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What Lies Between Us: A Novel
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St. Martin's Publishing Group 2016
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Description

In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this new country of freedom, everything she has built begins to crumble around her, and her hold on reality becomes more and more tenuous. When the past and the present collide, she sees only one terrible choice.
From Nayomi Munaweera, the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, comes the confession of a woman, driven by the demons of her past to commit a single and possibly unforgivable crime.
Praise for Island of a Thousand Mirrors:
"The paradisiacal landscapes of Sri Lanka are as astonishing as the barbarity of its revolution, and Munaweera evokes the power of both in a lyrical debut novel worthy of shelving alongside her countryman Michael Ondaatje or her fellow writer of the multigenerational immigrant experience Jhumpa Lahiri." - Publishers Weekly
"The beating heart of Island of a Thousand Mirrors is not so much its human characters but Sri Lanka itself and the vivid, occasionally incandescent, language used to describe this teardrop in the Indian Ocean." - The New York Times Book Review

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Format:
Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read
Street Date:
02/16/2016
Language:
English
ISBN:
9781466842281
ASIN:
B0122VFGJY
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APA Citation (style guide)

Nayomi Munaweera. (2016). What Lies Between Us: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Nayomi Munaweera. 2016. What Lies Between Us: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Nayomi Munaweera, What Lies Between Us: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2016.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Nayomi Munaweera. What Lies Between Us: A Novel. St. Martin's Publishing Group, 2016.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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      • value: Sri Lanka
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      • value: mental illness
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      • fileAs: Munaweera, Nayomi
      • bioText: NAYOMI MUNAWEERA was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Nigeria. She emigrated to the United States in her early teens, and now lives in Oakland, CA. Island of a Thousand Mirrors won the 2013 Commonwealth Book Prize for the Asian Region and was longlisted for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize.
      • name: Nayomi Munaweera
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title
What Lies Between Us
fullDescription

In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this new country of freedom, everything she has built begins to crumble around her, and her hold on reality becomes more and more tenuous. When the past and the present collide, she sees only one terrible choice.
From Nayomi Munaweera, the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, comes the confession of a woman, driven by the demons of her past to commit a single and possibly unforgivable crime.
Praise for Island of a Thousand Mirrors:
"The paradisiacal landscapes of Sri Lanka are as astonishing as the barbarity of its revolution, and Munaweera evokes the power of both in a lyrical debut novel worthy of shelving alongside her countryman Michael Ondaatje or her fellow writer of the multigenerational immigrant experience Jhumpa Lahiri." - Publishers Weekly
"The beating heart of Island of a Thousand Mirrors is not so much its human characters but Sri Lanka itself and the vivid, occasionally incandescent, language used to describe this teardrop in the Indian Ocean." - The New York Times Book Review

reviews
      • premium: False
      • source: NoViolet Bulawayo, award-winning author of We Need New Names
      • content:

        "By turns tender, beautiful, and devastating, Island of A Thousand Mirrors is a deeply resonant tale of an unraveling Sri Lanka. Incredibly moving, complex, and with prose you may want to eat, this debut is a triumph."

      • premium: False
      • source: Yangsze Choo, author of The Ghost Bride, international bestseller in SE Asia and Oprah.com's Book of the Week
      • content: "A searing tale of the Sri Lankan civil war...Nayomi Munaweera breathes life into the beauty and terror of that era through her delicate, bittersweet prose. An unforgettable novel."
      • premium: False
      • source: Sarah Dunant, author of Blood and Beauty and Birth of Venus
      • content: "A novel of the heart...The colour, tastes, sounds and smells of Sri Lanka ooze from its pages, vibrant and intoxicating, but as beauty turns to brutality our sympathies are tossed between two young women whose different paths are fashioned by the violence of civil war, but whose inner humanity is never forgotten."
      • premium: False
      • source: Alan Brennert, author of Moloka'i
      • content: "Exquisitely written and beautifully evocative of an exotic place and bygone age."
      • premium: False
      • source: Janet Fitch, #1 international bestselling author of White Oleander
      • content: "Munaweera writes with ferocity, fire and poetry of the incomprehensible madness of civil war and its effects upon those caught within it... A masterful, incendiary debut."
      • premium: False
      • source: V.V.Ganeshananathan, author of Love Marriage

