Review Summaries

• Readers respond strongly to the novel's warmth, its attention to family memory, and its direct engagement with racism and history. Some welcome the layered structure, while others feel the density of voices can be demanding.

Reviews

• Beautiful, heartbreaking, powerful and haunting

  Chai Time At Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran is a beautiful, moving, heartbreaking, powerful book, one that will touch your heart, and break it a little, but also wrap you in the comfort of hope, and the warmth of friendship and love and family, both those you’re born into, and those you find and create. It’s about the power of storytelling, the sharing of burdens by bearing witness to another’s life, the horror and loss of war, and the devastating impact of racism not just in the Sri Lanka many of the characters have ancestral links to, but in Australia too. It’s also about those who stand against it and speak out, who find the courage to make a difference and to protect the vulnerable. Set in a western Sydney nursing home, it is peopled with wonderfully diverse characters, from wise and witty matriarch Maya, who runs Cinnamon Gardens with love and warmth, and the foods and rituals of the residents’ childhoods, to her strong yet vulnerable daughter Anji, Anji’s husband Nathan and her best friend Nikki, traumatised, secretive, 10-language-speaking refugee Ruben, and the sweet, funny, occasionally cranky residents and all their memories both sweet and sour. The writing is gorgeously lush and evocative, occasionally too heartbreakingly real, when the recollections of civil war in Sri Lanka emerge in the nightmares of those who survived, and those left to mourn. And it’s gripping and masterfully plotted, with flashbacks that deepen the story, and so many different threads that are so slowly yet satisfyingly, and occasionally shockingly, woven together. There are two mysteries that keep you hooked and longing to know what happened, and a shred of empathy even for the one whose moment of jealousy sets off a horrifying chain of events – though not, of course, for those who take inspiration from it, the very worst of humanity, who are all too emboldened and real in Australia, and the world, today. There is humour too, and love and honour, and people who are kind, loyal, brave and good, as well as a sprinkling of the language, culture, traditions and food of the author’s own Tamil ancestry, a fascinating extra layer to the story and the people in it. In the book Maya has a secret life as an author, and Shankari, by day a social justice lawyer who advocates for systemic reform on First Nations issues, justice reinvestment and Australia’s human rights record, shares her belief in the importance of stories and storytelling to teach, reflect, memorialise and heal. I was won over by the title, and fell under its spell from the very first page. Powerful, moving, haunting and tender, I can’t recommend this beautiful book highly enough.

• Delightful read

  A beautiful book and story, I had no idea what to expect and it was something so different to things I have read before. This was a delightful, heart warming read

• An uncomfortable mirror to our society and cultural norms.

  For half the book I was hesitating whether to continue or not. However, the times spent setting up the characters made the denouement more emotional and more satisfying. A terrific emotional journey extremely well written . Highly recommended.

• A Great Read

  Very well written.

• The best and worst of humanity

  Beautifully written highlighting the absolute worst of humanity, but also the best of it. Horrors of wars never cease to dismay me

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