Preeta Samarasan’s Evening is the Whole Day tells the story of a privileged Indian family in Malaysia. Focusing on events spanning only a few years but incorporating historical information from years past, the book narrates the family members’ struggle to deal with multiple issues: the death of their matriarch, Paati; the perceived misbehavior of their much-abused servant Chellam; father Raju’s half-secret affair with a married Chinese woman; mother Vasanthi’s inability to stop compensating for her lower-class roots with haughty behavior; and the impending departure of eldest daughter Uma, who is leaving to attend college in the U.S.

Ghosts of the past, seen by Aasha, the baby of the family, are literally present in the story, and constitute a reminder of what has brought the family to where it is today. From beautiful scenery to ugly cultural clashes, