Hello Abilash,
I’m Muralidharan from Chennai. I’ve not written or spoken to you before, but I’ve only been interacting with you on your Facebook posts. I wanted to write to you about two things before I continue.
I read your novel ‘You’ve Come to the End of the Story’ last year. It was a hard-hitting novel and a good example of straddling the line between crime and literary fiction. The ending felt very surreal and evocative. I’m re-reading the last segments now, after the Tamil Nadu elections, and in some sense, now the ending feels very realistic. I want to write about it separately.
I enrolled in the ‘Outlining for Fiction’ workshop but couldn’t attend for personal reasons. Your beat sheet was interesting – I’ve used similar ones for some screenwriting assignments. It was a relief to know that such things can be used in Lit-fic novels as well. Many novels I read in Tamil are unplotted and because of the lack of structure, it’s difficult to reflect on what was the intention behind writing such a novel – apart from character traits and the city/village where it is based.
I recently watched your video on ‘The Sense of an Ending’ by Julian Barnes. It was wonderful to be able to reflect once again, with you, at a deep level. As you started exploring the characters and themes, I drifted into the story as well.
I read that book more than a decade ago and fell in love with the prose, which helped me finish the book in a very short period (I’m a slow reader and I take a lot of time to reflect on what’s written). What I was not expecting was that it would completely change my outlook on how we perceive things that happen around us. It intensified the notion I had already heard - “You are what you think you are.” Though not in an extremely practical sense, I started questioning how I was perceiving events that I’m part of and my memory of them. Earlier, I wallowed in self-pity over incidents that were detrimental to me, but later I studied them carefully and understood the part I played in my own failures.
I also frequently questioned how others perceived the events—whether it was the way I did, or different. Sometimes I try to chase the objective truth. Things have calmed down a bit now, and I still react emotionally to situations. But then I take a moment to truly reflect on what happened and rethink how I should hold it in memory. It reduces a lot of drama and helps keep me grounded – many times, I’m neither a victim nor an achiever.
I have also found it difficult to convey the plot of this novel to others without spoiling it too much—because it simply falls flat and gets communicated as a story about people having affairs and their repercussions. Only those who read it will understand that it’s about how our memories shape our personalities, and how our personalities shape our memories.
I had a thought about the downside of the novel you mentioned in the video:
• The mistake committed by Tony and his guilt—I felt Tony took the guilt upon himself when he realized he had instigated the relationship between Adrian and Sarah. He was mildly envious of Adrian, stemming from intellectual and social competitiveness. Adrian committed suicide, and Veronica is unmarried when Tony meets her. At his old age, the impact of this truth, of which he was oblivious before, hits him in a way he cannot recover. Veronica’s cryptic statements, especially “You still don’t get it. You never did, and you never will,” show how hard he had to struggle to know the truth. And when he did, it was more than he bargained for.
I do agree that if an American had written it, it would have been dramatized with more characters, viewpoints, and parallels to societal conflicts.
Thank you for creating the video. This novel was definitely a punch in the gut. Looking forward to interact with you on some other occasion.
Thanks,
Muralidharan
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