      • content: "The three women and the core of this ambitious, globe-spanning story show us, heartbreakingly, that we are linked by more than nation, more than race, more, even than blood. A dark, beautiful, transporting debut."
      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        December 15, 2015
        This family tragedy begins in a prison cell, where the unnamed narrator wants to explain her (also unnamed) crime by telling her life story, from birth and childhood in Sri Lanka to adolescence and young adulthood in California. The narrator's father, a professor from an upper-class family, married her beautiful but poor mother in the early 1970s, when he was 29 and she only 17. The narrator, born a year later after a difficult delivery that left her mother unable to bear more children, feels the pressure of being the center of her parents' lives. In glorious detail she describes the lush beauty of her childhood home, the flavors of the food, the love she feels from cousins and schoolmates. But her nostalgic memories also contain fear, dread, and confusion. Her mother veers from doting to withdrawn to hostile. Her father mopes and drinks. And then there's Samson the gardener: is he a source of protection or threat? She's not completely sure, but she has dreams of dangerous sexuality. After an altercation shortly before the narrator's 14th birthday, her father drowns and Samson goes missing. The narrator and her mother leave Sri Lanka for California, where the immigrant teenager struggles to fit in but also shares moments of genuine joy and intimacy with her Americanized cousin Dharshi. Then there's the glorious spiraling love the narrator shares with Daniel, a white artist from West Virginia. The exuberance of the narrator's memories are undercut by repeated warnings that the ending will be unhappy and by overwrought teasers concerning the murkily described evils that have supposedly caused the narrator's own unspoken, unspeakable behavior. The melodramatic framing device only distracts from the crystalline precision with which Munaweera (Island of a Thousand Mirrors, 2014) renders the richness of the immigrant experience as well as her character's singular longings, fears, joys, and demons.

        COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: School Library Journal
      • content:

        May 1, 2016

        Ganga's childhood is turned upside down by the unexpected death of her father. She and her mother must take advantage of her aunt's hospitality in America-a huge lifestyle change from her father's ancestral home in Sri Lanka. Ganga's relationship with her mother has always been tumultuous, and it doesn't improve when the girl becomes a typical 1980s American teenager. Once in college, Ganga finally finds love, acceptance, and a relationship, but the young couple's intimacy is tested by an unexpected pregnancy. Ganga isn't sure she can be a good mother-she has too many secrets and is terrified that the cycle of abuse will be repeated with her own daughter. The lush and sultry Sri Lankan setting provides a fitting atmosphere for the beginning of this dark and tense novel. From the outset, readers know that Ganga has done something horrible to her child, and the sense of foreboding grows throughout the narrative. While the latter part of the novel is written from Ganga's point of view as a new wife and mother, teens will still want to continue reading to find out what happened to the young child and what caused the violence.

        Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        Starred review from February 15, 2016
        Childhood in Sri Lanka is enchanting, filled with luscious flowers, juicy fruits, and other native beauties. For one girl, this magical time is also filled with the warmth and security of family and friends who enrich her beautiful riverside home, but behind the inviting facade lurks a dangerous darkness. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother flee to America, where she begins to rebuild her life. Away from the terrors that plagued her and the constricting traditions of her homeland, she pursues her education, becoming first a nurse, then a wife and mother. She is proud of her accomplishments and blissfully happy. But just when she feels she has everything, the demons of the past return to haunt her. Fighting these unrelenting forces, she watches everything she loves slip away, until she believes just one option remains, one that only she will ever truly understand. Munaweera's style is richly descriptive and deeply personal as she probes the link between childhood trauma and adult psychosis. Writing with the same tantalizing prose that captured readers in her debut novel (Island of a Thousand Mirrors, 2014), Munaweera explores the relationship of mothers and daughters, tradition, honor, and sacrifice, with beautiful and devastating results.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        September 15, 2015

        Chronicling civil war in her native Sri Lanka, Munaweera's debut, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, was a Commonwealth Book Prize winner and got strong reviews in America. Here, a girl from Sri Lanka's beautiful hill country escapes terror by immigrating with her mother to America yet can't shake off the past and is eventually driven to commit a terrible crime.

        Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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shortDescription

In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this new country of freedom, everything she has built begins to crumble around her, and her hold on reality becomes more and more tenuous. When the past and the present collide, she sees only one terrible choice.
From Nayomi Munaweera, the award-winning author of Island of a Thousand Mirrors, comes the confession of a woman, driven by the demons of her past to commit a single and possibly unforgivable crime.
Praise for Island of a Thousand Mirrors:
"The paradisiacal landscapes of Sri Lanka are as astonishing as the...

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