This is a tough but essential read and very deserving of the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2023.

Cinnamon Gardens Nursing Home is located in the western suburbs of Sydney and its residents and indeed owners have interesting histories peppered with secrets and trauma. The place is a home of safety and kindness and consideration, until it’s targeting by small mindedness.

The owner, Maya is herself a resident in her eighties having given up the running of it to her daughter Anja whose best friend Nikki is the home’s doctor. The author takes us into their lives, their past as well as their present. Maya’s beloved husband has disappeared and the trauma of her loss is never far away. Maya also harbours secrets to the outside world portraying herself as a white person when she is a Sri Lankan Tamil married to a Sri Lankan Muslim.

Chandran does a brilliant job to not just highlight and educate the reader about what it’s like to be a Tamil in Sri Lanka as well as Australia, but also shows us the brutality of war and the  stupidity of thinking behind racism together with the denial and destruction of culture by a majority over a minority. This is not only a repetitive historical trope but a real one that we witness today, right now. The Tamil language was forbidden back in the fifties, their land and culture denied which resulted in the recent Civil War.

Chandran also dissects white privilege thinking in Australia via her character Gareth who is married to Nikki. She explores media, mainstream and social where a story can go off course creating falsity and driving lies which leads to tragic consequences. Gareth is the instrumental vehicle and after lighting the ‘fire’ of racism, we don’t see him again. On reflection I preferred it that way.

It might be fiction but the themes are brutal, painful and uncomfortable. Chandran never lets you off the hook as the reader is forced to confront and consider and think.

The characters are well drawn and although there is a lot of them, you get to know them quickly.

A powerful book and a must read.