Unravelling the mysteries

When a young Celonese girl, raised in isolation on Father Brown mysteries, marries Jason, who has wooed her with flowers, poetry and talk about "the need for beauty", it seems she is destined for a life of romance. Reality proves far harsher for Pearl in Romesh Gunesekera's The Sandglass (Granta, £9.99 in UK). Once they are wed, the lyricism ceases as Jason applies himself to the business of "finding something that would launch their lives into a richer orbit".

Jason has no means, his wife does, thanks to her doctor father, but Jason wants his own money. In order to achieve his ambitions, he goes to work for a British tea firm. It is seen as a personal coup. "No Ceylonese had ever penetrated this last bastion of British colonial conservatism, not at the level he did."

This is an outstanding novel. Gunesekera is examining a culture at the mercy of colonialism as well as its own inner rot. But he is also, and most powerfully, concerned with the story of two rival families. Nothing could be more traditional that the way in which the narrative develops, following three generations through various vicissitudes and sorrows. It is a well-used device, the family saga complete with a store of complex secrets.

Chip, the narrator, has come to know Pearl in her old age. She becomes his life mentor and also his guide through her family's tragic history. Her tragedies are countered by her determination to feed everyone fattening food., her humour, and her loyalty to the traditions of her native country. She even encouraged her precise, methodical, Westernised daughter to wear a sari to her office, assuring her that her colleagues will "love it".

When Pearl's son Prins arrives in London for her funeral the various hidden truths emerge. Chips is more than narrator; he is a witness, and, indeed, seems to exist only in relation to the Ducal clan. Once this is accepted, however, the reader becomes engrossed a humane and gentle tale graced by the simple beauty and ease of Gunesekera's images are both poetic and natural.

Pearl's early married life is dominated by Jason's decision to buy a grand house, Arcadia, which lies at the centre of the vast estate owned by the Vatuna family. Despite the beauty of the surroundings, Pearl and her husband become more estranged. When he dies suddenly in bizarre circumstances, Pearl leaves her country and sets off alone for London with her three chrildren.

Through skilfull characterisation Gunesekera creates a brave, ordinary woman who is appealing and believable without being saintly of heroic. As she withdraws into the world of her flat, sustained by television and food, she forgets nothing - "the space around her was teeming with words; her whole life was woven with them" - yet she never becomes vengeful. "For her there was no map. All the places belonged either to the present or the past. The future was a fantasy. In her yellow room in Almeida Avenue she would rather watch a horror movie, at any time of the day of night, than think about the future."

One of the novel's achievements is Gunesekera's ability to balance major characters with minor ones without falling into caricature. The complex time-scales also work well.

Chip's commitment to his story of tangled lives is never in doubt. His absolute need for these people and for their mysteries becomes clear without compromise either to him or to the novel itself. It is Chip who pieces together the story, which included several set-pieces such as Jason's decision to consult Srijan, a well-proclaimed holy man, about the future of his business. Srijan asks him what he was about to do before he paid this visit. Jason replies, with unaccustomed spontaneity, that he had been going to walk on the sands and listen to the ocean. "So do it," says Srijan. Jason arrives at the beach and where before he has always found darkness, "shadows without light, and the roar of an invisible sea", this time the glow of campfires disturbs his medication.

Peace is denied Jason, and it seems that Gunesekera is commenting on the force of change. The female characters are stronger than the men, who invariably fail, whereas the women tend to survive. By the close of the novel the remote Prins has not only discovered his love of his mother, albeit not entirely convincingly, but also he realises the folly of trying to unravel every secret. Most significantly, he accepts that he can not rebuild the world that has been destroyed forever.

Neither sentimental nor melodramatic, The Sandglass is extraordinary in that it is an undeniably traditional, even conventional, novel which is sustained by its melancholic truths. Each character is in search of his or her version of a lost paradise. For Sri Lanka, the future appears to promise only political corruption, with a censored version of reality for the tourists. Yet Gunesekera never hectors.

Shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize with his first novel Reef, Gunesekera - in fact he almost won, but was beaten by James Kelman's How Late It Was. How Late - also impressed with his debut collection of short stories Monkfish Moon (1992). Born in Sri Lanka and raised there and in the Philippines, he now limes in London. Few novels are more obviously - and deservedly - destined for major success. As complex and it is simple, The Sandglass is a strong Booker contender and may well be the winner.