The Hamilton Case (37 page)
I was superstitiously determined
not
to return to Sri Lanka to research the novel. In the first place, I felt that what I remembered of the island was more than enough to recreate its landscapes and so on for readers. And, then, Sri Lanka today is a very different place from the Ceylon in which I grew up, let alone the colonial Ceylon of my parents’ generation. I was writing about a country that no longer exists—a ghost country, which, like all ghosts, depends on memory and narrative to conjure its existence. It seemed important, therefore, not to muddle that remembered, imagined world with the reality of contemporary Sri Lanka. Of course I had to research aspects of the novel—elephant hunting, for instance, which I’m glad to say isn’t part of my experience!— but I did so solely in libraries.
Your main character, Sam Obeysekere, says, “What I remember most about my parents is that they weren’t there.” How do his withholding parents affect Sam’s fate?
Sam has a very inadequate idea of how to express love because he has little direct experience of these things. In the upper-class, British-influenced set to which his parents belong, it is “bad form” to show emotion. Consequently, the personal relationships Sam forms are predicated on the exercise of power rather than trust or tenderness.
Your first novel,
The Rose Grower,
was set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, and
The Hamilton Case
takes place during social upheaval in Ceylon. Do you think characters can be revealed more fully in troubled times?
Yes, indeed. Social change is interesting because it obliges people to make choices—and is therefore very revealing of character.
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Michelle de Kretser once said in an interview that “people who are not well loved do not know how to love well in turn.” How does Sam exemplify this statement?
2. How does Sam’s schooling at St. Edward’s (“Neddy’s”) and Oxford influence his social and political opinions?
3. Sam’s sister, Claudia, ends her life tragically. What aspects of her past and present did she find unbearable?
4. Sam and Jaya come from similar privileged Sinhalese backgrounds. What is at the root of their animosity? How do their hopes for Ceylon’s future differ?
5. Sam reveres all things English. How does this reverence affect his attitude toward his mother, Maud, and his choice of Leela as his wife?
6. How is “the fabulous flotsam of Empire” reflected in the decorative objects in Sam’s childhood and marital houses?
7. The Ceylonese jungle is a powerful physical presence in this novel, especially as it slowly takes over the estate to which Maud is exiled at Lokugama. What kind of metaphorical presence does it have? How does it complement Maud’s decline?
8. Would you say that Sam — as a widower whose grown son is estranged from him — is most dismayed by the loss of his family, his fall from professional grace, or the cessation of English rule in Ceylon in 1948?
9. How does the use of different points of view in each of the four parts of
The Hamilton Case
enlarge our understanding of the characters and their country?
10. At the end of
The Hamilton Case,
Shivanathan writes that “history, like any other verdict, is not a matter of fact but a point of view.” Do you agree? Discuss.
Michelle de Kretser is a Sri Lankan who has lived in Australia since 1972. Her first novel,
The Rose Grower,
was published in 1999. She has taught literature at Melbourne University and worked as an editor and reviewer.
The Hamilton Case
received the Commonwealth Writers Best Book Prize, SE Asia and South Pacific region, and the Encore Award for best second novel of the year.
