COLPETTY PEOPLE
Ashok Ferry chronicles, in a gently probing voice, the journeys of characters seeking something beyond the barriers of nations and generations. His tales of social-climbing Sri Lankans, of the pathos of immigration, of rich people with poor taste, of ice-cream karma, of innocent love, eternity, and more take us to Colombo's nouveau riche, hoity-toity returnees, ladies with buttery skin and square fingernails, old-fashioned aristocrats, and the poor mortals trapped between them. Ferry's stories comprise characters that are serious and fine and upstanding, and infinitely dull, but also others like young John-John, who loses his childhood somewhere high up in the air between Asmara and Rome; the maid, Agnes of God, whose mango-sucking teeth fly out at you like bats out of the mouth of a cave; Ashoka, the immigrant who embodies his Sri Lankan identity only on the bus ride between home and work; and Professor Jayaweera who finds sterile freedoms caged in the ‘unbending, straight lines of Western Justice'.