Dear All
    
     Reading and discussing 'Ullswater' has proved to be a really enriching experience and we thought of inviting you all to read another text by Romesh Gunesekera so that we can perhaps discuss texts in comparison and go a bit further in our reflections on his writings.
    
     You can download the full text and other supplementary material at
     BritLit-A House in the Country
    
     I hope you enjoy it and I look forward to reading your comments here.
    
     Cheers - Chris

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Hi Chris,
     Just completed reading the text and its as powerful as any short story as i have happened to read. In fact, my first impressions, even as i went through the first 2/3 pages, was how it resembled Doris Lessing's "The Grass is Singing". I dont know if the perception is entirely misplaced, but the feel of the setting reminded me much about Mary Turner and her attempts at building her new home. In both cases, dreams for harmony end in violence. Although Ray nad Mary are much apart in their respective contexts, there's a psychological fragility that textures their existence vis-a-vis their hopes and desires.
    
     Hopefully some comments will follow.

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Hush! I've finished reading "A house in the Country" It's a magnific work and it was like a continuation of "Indepence" by the same author: complex charachters in a complex setting. Questions left open and not unswered on how the heavy and frigthing environment can lead the characters to their complexity as an outcome! it's now as a reader I can exonarate both Victor and Seneka for their different perspectives about life in their country which caused a stir in their relantionship, it has been like this in the works of Gunesekera ("Carapace" for example) and I enjoy this!
    
     Langa

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Hi everyone,
     I am a bit lost after having read this powerful text. It's very complex in the sense that you can not feel you have really unveiled its perplexing blanks or "indeterminacies".
     "The silence" of the simple past is noisier than "frogs, drums, bottles, dogs barking..." of the past perfect. That is, the perpetual curfews of the coloniser in Colombo have a strong and destructive impact on the oppressed population of Ceylan.
     This silence is reminiscent of the "silence of the lambs". This silence is an outburst of the oppressed who has become psychically not well. Ray has become sort of lunatic; he refers too much to the moon:" only the stars above moved..." " A young man(Siri) appearedin the moonlight", " Ray leaned back in his chair...and stared up at the night sky. He saw only a waning moon...."
     the story is built on an oxymoron of life(noise in the past) and death ("silence ...England transplanted")...
     The narrator has indeed well trapped me into identifying with him, so that I feel great sympathy with him; may be because I am a third world citizen and my parents and grand parents and I have undergone the same injustice through the French colonisation. This phatic communion is somehow inevitable!
     But do you think Ibrahim of the text deserves such oblivion?
     Cheers Mostafa

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Great to read our toughts Mostafa! You could not have been more true in understanding the "indeterminacies" of Ray and his situation. In fact, that accounts for why the piece has such an impact as a short story. The silence is indeed powerful, often oppressive throughout the text. The imagery is so evocative that nature within and nature without act as objective correlatives to one another. The silence here is not only the stupor of the mind but the sterility of Ceylon---reminds me of
     "The Wasteland" part V. what do you think?
    
     Thanks!

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Dear ELT e-reading friends,
    
     I could identify personally with two of the themes in this moving short story. Here in Brazil, the relationship between employers and domestic staff (for those who have such a relationship) is changing radically from the hierarchical and unfair relationships of the past. Today, many middle and upper-middle class families see their "help" as an extension of the family, albeit possibly a temporary one. We entrust our children and homes to people about whom we often know little... including their own domestic situation, family etc. Of course, as time goes by, we grow closer and I can certainly empathise with Ray in his desire to "do the right thing" to help his companion. The self-imposed deference is also something we come across in Brazil and can be excruciating for those of us who prefer to see all men (and women) as equals, be they politicians, business moguls, employees, beggars or other marginalised citizens.
    
     Another theme is that of the unfairness and cruelty of social violence, in this case civil war, but in the case of Brazil and many other countries, simple lawlessness and even stray bullets which, on an almost daily basis, take the lives of innocent loved ones, young and old. It is common for Brazilians to express the desire to just "up and go" to get away from problems such as violence, unemployment, corruption (especially corruption!) by moving to some distant land... only to find that they miss their roots and, like Ray, end up returning to the dialectics of good and evil in their own home countries.
    
     I look forward to reading other reactions to the text.
    
     Bye for now,
    
     Graeme.

