Book: THE SOUTH
Author: Tash Aw
Published by: Fourth Estate
Price: Rs 599
Lyrical, intimate and intelligent, Tash Aw’s The South is a novel that captures the life of a family at its most vulnerable moment. Set to be a part of a quartet, this first book is at once grim as well as the beginning of a story that moves the reader.
The South follows Jay, a seventeen-year-old boy in Malaysia, who has come down to a small town with his family after his grandfather’s passing. The family of five — Jay, his two elder sisters, and their incompatible parents — is on the property to decide its future. Jay’s father does not have the means to resurrect the property’s grandeur; his mother is ready to let it go; the sisters have their own lives at the university and care little for a farm or the small town. But Jay begins to draw closer to the wilderness as his association with the housekeeper’s child, Chuan, becomes intimate. Jay discovers a new version of himself as he and Chuan ride around the town on a bike, take dips in the lake, forage fruits and sell them, and guzzle cans of beer.
Aw’s writing shines with brilliance right from the first chapter where we follow the two boys into the orchard and listen to them talk about trees and forevers. It captures both the exuberance of youth and the decay of the world around. The choice of a multiple narrative style works effectively to illuminate the different sides of grief and anger that bubble in the story. As much as the reader is given access to the characters, Aw’s writing also makes the reader conscious of the somnolent, harsh, and yet sensuous setting.
Tash Aw’s novel is an important work, not just for the themes imbued in it but for its mastery of the craft. It brims with promise and makes the reader wait eagerly for the other books in the quartet.