Rakesfall

The Saint of Bright Doors (Chandrasekera’s first novel) has been raking up award nominations from pretty much every major award, whether it be popular vote, juried, or a combination. It’s also a book I enjoyed quite a bit. I initially hadn’t because weirdly enough psychadellic tracings of two lovers across timelines/memories/reincarnations/whatever is weirdly popular in 2024 releases (see Welcome to Forever, Emperor and the Endless Palace, and Principle of Moments), and I’d already read a few. However, when comparisons to one of my favorite novels of all time, The Spear Cuts Through Water, were made by some reviewers, I knew it was time to give this acid-trip of a book a try.

Elevator Pitch:
The cover blurb from another author calls this a ‘fearless hallucinatory novel’ and I think that’s about as good of a description as I can give. It traces two souls reincarnating further and further into the future, with a tight focus on Sri Lanka. Each of the ten parts is written in a different mode, or style, such as people in a TV watching a TV show where they are a documentary watched by the characters, a play performed about things that happen in the future, and mad semi-poetic allegorical ramblings about the color red.

What Worked for Me
When I felt situated in what was happening, I really loved this book. The writing is beautiful, and Chandrasekera revels in playing with language. I appreciated the structures of the book disparately (the opening part was really breathtaking, and I liked the drama script section quite a lot as well), and found that I was most successful when reading this book as a series of loosely connected vignettes instead of the intended experience of trying to stitch together meaning out of the whole. This is something I’m loathe to do since I normally revel in layers of meaning and how disparate pieces connect into a larger whole. This book makes Game of Thrones look like a book written for first graders in terms of mental effort needed to engage with the story, which isn’t something fantasy/sci fi authors are generally very willing to do.

I also enjoyed that this book, despite the plot oftentimes leaving me wildly confused, had more direct criticism of colonialism and processing of themes than his past work. It was willing to call out aspects of Sri Lankan history directly and explicitly, and drops tidbits that make you want to learn more by forcing you to search out answers to understand the context of what’s happening. I learned a lot about Sri Lanka from this book, and also understand that I barely scratched the surface.

What Didn’t Work for Me
I think I’m just too stupid to get everything this book has to offer. Or, ore accurately, it’s a book that asks more of its reader than I am willing to give. As an English major (not a great one, but still), I tended to prefer pop culture and genre studies classes like crime literature or kids lit over capital L Literature courses, and this book definitely falls into Literature. There were many times I felt utterly lost on what was going on, but was kind of just enjoying the language. You’ll encounter a lot of tough vocab words, and wikipedia will be helpful unless you’re familiar with Sri Lankan history/politics or Buddhism. It’s a book stepped in meaning, but I just don’t think I’m the right target audience for it. I needed the connective tissue to be stronger, the book to be more direct and less meandering.

If the idea of something that really demands you chew on it to get the most out of it, Rakesfall would be a great option.

In Conclusion: A wildly experimental book about parallel lives, this book is great for people who like dense texts that force you to commit a lot of brain power to getting meaning out of it.

I’m also going to avoid giving my normal ratings for this book, since I really don’t know how on earth I would even approach such an endeavor.