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Dear ELT e- reading pals,
    
     When reading this story, I connected myself to so many short stories written by Peruvian writers back in the time of horror – when insecurity and fright was something we had to live with. Silence as in the story was many times preferable to words, and leaving the country was the permanent hope of millions, but once in other lands the country and the family was in their minds..
     Thanks for having given me the chance to read this powerful story.
    
     Carmen

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I forgot to mention that I was reminded of the relationship between the two friends who protagonise Khaled Hosseini's "The Kite Runner".

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Hi Graeme,
     It seems that your reflections on the story vis-a-vis the state in Brazil, can be taken as a generic statement on all "developing countries", where money is the road to identity. Master/servant relation ahs been a pertinenet topic in colonial literature, which is the reason why i was prompted to think of "The Grass is Singing". And yes, "The Kite Runner" too explores the complexities of this situation, although the pignanacy there is more moving, the protagonists being childhood chums.

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Hello everyone
    
     I've been reading with great interest your posts here and I think we've discussing some powerful topics, indeed.
    
     Obviously, the silence, so plainly stated at the beginning of the story is something that follows along the pages. However, I think the most oppressive silence is that one of the words not said between Ray and Siri - what's more, the silence of the thoughts that apparently Ray does not acknowledge to himself. It seems to me that Ray's silence is the one that actually impregnates the story, the air and the nights of Colombo.
     What is the reason for his silence? For his short, almost childish sentences? Especially when he remembers his past life and relationships in London?
    
     Have you realised that the silence is broken at the end of the story? Why so? Why have the fireflies returned and the frogs started to croack again and the sky now is like a drum??
    
     Looking forward to having your takes on that.
    
     Chris

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Thanks Chris for guiding us into analysing this deep and frigthining silence.
    
     In my culture, we bilieve in a natural intuition or in foreseeing desgrace and death of our close acquaitances, friends or relatives. My mother would say the last nigth silence was a foreboding of Mr. Ibrahim and Siri's brother's fate and bet she knew it.
     But at the same time the silence as described in the story provides the drama and guide us into understanding Siri's attitude who wants to give up and go away, but he doesn't know where the better place is in this world. Ray's reply is of no use to him, since he tells Siri "we're no better, but we're no worse" which Siri's doesn't bilieve it. I find the silence in this story too noisy, the frogs have always been croaking, but not heard in the face of terror, destruction and most of all, in this unpeaceaful setting. a powerful story and magic realism for us in the "Third world Countries"
    
    
     Hope I understood the story...
    
     Langa

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Hi Graeme,
     Reading the House in the country and your reading make me think about my relationship with the domestic I have at home. I leave my house and children with her, because I trust her. I also try to make her happy with gifts, good words and good treatment. I am ok with you when you say:"to do the right thing". Unfortunately her behaviour does not change as Siri, either. She ca be invited to eat on the table, but she prefers to stay in the kitchen, in her own corner.
     I think it is a matter of classes, my domestic and Siri come from the lower class, so our behaviour is totally different, and somtimes there is a shock.
     I can do effort to change her as Ray was trying to do but it is not a matter of one day. It is really a process ant it needs more time. They think the education received from their family what is " to be frightned of superior" means to "respect".
     To conclude this part, this " respect or fright " makes them to see their employerts as gods or inequal men/women.
    
     I hope everyone will follow Ray's example, treating Siri as himself.
    
     I was also tauched by Ray's decision of going back home. It was through the deception of the woman, he loved that Ray realized his great dream of going back to Sri Lanka. I think Ray's heart was always in Sri Lanka, even having all those goods, friends in England; he could not forget his country. And loving his country caused a big silence in his relationship with the woman. Ray did not have much to talk with her, so she could not support and decided to give up, fortunately she found another man. Communication is also a real tool to keep good relationship going up.
     Here Ray reminded me what was said by our grand parents: "don't get married with foreigner. He/she can have all kind of goods in your country even children but one day he/she will leave you to go back to his/her country, because his /her heart is there."

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Hello Chris,
     i believe that one of the pleasures of reading a short story is its textual silences or 'aporia'. You are right in that the most oppressive silence in the story is the one that emanates from Ray. The setting at the onset is like a prelude to that. In fact the story can read like a musical structure where the final burst of sound viz. the blasts of death comes like a crescendo. As if we were almost expecting and wating for the explosion after the strained sequence of silence that coils unto the self of the story and its characters.
    
