In the opening pages of Shankari Chandran’s third novel, Sister Fina, a Carmelite nun, slips in the blood of a 14-year-old child who has succeeded in his most recent suicide attempt. Even after his death, she thinks of him as a survivor.
“Kannan Puveendran, aged fourteen, had survived the bombing of his village, Kokavil, in the Vanni region of northern Sri Lanka in the final months of the way, years before,” Chandran writes. “He had survived the march through the jungle from the smouldering remains of his village to a small stretch of beach on the other side of the island. He survived dehydration, heat, hunger, and dysentery. On that beach, his mother prayed that the Red Cross ships, moored just five kilometres off the coast, would send lifeboats for them. Instead, the Red Cross waited, paralysed by international diplomacy and geopolitical agendas.”
Is there a more damning indictment to government and social apathy than this – a child who lost hope not in the midst of war, but in the bleak, unending despair of government sanctioned detention centres? It is in one of these institutions that Sister Fina volunteers, still on the temporary visa granted to her after she arrived by leaky, collapsing boat into Australia.
Kannan’s death, and the adjacent suicide of one of the prison guards, triggers the events of the novel: Sister Fina, retraumatised by the smell of the boy’s blood, breaks the confidentiality of her visa to report the story to a fictional version of the Guardian. This in turn triggers the arrival of Sri Lankan Tamil OSI officer Lakshmi Dharman, or Lucky, who travels to the detention centre to investigate both deaths. For her efforts, Sister Fina is arrested by Border Force and detained for deportation back to Sri Lanka. The small community of Hastings, where Fina has found friends and a home, campaigns for her release – a community-driven act of compassion inspired by the real events of the Biloela family.
From its opening pages, Safe Haven delivers a sharp shock of pain, an immediate emotional response with the goal of further provoking action. It is punctuated by devastating flashbacks to Fina’s traumatic escape from Sri Lanka, and the Orwellian bureaucracy she (and all others like her) encounter as barriers to freedom and safety. Later, it shifts focus to Lucky’s investigation, which is blocked at every turn by guards at the detention centre. The effects of Kannan’s death continue to be felt, but more as an undercurrent as there’s no satisfying resolution available for his family.
Like her Miles Franklin-winning novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, Safe Haven is a warm and generous read despite its hefty subject matter. At times, as the focus of the book shifts more towards Lucky’s investigation and the revelation of Fina’s own secret past, the novel reads more like a crime procedural – no less compelling, but perhaps without the driving fury of the opening pages. But Chandran brings the story to life through the warmth and vibrancy of its characters. We immediately feel welcomed; no mean feat, given the concurrent feeling of discomfort and shame. Stories like this have the power to create and hold space where shame and hope can coexist.
Chandran credits her characters – and her readers – with the ability to meet such complexity. In one scene, Fina recalls learning to swim in the community pool, slowly overcoming her fear of being back in water. She is the only adult in her class; the families of the children learning alongside her watch on, never laughing, in part because they too have “seen trauma before, in forms that were distinct because all trauma is distinct, but also universal”. This is a work that invites a nuanced reflection on the myriad ways trauma is experienced and felt – from the violent immediacy, to the ongoing ache, to the monotonous, hope-depriving bureaucracy that enables such apathy.
Is Safe Haven, or any book, enough to inspire action? Perhaps not. After the novel’s initial hurt, it does ease into a gentler, more recognisable narrative that, while highlighting the various mechanisms that strip individuals of their humanity and rights, doesn’t deliver too many outright shocks. But it is quietly discomfiting, fury wrapped in the familiar in a way that means it lingers long after the final page.
Safe Haven by Shankari Chandran is published by Ultimo ($34.99)
