Review: A Disobedient Girl

“She loved fine things and she had no doubt that she deserved them. That is why it had not felt like stealing.”

From taking cakes of Lux rose-scented soap from the bathroom cabinet to committing far more serious crimes, the two women in Ru Freeman’s stunning debut novel have disobeyed. The first is Latha, the servant girl with expensive taste, who has served the Vithanage family since the age of five; the second is Biso, mother of three and wife to an abusive, alcoholic fisherman. Although strangers to each other, Latha and Biso share what in their world could be the gravest of transgressions: the refusal to accept their fates and the audacity to fight for the lives they believe they deserve.

Set in Freeman’s native Sri Lanka, the novel’s chapters alternate between Latha’s and Biso’s perspectives. The story opens in the perspective of eleven-year-old Latha as she prepares to go flower picking with Thara, the Vithanages’ daughter and mistress of the household. Theirs is a typical friendship between girls of this halfway-between age—girls who possess a precocious awareness of societal rules, yet routinely collapse into fits of giggles. It is a friendship that will only grow more complicated as the girls reach adolescence and then adulthood, as their class differences grow more distinct than the sandals on their feet and the bangles—or lack of bangles—on their wrists.

But while Latha’s story spans nearly two decades, Biso’s takes place in a matter of days. Her story begins with her plotting to leave her husband’s house with her three children, the youngest of whom was born not to her husband but to her lover. From there, the family boards the train that will bear them to the safety of the mountains, to Biso’s “mother’s sister’s home in the hills,” words that she is proud of, words that to her “sound rooted and safe.”

How these seemingly disparate characters and time periods will eventually come together remains a mystery, but in a novel filled with complex, richly drawn characters in high-stakes situations, the added urgency is unnecessary. Numerous other elements capture the reader’s attention, not least of which is Freeman’s lush, fluid writing—writing that asks the reader to slow down, to fight the urge to rush ahead—as when Freeman describes the first time Latha seduces a boy, and one of a far superior caste at that. In this moment, the novel’s pace slows, confidently drawing out the moment, teasing the reader, testing her patience: “Latha leaned on the gatepost as she waited, knowing—the way fifteen-year-old girls know these things, even those who had never had the need to put their theories to the test because there were always enough men in their worlds to let them know in subtle and not so subtle ways that they would be proved right if they did have the chance to do it—that this would be easy. And it was.”

Freeman pushes her reader to work in other ways. No sooner have we sunk into the Vithanages’ hot, noisy, chaotic, cosmopolitan household than the perspective shifts, transporting us back to the train in its seemingly endless journey to the mountains. For Biso, this journey is “the time between one life and another.” She feels at peace “in this train, in this empty car, this booth, my children all accounted for, safe.” Like the precariousness of Latha and Thara’s girlhood friendship, Biso’s peace is fleeting. When the novel’s penultimate chapter reveals the point where Latha and Biso converge, the realization is staggering, yet pales in comparison to the outcome of the choices they have made. But these are women who have risked everything to better their lives, women who will fight these consequences and prevail in ways that will force readers to question their notions of love and compassion, and ultimately affirm their belief in the human spirit.