     Coming back to Ray, we are delving into a history untold here--a feature that diffrentiates a short story from a novel/epic. of course, the silence speaks of a troubled past, a failure in relationship which makes his relationship with Siri so familial in nature. Ray's return to his native(like Hardy's Clym), is therefore symbolic of his desire to return to a mother/brother figure that he lacks. Siri is not only his 'other' but also the void he feels within. The final loss of Siri's brother signifies the deathly silence at the core of the film will remain, as the lack persists in Ray's life too after Siri's departure. The fireflies return, the frogs croak and the skies drum maybe as an ironic clarion call to that.
    
     hope i havn't bored everyone to silence :)

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Hi Everyone,
    
     I am sorry for not posting earlier. I have been a little busy with my teaching duties. House in the Country is really a beautiful story. The silence at the beginning is really an omen of death. I see the death of hope, of illusions, the end of a dream. I had the sensation that it was also a wake up call for Ray who maybe refused to see Siri as he really was, to recognize his fears, to see his disbelief in the future. Ray seems to leave in denial of the world around him. It is difficult to visualize any kind of future if one lives country that dwells in conflict, in war.

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What a great short text!!!!, it almost made me cry at the end....it also reminded me our carefews we had in our country when the military took up the government, I was only 10 at that time, but the "silence", that scary "silence" came to me....I could tell how these two friends felt.
     I just loved "House in the country".
    
     Love to everyone, Viviana.

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Hello Jia and everyone
    
     I think the way you interpreted the silence was really poetic and powerful. Thanks for that! Actually, I also had this sensation that death was a sort of moment of realisation where the silence is broken, illusions are shattered,... but only partially... There is still something elusive lingering on that I've been trying to grasp but - well-done Romesh !!- it still escapes me.
    
     I'd also like to mention the 'house'. As an extended metaphor, I was walking this morning and thinking what Ray actually wants to build up. Is it a homely recreation of the comforts of his London flat or is it a nostalgic version of the houses of his childhood? Is it a hybrid version? As hybrid and complex as his new identity?
    
     mmmmmm so many questions...
    
     Cheers - Chris

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Chris, I've a slightly different view of silence and death from you. Doesn't silence follow death rather than precede it?
    
     I wonder why we let the author off so lightly for a story that hides so much more even than 'Ullswater' hides. Before we read the story, we know that the author specializes in "the passions and feelings that we spend part of our lives trying to hide or avoid" (Jose Antonio's comment on 'Ullswater'). And when we read it, we notice the silence ("the most oppressive silence is that one of the words not said between Ray and Siri" - your ever so delicate reference to their homo-erotic relationship). Also the words not said between Siri and Ray when Siri's brother is killed ("You should have told me").
    
     For Langa and Jose Antonio, the opening silence is an omen of death. I must say that I'm unhappy, not with this interpretation of the story, but with the invitation to interpret death in this way that the author invites. In the everyday world, death isn't foreshadowed by literary silence, nor is it part of a wider symphony of the kind that caused Sam Johnson to call 'Lycidas' "easy, vulgar and therefore disgusting". In the real world, untimely and unnatural death, the theme of these two stories, often occurs at the noisiest times and when it's least expected. I think the author (not necessarily the same person as Romesh Gunesekera) accommodates death, when in fact it should be challenged.
    
     Given that this is a story about death, why should the author stoically hide behind the tragedian's mask ("when the gods take pity"; "things had to improve")? Why should 'A House in the Country' begin with (even, celebrate) an unnatural silence that goes beyond the imposed silence of the curfew and the failed radio? The story promotes the sense that existential status is all we have: otherwise, shutters are to guarantee future privacy, virtually no one knows or cares about government policy, the protagonist prefers to walk alone and avoid other human beings, the cows' milk has dried up.
    
     Like the night, the story is silent about so many things: the homo-erotic relationship of Ray and Sita mentioned before ("Ray could say nothing except that he wanted to"; "the intimacy that had yet to be"), the emotional effect of his brother's death on Siri, even the story's own outcome (does Siri leave Ray or stay with him? does the house in the country come into being or not?).
    
