The distress call from the sinking boat is from Serafina Daniels, a nun. She survives, although many of the other refugees, many children do not. When the novel settles into itself it is four years later and Sister Serafina, of the practical Carmelite Order, is now in Hastings, a country town in NSW. Her situation is as precarious as the strange house she lives in and organises; huge, rambling and dubbed the Nightingale Inn, the house is owned by Louisa, a troubled, shadow of a woman with an 11-year-old son, Cash.
Cash adores Serafina, now known as Fina. He often sleeps in her room so he knows she cries in her sleep. And swears like a sailor. Fina is Tamil, as were many of the people on the boat rescued by the young Norwegian captain. The Captain and Fina are still in close contact.
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Fina is in Hastings because of the pastoral care of Henry Manners, a doctor who works at the detention centre Fina returns to every three weeks. She returns as a detainee on leave but also to help Manners with his medical work – she is alarmingly competent with medical matters – and also to work as a translator and advocate for the many asylum seekers there. Henry and Fina are extremely close, but in his official letters to her, he advises her to stick with her pastoral-care brief. She won’t. They both know that. And this is dangerous.
Some artists make us see by making us feel. A seduction. Shankari Chandran, who is an Australian Tamil, has an agenda. Or perhaps, a responsibility. Agendas come from rage at the cruelties, injustices, unkindnesses right before every human eye in daily life. And a further rage at our inability to see that reality before our eyes. A determination to turn our faces away. Lord knows the desire not to see has only been strengthened in the past few years.
Writers with agendas can be the most gifted – Dickens, Beecher Stowe, Zola, George Eliot, Toni Morrison, Elena Ferrante, Alexis Wright – and it has to do with an adept use of that space between reader and writer; the conjuring of an emotional intimacy between reader and writer, leaving the reader unarmed, vulnerable, poised to reflect. Of course entertainment is involved.
And here, with adventure, crime, mystery, romance – entertainment – Shankari Chandran is slyly involving us in a story that will make us feel, maybe inform us and if we’re lucky, able to return to the outside world with wider understanding.
Shankari Chandran is a guest at Sydney Writers’ Festival (swf.org.au).
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