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Sunday, February 22, 2004 |
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Sunday, February 22, 2004 |
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The Veil of Illusion
Olivia and Jai ends on a happy note with the lovers uniting after they overcome the odds facing them and their love reaches a full circle. The Veil of Illusion focuses on Olivia and the life of her children, Amos and Maya, following the supposed execution of their father, Jai Raventhorne, who is wrongly charged with the spine-chilling slaughter of British women and children at Bibighar during the mutiny of 1857. Trying to prove her husband innocent becomes the force that drives Olivia even as her heart goes out to her children who being Eurasians, are trapped in two worlds, fitting into neither. The horrors of the past never cease to cast their shadows on their lives, making them resentful of their parentage. The narration gains pace with the arrival of Christian Pendlebury, the aristocratic son of a high-ranking English civil servant. His love for Maya grows only to end in a tragedy that takes him away from the world to find solace in a monastery. Unforgiving and unorthodox, Maya is doomed to inherit the destiny that was carved out for her mother. Disenchanted with the superficiality of the life that she was seeking, she decides to work with Kyle Hawkesworth, a fearless Eurasian journalist, on a school project in a backward area. With the arrival of Alistair, Olivia’s son from her first husband, their lives are thrown into turmoil again as Amos and his half-brother become sworn enemies. The fight to reclaim the family’s honour throws them together and they are forced to let go of their prejudices. As the different characters try to come to terms with their personal demons, they learn that at times one has to create illusions in order to survive. Rebecca Ryman’s first book, Olivia and Jai, was selected by the Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club and has been published in 13 countries. She wrote under a pseudonym and died last year in Kolkata. There is no way to know her age but there can be no doubt that her death has brought a creative career to an early end. She was a masterly writer and a compelling raconteur as is evident in her two novels. She put historical events to good use, transporting the reader to the chaos that prevailed during the times she wrote about with an ease that can only be envied, after first being admired. |
THE Veil of Illusion
begins where Olivia and Jai left off. Just as love, hatred
and betrayal formed the core of Olivia and Jai, these themes form
the basis of the sequel. The Veil of Illusion has the intensity
of Olivia and Jai and at the same time there is a freshness in
the love saga set in colonial times. Sequels, at times, find it hard to
sustain the readers’ interest since the basic theme of the story
remains the same as the roiginal. Rebecca Ryman avoids this pitfall in
that she not only makes the sequel independent of the first book, but
also holds the readers’ attention right through to the very end.
