Noontide Toll

Guneskera's (Monkfish Moon) newest work is a cross between a collection of stories and a novel. The chapters are both self-contained stories and a larger arc of reflections and revelations related to the protagonist, Vasantha. Set in 2009, two years after the Sri Lankan Civil War, Vasantha buys a van with his retirement money and becomes a driver. He drives an array of individuals from Jaffna's army camps to Galle. Through his encounters with them, traversing through a country trying to recover, he learns about their experiences. Episodic rather than plot-driven, the writing is smooth, spare, with exquisite detail. Vasantha meets everyone from a solider afraid to tell the girl he loves that he killed her brother in war to a honeymooning couple horrified that the place in which Leonard Woolf wrote about will be renovated to be a modern resort, even after surviving the tsunami. Guneskera's powerful prose keeps the reader turning the page, with images and emotions resonating long after the story ends. (Oct.)