
From the very first page:
“One afternoon on a weekend in March, Dewi Ayu rose from her grave after being dead for twenty-one years. A shepherd boy, awakened from his nap under a frangipani tree, peed in his shorts and screamed, and his four sheep ran off haphazardly in between stones and wooden grave markers as if a tiger had been thrown into their midst. It all started with a noise coming from an old gravesite with an unmarked tombstone covered in knee-high grass, but everybody knew it was Dewi Ayu’s grave. She had passed away at fifty-two, rose again after being dead for twenty-one years, and from that point forward nobody knew exactly how to calculate her age.”
As I had already seen with Man Tiger, Eka Kurniawan likes to open his novels with a bang. And Beauty is a Wound (Cantik itu Luka) is no exception. Dewi Ayu, Halimunda’s most famous and renowned prostitute, has suddenly returned to life. Half Indonesian and half Dutch, Dewi Ayu had been renowned for her beauty— and so had her three oldest daughters. However, not long before she had originally passed, Dewi Ayu had miraculously, at the advanced age of fifty-two, given birth to a fourth daughter: a child whose countenance did not match that of her sisters at all. Poor little Beauty, as she is ironically dubbed by her mother, is described as follows:
“The baby’s entire body was jet black as if it had been burned alive, with a bizarre and unrecognisable form. For example, she [the midwife] wasn’t sure whether the baby’s nose was a nose, because it looked more like an electrical outlet than any nose she’d ever seen in her entire life. And the baby’s mouth reminded her of a piggy-bank slot and her ears looked like pot handles.”
Dewi Ayu, as it transpires, was in possession of a very cynical outlook at the time of her daughter’s birth and was actually rather glad that her youngest child didn’t resemble her pretty sisters. She also confesses that she tried her hardest to end the pregnancy, but the daughter was stronger than her mother.
The she stumbled on a thought: if the baby didn’t want to die, maybe the mother should?
But through whatever supernatural means, Dewi Ayu’s business remained unfinished, and she returns to the town of Halimunda after an interlude that would put Jesus to shame. From there we learn of her family history; from her grandparents less than acceptable relations, to her own life as a prostitute, the marriges of her elder daughters, and the odd life of little Beauty. And slowly, thread by thread, the reasons for Dewi Ayu’s cynicism, her desire to prevent the birth of a fourth daughter, and her sheer bloody mindedness that allowed her to rise from the dead, are all woven together.
As a novel, Beauty is a Wound is ambitious and complex. The narrative is broken up in pieces that cover a large range of characters that would not look out of place in a soap opera. While things progress is a roughly chronological order after Dewi Ayu’s monuments return, it is still not something that is easy to follow. In addition, the period in which we follow the life and times of Dewi Ayu’s family follows—and is intrinsically entwined with—Indonesia’s tormented history across the 20th century; from the Dutch and Japanese occupations, to the communist purges and political upheavals in Timor. (While it isn’t immediately obvious, I’m fairly certain Dewi Ayu’s revival happens in the 1990’s.) This is reflected in the marriages of Dewi Ayu’s eldest daughters: one marries a military commander. Another an avowed communist. The third? A one-time freedom fighter. And each one is caught up in history during it’s making.
Eka Kurniawan’s writing has previously been described as being in the same vein as Marquez or Rushdie. But even for Man Tiger, I didn’t feel this was an apt comparison, and I feel it even more strongly here. It’s very obvious from the first few paragraphs that we’re dealing with something adjacent to magical realism, but Beauty is a Wound carries some deep streaks of the cynical, the darkly comical, and the grotesque; whose depths you would not find in either Marquez or Rushdie’s writings. Sometimes you feel like you’re reading a fairytale. Then, only a couple of pages later, you’re reading a pulp fiction novel. And then, often without warning, shit just gets dark. This book is disturbing in parts, and there were times I really had to be in the right mindset to read it. But. If the lives of Dewi Ayu’s family are drawn to mirror Indonesia’s history over the same time period, we should be expecting dark. We should expect violence. I agree with ElCicco here, it goes into some truely disturbing detail.
However, on a less dark, but perhaps odder side note, it was interesting how often dogs would come up as a motif. A princess marries a dog, a man is ripped apart by dogs. A dog doesn’t care if a young girl is beautiful. Considering the book is set amongst a cultural background that doesn’t quite revere dogs the way many of us do, it came as a bit of a surprise*.
This is a deeply impressive book, and one that seems to have been very skillfuly translated by Annie Tucker.** But if you’re not a fan of either violence or horror, I would take care before diving into the deep end. As I mention before, the book is woven together of many intricate parts, and sometimes you get no warning of the impending tonal whiplash. But if this isn’t a concern for you, I have no hesitation in recommending Beauty is a Wound.
So for CBR15Passport, this is another for country.
And for CBR15Bingo, this is Asia & Oceania