfies': half 'Aussie' and (in a cross-section of the diverse ethnic spectrum typical of Melbourne) half Scottish/Italian/Islander:
'All teenagers and except me, all mongrels...Then of course there is me. One hundred percent Sri Lankan, second generation.'
His use of the word 'mongrels' here is significant, conveying from the outset his unacknowledged awareness that his friends are in many ways comparatively debased and dispossessed individuals. Robbie, son of a criminally violent father and emotionally damaged by an abusive home life, quarrels like an animal for territory, and is ruled by survival instincts; and in the end dies as a result of retaliatory violence in response to his own actions, 'killed like a dog'.
Shehan discovers how socially and emotionally isolated Robbie was, only after his death:
'...I know the hospital got in touch with Dad because he had my number in his phone. There had been only two numbers. One was my mobile. The other was my home number... He had no one else. No family. No friends'.
Shehan's social life & his family life are binary opposites: his parents are functional, and co-operative and despite their predictable stability, progressive. His friends are violent and destructive, and despite all their violent activity, stuck in an arid and desolately futile situation of passive resignation & frustration.
Shehan when we first meet him is enmeshed via his obsessive love for Robbie in a demeaning connection, led by his emotions & physical attractions, unaware of his own increasing moral disquiet, which convincingly escalates, in seemingly repetitive but subtly differentiated crisis spirals, until the final catharsis of Robbie's death.
The first person narrative powerfully immerses the reader into Shehan's point of view. This engages us to inhabit his perspective, taking us past the point of judgment or personal distaste, latent homophobia or prejudice against violent yobbo youth. It is an insider's perspective, documented at a flashpoint in the character's story arc, where he finally and at last becomes emergent: utterly unable to inhabit his past relationships. Having sought security in them, for years, he has now outgrown them, and the repetitions and diminishments of self they required.
He wants to make different choices, ones which generate a future, and increase his necessary sense of hope. He has still unresolved feelings, and it is not a clean or clear cut severance. But he moves onwards, and outwards, into a more stable and suitable environment. From the train station and its urban decay to the sun-filled lawns of the university. Sri Lankan parents everywhere will be relieved! Shehan's life is 'back on track'.
It could have been a clichéd story, as adolescent 'crossroads' stories often are. Many young adults have difficult psychological terrain to cross in their late school years, and have a hard time determining who they really are amidst an influx of dizzying lures and contradictory messages. Shehan's cultural and sexual identity is in formation and the process is complex, and probably alien to many readers, yet never do we feel relief that he has chosen to be respectable and heterosexual and go to the hallowed portal of university, leaving the railway tracks and dead end friends behind him, like a burnished brown contemporary Melbournian Prince Hal.
An intense insightful novel. Authentic voice. Believable and unsentimental. Completely uncliched. Liberatingly specific and non-stereotypical.
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