Mosquito

by Roma Tearne

Book Overview

Shortlisted for the Costa (Whitbread) 2007 First Novel Award Set adrift by the recent death of his wife, Theo Samarajeeva abandons his comfortable writer's life in London and returns to Sri Lanka, his war-torn homeland. There he finds himself slipping into friendship with Nulani, a talented and enigmatic young artist--a friendship that blossoms into love. Under the threat of a rising terrorist insurgency, their affair offers a glimmer of hope in a...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1933372575
• ISBN13: 9781933372570
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Europa Editions
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.3" x 8.2"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Does anyone know how to get hold of the author?

My book club loves this book and we want to speak with the author!! Please help us find her! Thanks

An amazing read that will bring you into another world

Probably few people are aware of the tortured history of Sri Lanka which forms the backdrop for this incredibly impressive novel. The author treats the characters with great respect, and is able to accommodate multiple points of view from it's protagonist, Theo Saramajeeva, to the young girl that he develops a great affection for. This book is full of emotion but it is neither corny nor overly-dramatic. The author very effectively manages the narrative, with superb but also concise descriptive language. Excellent.

A must read

I will skip the summary, because you can find that elsewhere...this book's strength comes from the emotions - love and sorrow and hope - that it successfully evokes in the reader without being trite, overly cliched (though the girl reminded me of every beautiful Indian woman I've ever met), or reliant on deus ex machina manipulations (or karma, as I suspect the characters would call it). I would hate for the book to be type-cast as a romance or a Sri Lankan novel or a war novel, because it offers so much about universal humanity. That said, the book puts a human face on a conflict that makes little sense to Westerners (for good and bad reasons). Whatever Ms. Tearne will paint or write, she can be satisfied that she has written an astounding book (and one I'm buying to give to friends!) that will last for a long time (and as an artist myself, I could only hope for so much!). If you have ever loved anything or anyone from this part of the world, this is a great way to have one more small piece of understanding.

"Mosquito" - Walkiing Through a Water Colour

"...Thank you,' she said and she went, a splash of red against the sea-faded blue gate, and then through the trees, and then taking in glimses of road and bougainvillea before she disappeared from view around the bend of the hot empty road. Taking with her all the myriad, unresolved hues of the day, shimmering in the distance." Roma Tearne is also an artist and her book "Mosquito" is crafted like a painting, a watercolour filled with dense visions of tonality,temperature and emotion. Her tale is that of a road that begins within the boundaries of an isolated backwater cottage in Sri Lanka, a garden surrounded by lush vivid green vegetation. A special love affair is in the making and there is no better place for this to grow and nourish. The love shared by Theo and Nulani is witnessed by Theo's faithful servant Sughi. It is lavishly described, contructed with care as it evolves through the black and white of written words, the vivid colours of oil paint and the dense blue-green of the Indian Ocean. Tearne allows every wonderful detail of this private, tender relationship to slide through the humid climate of Sri Lanka but she knows that love cannot isolate itself. Theo's private garden is no longer a shield against the violent eruption of the civil war where Roma's road forces us into the ugliness of human dramma. The lush and intense colours of love are abandoned as the neutrality of grey and darkness surround the unheard cries of pain and tragedy. If Theo's memories of Nulani allow him to live, to survive the horror of men's cruelty, what remains is a void, the emptiness of a white canvas. The tired remains of Theo's complex road that is his (and our) life leads to the safety of civilisation where the beauty of love sleeps and where the lapse of time may possibly mend the unresolved hues caused by separation and the scars of war. ".......Some say art is our greatest form of hope,'....'Perhaps it's our only hope. Living has always been a desperate business." Thank you Roma Tearne, thank you dearly.

"We are not normal. We can not speak in normal voices ever again. Even if the peace comes."

Theo Saramajeeva, a successful writer and film-maker in London, has returned to his native country, Sri Lanka, seeking solace in his spiritual "home" following the traumatic death of his Italian wife. The civil war is on, and Sinhalese government soldiers patrol the roads and beaches. Though Theo, a Sinhalese, sees much evil in his own people and much good in the enemy Tamils, he does not fear violence to himself--he believes that reason can triumph, given a chance. In a separate plot line, Vikram, a Tamil boy soldier-killer, is adopted by a Sinhalese at age twelve and provided with schooling and a better life, but his guardian is gone for years at a time, leaving Vikram virtually on his own. Remembering the terrible deaths of his family, he soon finds his own spiritual "home," once again, among the Tamils--both the separatists and those who want more than a separate state--Tamil domination of the entire country. Nulani Mendis, a seventeen-year-old Sinhalese with a brutally violent uncle, a high-ranking government soldier, has been mute after watching her father burned to death. She has a fine talent as an artist, however, and when she meets Theo, who is twenty-eight years older than she, she begins to reenter the world again as she sets out to paint his portrait. Gradually, and carefully, they fall in love. Vikram, the prowling Tamil spy, now sixteen, is also in love with her. When the war explodes in the countryside where these characters live, the Sinhalese, their associates, and friends find that they can no longer recognize the world as human. Though they know that "Living has always been a desperate business," many have found "art as our highest form of hope," but now relocation, imprisonment, torture, murder, and slow death become the norm, and there is no hope, other than escape, physical or emotional. Unconscionable violence alternates with scenes of exquisite love and the serenity of nature, leading to a fast-paced, suspenseful novel in which hope can never be completely extinguished. Roma Tearne, who grew up in Sri Lanka, crafts a powerful novel, combining the horrifying violence and brutality of brainwashed boy soldiers and opportunistic power seekers with the sometimes lyrical portrayal of nature and the enduring power of love. Now a painter and film-maker in London, as well as a gifted writer, Tearne makes the fraught atmosphere come alive through almost tactile sense impressions, adding depth to this portrait of Sri Lanka, even as she uses the mosquito symbol to show that beauty, when it can be found, always comes with a price. n Mary Whipple Bone China Heaven's Edge: A Novel, Romesh Gunesekera's mystical story of Sri Lankan violence