Marriage of a Thousand Lies by SJ Sindu (review)

"Let me tell you something about being brown like me: your story is already written for you," says Lucky, the narrator of SJ Sindu's debut novel, Marriage of a Thousand Lies. Set in New England during the 2012 presidential election, the story is a contemporary Bollywood narrative that places a lesbian woman in the traditional role of leading male. The daughter of conservative Sri Lankan parents, Lucky is married to her gay college friend, Kris, in an arrangement based on façade and mutual convenience. After her grandmother endures a nasty fall, Lucky decides to move back into her mother's house and soon engages in a tumultuous game of sex and emotions with her childhood best friend, Nisha, who happens to be engaged. Despite its title, Marriage of a Thousand Lies is not a story about a single marriage, or even a single relationship, but of Lucky's ongoing struggle to reconcile her sexuality with the Sri Lankan Hindu community to which she belongs.

Lucky has many strong-willed women in her life, the first being her mother, Amma, who embodies every cultural and social convention Lucky so vehemently defies. Chastised by her Sri Lankan Hindu community for being divorced, Amma is Lucky's greatest challenger and a constant source of conflict: "Amma cries about wanting me to have a baby, to fit in for once in my life and be a good brown daughter" (149). The tension between Lucky and Amma intensifies when, midway through the novel, Lucky begins spending more and more time at the rugby house, where her friends Tasha and Jesse live. For Lucky, the rugby house is a sanctuary, a place where her queerness is protected and embraced. Using her body as a way to release the tension built from home, Lucky finds escape in playing and practicing rugby, and she develops a close friendship with fellow rugby player Tasha. At one point, Lucky seeks Tasha's help in finding Lucky's runaway sister, Vidya, who'd disappeared years prior in an attempt to flee their family's conservative ideals. Lucky embodies the extreme qualities of both her sisters, Shyama and Vidya, submitting to her family's cultural customs by marrying a Tamil Indian man, like Shyama, while privately living life by her own rules, like Vidya. The women in Lucky's life not only inform her decisions, they symbolize Lucky's internal conflict of desiring both acceptance and autonomy.

While Lucky and her husband, Kris, masquerade as the happy couple, Lucky's best friend, Nisha, miserably prepares for her wedding. The archetypal femme fatale, Nisha is different from the other women in Lucky's life in that she is more readily willing to sacrifice her own happiness in order to satisfy the desires of those around her. While Lucky is more comfortable embracing her unique identity, sporting an androgynous hairstyle despite her mother's objections, Nisha cloaks herself in conformity. Though engaged, Nisha desperately pursues Lucky while continuing to plan her extravagant wedding, balancing on the cusp of two vastly different worlds without ever fully committing to either one. With each of Nisha's jealous tantrums and desperate pleas to flee together, the gulf between Nisha and Lucky widens, allowing for other players, like Tasha, to wedge themselves in the middle. Though at times Nisha's behavior borders on juvenile, Lucky, more than anyone, empathizes with her best friend/lover's ongoing internal conflict. In describing queerness, Lucky says, "Most people think the closet is a small room. They think you can touch the wall, touch the door, turn the handle, and walk free. But when you're inside it, the closet is so vast. No walls, no door, just empty darkness stretching the length of the world." Because of their shared history of sex, religion, and culture, Lucky finds it increasingly difficult to abandon Nisha, risking the backlash that will surely unfurl should anyone in their community discover the true nature of their relationship.

Structurally, Marriage of a Thousand Lies is loosely framed like...