     This is the second Gunesekera story about untimely and unnatural death, and once again the author scrupulously avoids confronting grief and the appalling knowledge of the bereaved that someone who meant so much to them has been wiped from the face of the earth for ever. For readers, the question is whether we too are prepared to collude in this "swallowing silence". Not to collude involves blaming the author (not necessarily the same person as Romesh Gunesekera) for his story and refusing to accept that the teller is merely the agent and that the story speaks for itself.
    
     Alternatively, the author could have written a quite different story, an 'English' story, called perhaps 'A Country House', in which the "world of manners" (although not necessarily manners of the kind with which Siri is familiar) provides a comedic backdrop for many generations, rather than the tragic story of a house in the country which has yet to be built and which, like Seneka's marriage in 'Ullswater', being a step too far, invites challenge by the unpitying gods.
    
     Re-reading our reactions to 'Ullswater' in the context of 'A House in the Country', their focus on the role and responsibility of the author is striking. Soher (25 August, 07.24 pm) suggests that our debate results from the author's limitation of the story to the perspective of the narrator, and thanks the author for the story. Chris (25 August, 08.09 pm) mentions the partial role of the narrator and suggests that the author uses the narrator as a trap to alert us to "glimpses of another truth". Soher responds (25 August, 08.47), ascribing the narration of the story to the author and arguing that this story differs from the default in which the author conveys his perspective through the words of "his" narrator. Jose Antonio (26 August 01.49 am) agrees that the author implies that the narrator's version is partial. Thereafter, the debate about the functions of narrator and author takes a more ambiguous turn: in asking whether suicide is an outcome of reading (I know, at reliable secondhand, of someone who took his own life after reading King Lear), Mostafa (29 August) doesn't shrink from implying the responsibility of authors for the perlocutionary effects of their work, and Tanguene (September 6) implies the responsibility of an author for the perspective of the narrator ("Romesh is great, and let us not blame the narrator").
    
     I wish I could join our live discussion with the 'author' tomorrow, but unfortunately I've a work commitment which I can't get out of. I hope colleagues won't blame the story for its partiality when we might blame the author for choosing to make a symphony of silence out of death. This is not, in my experience, the truth about untimely death.

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Hello Porlock and everyone,
    
     I'm grateful to Porlock for enlighining us into escaping the way the author has expected us to interprete the silence in these two stories, I think it's true he has led us there. But if you could read "Carapace" and "Independence" by the same author you'd find out that this (loudy)silence we're now discussing is even more intriguiging and noisy. I hope Porlock is not missing one key element in these stories: the setting! The author brings this silence and also creates a setting which one can think was never a silent one to put it! I don't personally simphathize with the way he leads the drama into a more dramatic state, I mean, in all the stories it seems the setting deteriorates and the characters don't improve their status, on the contrary they end up drawn characters. It is not human to expect things to start from bad to the worst. You can even be tempted to think there was never such silence, but the indeference of the characters towards a situation they found themeselves in.
    
     Does silence comes after or precede death? that's a powerful question to be discussed. but the story unfolds in a "rather ill" setting where silence can mean an omen of death and terror. In reality, I think silence comes at the same time with death.
    
     Grateful to all

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i completely agree with you Tanguene...i think i mentioned in one of my earlier post that the setting is a reflection of the silence that haunts Ray and indeed the entire text...objective correlative i think they call it in literary terms

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'The rest is silence.O,O,O,O'
    
     Thanks a lot Porlock and Tanguene. Your comments made me spend days in silent meditation ;)
    
     Does Hamlet say that silence follows death? Although we tend to think so, his sentence is by no means the last one of the play. Actually, there is quite a lot of drumming and talking going on after his final breath and we can even say that, in fact, his death is the cause of the play's existence because it prompts Horatio to beak the silence of Elsinore and tell the world his friend's tale. What is *the rest*? Does he mean the period of idleness, the hiatus that is supposed to be death itself? Or is it *rest* a synonym for that remains? If so, is Hamlet talking about what he sees ahead or about what he is leaving behind?
    
     I'm not sure if silence follows death. Actually, I'd like to believe that indeed it does. Silence and Oblivion after so much toil and suffering would be the balm that heals our wounds and a promise of freedom from our future unhappy returns. I'm not so sure we can get away that easily, though.
    
