Roma Tearne is a wonderful novelist who brings out the issues in Sri Lankan fiction and the problems of the Tamil diaspora in Britain. The Road to Urbino is about a journey towards redemption. It could be seen as a journey to a place, and also to a psychological place. Ras, the protagonist, is a Tamilian who migrated to Britain for fear of his life. His mother and father had died early, but he, along with his brother Sam, moved to London. And they started their lives. Ras falls in love with Helen and he starts a family. He has a daughter named Lola. However, the ghosts of Sri Lanka haunt him and his mother’s memory comes like a recurring concept, but once he had come to Britain, he focused most of his time on his art, while his brother, on the other hand, focused much on Tamil liberation, and he was part of the funding.
But unfortunately, as the story goes on, we understand that he had a daughter called Lola, but the story is mostly a narration by his barrister, Elizabeth. And also, another character called Alex is narrating the story to the barrister. Elizabeth is trying to get the story out of Ras and Alex to have a complete understanding of a trial (only later in the story do we come to know what happened) and to reduce the trial period for Ras. Ras had somehow robbed the great artwork of the flagellation of Christ.
and now he has been sentenced to jail during this time. However, the story is narrated well by both Alex and Ras. So Alex is also with the girl named Delia. But eventually, she falls in love with an art researcher and professor called Charles. Charles and Delia have their own family. And Alex starts a family with Elena, but it doesn’t work out. Throughout the narration, Alex obsesses about Delia. But tragically, what happens is that Charles and Delia have a child called Matt, and he dies in a bomb blast. (A mine planted during the Second World War)
Charles, by the end, has an affair with Lola, who we already know is the daughter of Ras. And so the cycle completes, all these characters meeting at different points in time. But the overall idea of this novel is simple: connecting things, and the father also takes that role. The girl also takes the role, but they see things differently. For him, the country, the problems of Sri Lanka, were so great that he had to show the world by stealing a famous artwork, and Lola didn’t bother because she was not identifying herself with the Sri Lankans. But she identified with the white people. And she had a theory that Britain shouldn’t become more multicultural. She wanted it to become a mixed race.
Finally, after 8 years, Ras was released for his crime, and Lola started to take a serious role in British politics. Lola makes up her mind to forgive her immigrant father, who abandoned her when she was a small kid. I liked the writing style, and so 3.8/4 for this novel. For more reviews click here.
