Beautiful Place

by Amanthi Harris

Beautiful Place is a novel about leaving and losing home and making family. It is about being oppressed and angry and wanting a better life – but how is a better life to be defined?

The Villa Hibiscus is a house by the sea on the exquisite southern coast of Sri Lanka, home to Padma, a young Sri Lankan woman. The owner of the villa, Gerhardt, is an elderly Austrian architect to whom Padma was taken when young by her scheming father, Sunny, who had hoped to seduce the wealthy new foreigner in the area with his attractive child. Gerhardt adopts Padma and pays Sunny to stay away until she’s grown up – when Gerhardt expects to have sent Padma to university, far away.

But Padma fails her exams and is lonely in the city, gladly returning to her beloved old home by the sea. With Gerhardt’s help she creates a guesthouse at the villa and soon guests start to arrive, opening new vistas for Padma through their friendship and love.

Then Sunny appears, ready to reclaim his daughter...

Genres: Fiction

560 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2019

Reviews

[Mridula Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Sri Lanka is a mixed-up garden, a hive of buzzing anxiety and passion where dangerous venom lurks, always about to spill over."
A very promising story that takes you to the coastal heaven of Sri Lanka. Padma returns back to her beloved house near the sea after her unsuccessful education in Colombo and with the help of her adoptive father turns it into a profitable business. But Padma has a past that seeks her out every now and then, a past that has a dangerous network of webs, waiting for its next prey.

In 'Beautiful Place', Harris works with both- the rich and violent history of the island and the darker, politically troublesome present. She connects them seamlessly and through characters who are deeply affected by it all. Padma wants to stay as far away as possible from the politics and the filthy locals who would do anything for money. There are these tiny details mentioned throughout the story such as the importance of Race to the locals, the feud between Sinhalese and Tamil folks, the need to present the country as a flawless and perfect society despite the corruption and the extortions. Harris firmly integrates them and gives us an honest and true picture of the life that hides behind the scenic beauty. Her ability to transport the readers to the setting of the book is commendable and at times, gratifying.

Harris also invests a substantial amount of time in building the other characters, some significant and some, not so much but each acting as a vehicle to represent some event (dangerous in most cases) in the bigger scheme of things.

The story gives a lot to the readers but demands a little bit of patience in return. The plot turns predictable too soon, but it is also refreshing to see how each relationship in the story helped form an ending that was painful, yet inescapable.

[Girish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful Place by Amanthi Harris is an ambitious mixture of personal and political in a country that seems to be relegated to horror stories of war and terror. The titular Beautiful Place is a villa where guests and the staff find safe haven in an increasingly dangerous environment.

Padma and Soma are running the Hibiscus Villa, a new villa among the many brothels, created by an Austrian architect settled in Sri Lanka. There is a story of how Gerhardt "bought" Padma from the vile Sunny and raised her as a daughter. Now Sunny is back after all these years and he refuses to be bought off. He and his son are a shady presence hovering around the villa and scaring the guests.

The guests at the villa come at different stages of their life and try to find peace. There is Rohan, who comes in to hide away from the world after a bad divorce. There are a few more travelers whose stories also become entwined with the villa's story - it becoming a microcosm of Sri Lanka itself.

Somewhere while reading this book, I visualised myself as a traveler through the eyes of the locals and staff and imagined what stories they will make of me. Or how I do not know anything about the people in the new places, their lives, their struggles. In a lot of ways, "beautiful" is limited to what meets the eye and gets filed away by the brain.

This book demands patience above all. The last few chapters took the route of inevitability when it comes to Sri Lankan authors.

[Meredith C · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ve never read an author with such an unfettered love of exclamation points!

[Robert Landon · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delight this book is. Devoured it. Combines intelligence and psychological and social sharpness with page-turning plot.

[kanii · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved the atmosphere and setting of the book. it was so cozy, almost reminiscent of the slice-of-life genre. the diction was beautiful and none of the descriptions seemed overdone or out of place. most of the characters were lovely and i enjoyed reading about them.

however the last one-third of the book lost me. it takes a darker turn, which was anticipated from the build-up, but the pacing comes off as a bit too abrupt. the first two-thirds of the novel is very slow-paced, and then comes the last 100 pages where there's so so much happening in such a short span of time. there's such a sudden shift in genre. it sort of dampens the mood set up so far.

