An engaging story of battling despondency
WHEN I OPEN THE SHOP Romesh Dissanayake Te Herenga Waka University Press
Being bereft, and all that it dredges up, is at the heart of Romesh Dissanayake’s first novel. It is 2012 and a young man has been nursing his mother through her final days. He negotiates a period of limbo by keeping busy with his new project. This too encompasses his mother, for she had taught him how to cut apples into matchsticks and to make a firstclass carrot salad. The narrator loves the sensory aspects of food, and he is especially keen to draw on Sri Lankan cuisine. He knows how important it is to slurp noodles. Yet it is hard to keep up the optimism when the more brutal reality is balancing books and managing supplies, all while he slaves away in the kitchen.
The narrator, who curiously remains unnamed until far through his story, is based in Wellington. He is unabashed about fully leaning into the ‘‘foodloving immigrant stereotype’’. With big wok gas burners, netted baskets in the kitchen and white plastic chairs out the front, his vision feels complete, if a little underwhelming. He settles for three items on the menu, enthusiastically pouring them out. However, patrons are far and few and boredom and frustration sets in.
Occasional visitors occupy his imagination as he builds their backstories or collects pieces of them to take home and ‘‘give texture to a dream’’. In his loneliness, without his parents, he spirals, thinking of father figures, of loss, and of the meaning of life. Conversation can partially fill gaps, as can wild nights out, and evenings on the sofa with popcorn, but caverns remain. His garage’s squeaking rusty doors and the slumped over plastic chairs reflect the morose state of his life.
Wellingtonbased Dissanayake is of Sri Lankan and Koryo Saram descent and this work won the IIML’s 2022 Modern Letters Fiction Prize. His narrator is affable, industrious, and more than willing to share his background story and states of mind with the reader. Importantly, he is able to laugh at himself, and to be curious of the features of others. With his ambiguous appearance he enjoys taking on various ethnicities at whim, observing casual racism or assumptions about him. There is also his kitchenhand sidekick, a seemingly glum fellow who may have a hidden side.
He seeks solitude when stressed by interactions. We learn a little about his Sri Lankan family and the events that led up to his father leaving. Further back, ancestors haunt, but they only get a whisper in, remaining peripheral, while still vital. For him, he finds art and contentedness in cuisine.
Though, from his childhood, it is particular melodies that remain ‘‘etched on to the back of my skull like a freckle’’.
Dissanayake’s is an engaging story, where his protagonist surfs despondency through various outlets, trying so hard to make his business succeed. He knows the shop has moulded his body into shape, and alongside are other transformations, as he negotiates his relationship with his heritage. We hold out hope for him even as he stalls, where for him love ‘‘floats like sewer water, flooding through his body’’. Beguiling.