Book review: Bone China, by Roma Tearne

BONE CHINA

Roma Tearne

HarperPress, £16.99

WHEN Grace de Silva's comically careless husband loses her family's tea estates in a game of poker, she has little idea how everyone's lives in her lush, Eden-like homeland of Ceylon are soon to change. She purses her lips, holds her tongue and, with dignified silence, moves her eccentric family of five to a humid, sea-fronted bungalow in Colombo.

But it soon becomes clear that this personal story of loss is to be echoed in the island at large. Soon the de Silvas and the country they live in – renamed Sri Lanka – are enveloped by an overwhelming gloom and sadness.

Bone China is Roma Tearne's second novel. Her first, Mosquito, also set in Sri Lanka, received praise for its beautiful, lyrical writing, and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award. And while there seem to be a number of novelists writing about the Indian subcontinent, there are few tackling Sri Lanka.

The novel begins at the start of the Second World War. Its scope is ambitious, taking in the vast sweep of modern Sri Lankan history and three generations of de Silvas as they move between hope and despair, between imploding Sri Lanka and dislocating, modern immigrant London. Throughout, violence lurks in the background, shadowing, shaping and occasionally exploding on to the lives of the de Silvas.

But despite – or perhaps because of – this I feel little wiser about Sri Lankan history. Tearne writes about the growing tensions on the island, but the ethnic divide between the Tamils and the Sinhalese never seems fully explained. There are references to the Tamils having been favoured by the British during colonial rule, but this is barely elaborated on. Instead, Tearne has her characters despairing in general terms of corruption, nationalism, politics, superstition and ethnic tensions. There is not enough insight to help you understand what propels Tamil Tigers to blow themselves and others up.

Bone China is well-paced and nicely plotted, with flashes of brilliant lyrical writing. But I wonder whether Tearne has fallen prey to the pressure of producing a second novel hot on the tail of a successful first, or whether the scope and sweep of Bone China means depth is sometimes sacrificed for pace.