(also i don't really get the point of including nimmy and prakash in the story. they served no purpose to the main plot except to serve as a complete contrast of gerhardt's personality. this message, too, came off as too forward and direct. not a single ounce of subtlety. i do wish there was more closure about anjali and dan.)

overall a very good read! really recommended for everyone.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The plot line centers on a young Sri Lanka woman, Padma. After an unsuccessful try at university she now lives and manages a luxurious villa, hosting a stream of foreign guests. The property is owned by an Austrian expat, a very successful architect, living in Sri Lanka. He adapted her when she was quite young from her abusive but lurking in the background still father, Sonny. Going to Sri Lanka is not casual holiday for Europeans or Americans. Often villa guests see themselves on a kind of spiritual guest, hoping to achieve a spiritual ephifany from the temples. Of course European visitors are intrigued by the thought of a sexual encounter with for them "an exotic woman from the East". The extreme wealth disparity of the country and the under valuing of female children has created many venues for prostitutes. This should be seen as but another pernicious legacy of colonialism.

Setting the novel in a luxury guest villa means the clientele are affluent. As a structural device it enables Harris to bring new characters on stage for the single Padma to encounter. Seeing her and the guests size each other up was great fun.

Harris depicts the lush tropical beauty of Sri Lanka, for sure I would love to sample the curries she describes and sit on the beach reading something like A Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse.

We get to know a good bit about Padma's father Sonny who shows up looking for money. The nearby village is replete with thugs (a term borrowed from Hindi long ago) drug peddlers, crooked local
politicians, relatives wanting to spy on Padma, some to ask her for money and Aunts wanting her properly married.

Many in the local area are jealous of Padma's easily acquired wealth. A friend of Gebhardt, a European practitioner of Yogi and the author of a less than flattering book on Sri Lanka. Harris introduces the history and divided politics of the island through quotes from his book- a very nice touch, he adds some drama to the plot.

Padma's family wants to exploit her. There is more to Gebhardt than meets the eye. I really liked the slow way Harris develops her characters. Everyone in Beautiful Place is at least interesting and real. The atmosphere, pervasive poverty, long periods of ethnic conflicts introduces a sinister underlayer to the beauty Harris so skillfully invokes.

I greatly enjoyed and was very much drawn into Beautiful Place. I hope to follow the work of Ananthi Harris for many years.


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[Atharv G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed getting lost in this story and these characters. The sense of place was so strong in this novel, and I really felt like I was there with the characters in the village. I love how Harris examines the darker sides to these picturesque villages, and how the remnants of civil war, inequality, and tourism affects these communities. The contrast between the sunny outer appearance of the village and the shady activities that took place under the surface was a running theme that I thought was handled perfectly. This novel was infused with social commentary throughout, which I always enjoy reading about, and it was interesting to learn about ethno-nationalist movements in a new context and the ways they are engaged in rewriting history. Moral and financial corruption are closely interlinked in this novel, and the gulfs between various sections of society (such as poor village-dwellers and the cosmopolitan Colombo elite) are examined with poignant detail.

I think the diversity of backgrounds among this large cast of characters is what makes a lot of this social commentary more effective. Reading about the interactions between these characters really amplified their differences and shed a light on the ways they may not understand each others' backgrounds. I got really invested in these characters over the 500 pages of this novel, and I'm so glad to have been given a glimpse at life in this part of Sri Lanka through their eyes.

The one small criticism that sticks with me almost a month after having finished the novel is that the narrative was sometimes diverted by distracting and overly detailed descriptions of plants or rooms or furniture that took me out of the story. But other than that, the experience of reading this novel was very positive for me.

[Stephen Mallet · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable story set in a Sri Lankan seaside village. An interesting and quite dark view of the awkward interaction between locals and long term foreign residents, with tourists passing in and out of the narrative. Good characterisation and lovely descriptions, but ultimately the plot seemed a bit fanciful, the characters a bit unlikely.

[Lady R · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. This is a slow-moving novel but beautifully written. If you stick with it you will be rewarded. A strong debut. Her ability to transport you to the settings in this book are brilliant.

[bongbooksandcoffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful Place by Amanthi Harris is A Mesmerising Novel about Family, Home, Love and Loss in terms of the Personal as well as the Social and the Political.


Full review available in blog https://bongbooksandcoffee.com

[Nisha Patel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the descriptive writing, the description of Sri Lanka and the story of the guest house, her childhood and the guests who come to visit. Not sure I like one part of the ending but it also makes sense and feels real the more I think of it. A great read and so suspenseful.

[Tessa Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes me want to visit Sri Lanka

[Sian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a delightful read. I thought it was beautifully written and I didn’t want to put the book down. This book felt so wonderful in my hands, just as the book itself and the fact that the story was wonderful made it all the better! I loved the title and the cover, that’s initially why I picked it up. Well worth the read.