     Porlock says that, 'in the real world, ultimately and natural death often occurs at the noisiest times and when least expected.' I think there are two points to be considered here.
    
     First, as I see it, death is never unexpected. We just pretend it is. Actually, we live under its shadow since we are born, expecting it to come to claim our frail existences at any moment. It's like a game where 'we have cheated death/and he has cheated us.' Death is like a guest we do not want to welcome, but who we know will show up sooner or later - mostly unwanted; but never unexpected.
    
     Secondly, perhaps death comes at the noisiest times. However, have you ever been to a noisy party, full of music and chatter and felt as if you were inside a bubble of silence? I think silence can be something inside you. It seems to me that the silence in 'The House' is this kind of silence that comes from within the characters, who become deaf to the sounds around and to the voices of the others. This kind of silence can be more eloquent than a thousand words because it's reveling. It tells us a tale of isolation, of not belonguing, of allienation.
    
     Some time ago someone said to me that we are neither able to say things in the way we would like to say, nor have things heard in the way we would like them to be heard. Therefore, the only alternative is silence. Now I know that the more you try to say, the least you can make yourself understood and the silence that the other imposes on you can say much more than the words he cannot or does not want to say. You can interprete the silence coming from the other in many possible ways, but for me its most profound effect is that it is contagious - it makes the silence inside you grow deeper, bleaker and heavier. From this point of view, I'd say that silence does precede death. It is an omen of death...if not of physical death, at least of the death of something vital inside yourself.
    
     'O Death in Life, the days that are no more.'
    
     All the best - Chris

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Dear Chris,
    
     Thanks for your message. I didn’t say death was unexpected but, in a quasi-tautological way, that “in the real world, untimely and unnatural death .. often occurs at the noisiest times and when it's least expected.” Although we know they occur, we don’t expect suicide and the murder of a young person as defaults. My objection is to situations in which we get close to unnatural death, seeing it partly through the eyes of the narrator and brother in ‘Ullswater’ and partly from the perspective of the protagonists’s Man Friday (to introduce a controversial note) in ‘A house in the country’ and yet we don’t feel the pain of bereavement to any very great extent. Instead, in ‘A house in the country’ in particular, we identify so called objective correlatives which help us to reach an easy, symphony-of-death interpretation. Personally, I don’t believe this is true to life. (Which may be the point of the story, but such a reading requires a dollop of postmodern cynicism and isn’t our preferred understanding.)
    
     Thanks for the references to ‘Hamlet’. It would be wonderful to discuss the predicament of the philosophy student required to resolve a series of family and constitutional problems. But first we have to absent ourselves from felicity a while to read a story about “the silence and darkness” which enables “the poet to sleep safely”, free from grave-disturbers.
    
     Porlock

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Dear Tanguene,
    
     I've been thinking about your message for several days. I'm not sure if we agree or disagree.
    
     I think your suggestion that the characters are indifferent to the situation they find themselves in isn't very far away from my suggestion that they bear their fate stoically. However, this view of context as presumptive and determining of our actions is rather pessimistic and needn't be accepted.
    
     Porlock

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Hello Porlock,
    
     I really read your posts as well as others with great interest...
    
     I fully agree with your suggestion that 'the characters bear their fate stoically', but in my reading I was invited to look at the setting before assessing the characters. That has helped me in accepting the flow of the story and not blame either the writer or the narrator for the characters' fate. it seems Gunesekera doesn't own the characters and choose what he'd like them to be, either pessimistic or optimistic, but it seems he leaves them evolve and be influenced/transformed by the setting. in the end they seem to find out the world they live in is too different from the world they dreamed of. that's simply my opinion.
    
     when I first entered our EnCompass Discussion Group in our Buklub reading group in Mozambique we were reading 'Independence'. In this story two characters shift from London back to Sri Lanka and it's too funny: they were in love in one setting and fell apart in another setting and we are not told why. In 'carapace' happens almost the same, silence and complex characters and the drama let alone with no answers.
    
     We have read 'Ulswater' and 'a House in the Country' and i still found complex setting which shape complex characters, i mean, their attitude derives from what they see, what they face in their day to day lives. This is to say, pessimism is not simply a way some people look at life as a whole, but an outcome from their own life experiences.
    
     We cannot hold the same emotions, act the same way in a concert room and in the graveyard as well...
    
     Thanks

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