Lucky is a Sri Lankan-American woman who has been living a life of deception. She’s married to Kris, her accomplice in one of her biggest lies. Both Lucky and Kris are gay, each consenting partners of a marriage of convenience. They encourage one another’s desire to find physical intimacy with members of their own sex outside their fraudulent marriage and they even frequent gay bars together.
After her grandmother takes a fall, Lucky returns home to her mother’s house in New England to help care for her elderly grandmother who also suffers from confusion and forgetfulness. While living back home, Lucky learns that her childhood best friend, Nisha, will soon be getting married to an Indian man—the result of a traditional cultural arrangement. The two reconnect and start spending a lot of time together. Nisha had always pretended to like boys in high school, but it was Lucky and Nisha who shared an on-again, off-again secret fling all those years ago. As they rekindle their complicated relationship, it’s clear that Nisha wants to be married, just not to her fiance, Deepak. Lucky and Nisha are both tied to men that neither of them wants to be with. They’re in love with each other, but will either of them have the nerve to follow their heart and be true to themselves? Will Lucky continue the facade of a thousand lies?
Lucky and Kris’s marriage wasn’t the result of some beautiful love affair. They were friends from college who used marriage as an answer to their personal problems. Kris had been pretty much disowned by his family after coming out to them about his sexuality, while Lucky struggled with the aftermath of when her mother found revealing text messages from an ex-girlfriend while snooping through her phone. Having a hard time making ends meet, marriage seemed to be the only answer. Lucky’s marriage to Kris was the perfect facade, misleading her family into thinking she was in a happy heterosexual marriage, thereby preventing the possibility of a traditional arranged marriage.
Lucky’s parents are traditional Sri Lankans, but only to an extent. Their family dynamics are definitely flawed, even if they’d like to pretend otherwise—no one wants to be the outcast of their close-knit Sri Lankan community. When Lucky’s parents divorced, her father married her mother’s best friend shortly thereafter. Lucky’s sister, Vidya, was rejected by her parents when she chose to marry and start a family with a man outside of their race and culture. Lucky’s other sister, Shyama, was the only one to experience the customary arrangement of marriage, but not without hesitation. Then, of course, there was Lucky—the third child of this broken family who did her best to conceal her sexuality, but there was no doubt everyone was aware of her secret truth. She was expected to oblige, please her parents, and be the daughter they expected. She was encouraged to be more feminine and knew she’d never be permitted to express her true feelings, nevertheless act on them. Lucky’s parents were in complete denial and were more concerned about what others thought than the happiness of their children. For Lucky, the only solution was dishonesty. If her parents expected her to live a life that wasn’t truthful to who she was, she reciprocated by pretending to live that life and covering up her truth with one lie after another.
I Absolutely recommend Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu. Not only did I connect with the characters and find the story to be compelling, realistic, and fascinating, but I also found it to be educational. I realize that may sound strange, as it is clearly an award-winning work of fiction. However, Sindu told the story so well and intertwined so many facets of Sri Lankan traditions and culture, that I couldn’t help but be enlightened. I found myself researching facts about Sri Lankan and Indian customs, jewelry, food, music, religion, and clothing so that I could have a better understanding and become more knowledgeable of this beautiful culture. I learned a lot about the lifestyles, values, beliefs, and practices of the Sri Lankan people. I was highly impressed by this novel and I was quite surprised to find that it was Sindu’s debut.
Marriage of a Thousand Lies has been selected as a recipient of an ARC Award.
