The Rice Mother by Rani Manicka (Sceptre)

The Rice Mother is the debut novel by Malaysian-born writer Rani Manicka. It is the multi-generational story of one family, beginning with Lakshimi, the matriarch to six children, three grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. It is a story of love and loss, betrayal and deceit, and of remorse and redemption. 

Lakshmi was born in 1916 in Ceylon, present-day Sri Lanka..At the age of fourteen, Lakshmi is married off to a wealthy man named Ayah who has a job in what is then called Malaya. The man is much older than she, a widower with two children. Unknown to Lakshmi or her mother, they’re deceived by the man’s mother. Lakshmi discovers that he is not the wealthy businessman as he was described to her before the marriage. But with no option of returning home, Lakshmi decides to make the best of her life in this new land. 

Lakshmi has six children. The eldest are the twins Lakshmnan and Mohini. Lakshmnan is everything Lakshmi could hope for in a boy but it’s Mohini that she’s most taken with. She’s given birth to the most beautiful girl the heavens could provide her with. After the twins comes Anna, the strong and reliable daughter, followed by Sevenese who becomes enamored with his neighbor, the snake-charmer’s son. Sevenese also realizes that the snake-charmer’s son is in love with his sister Mohini. The youngest is Lalita, everyone’s favorite. 

Life is mostly peaceful and grand. Then the Japanese come and for the three years of the Japanese Occupation, the Imperial Army commits a number of atrocities that the citizens won’t soon forget. The most devastating blow to the family is the kidnapping and killing of their daughter Mohini. This act will change the lives of all the members of the family. 

Lakshmi becomes inconsolable and turns into a cruel and nearly intolerable presence. Lakshmnan blames himself for his sister’s capture and loses himself to loose women and gambling even though he is married and has three children. Ayah, the father, was also taken by the Imperial Japanese Army, tortured and left for dead. He survives and is only a shadow of his former self.

Of Lakshmnan’s three children, Dimple is the spitting image of Mohini. For Dimple, this is more of a curse than a blessing. Dimple decides to make a “dream trail” by asking and taping everyone in her family to tell their stories so she can understand herself. It isn’t until Dimple’s daughter Nisha grows up and is bequeathed a key from her father that the secrets of the past are unlocked. 

I can’t imagine the suffering of losing a loved one during a time of war or how that death will affect everyone surrounding them, but even if the story is fictional, it can make your own family problems seem trivial in comparison. 

Manicka’s beautiful prose of this family epic sometimes reads as an ongoing storyline of an American soap opera such as Days of Our Lives or One Life to Live, not that that’s a bad thing. She writes in such a way that will have the reader gain an understanding of the customs and manners of Tamil and Malay culture. ~Ernie Hoyt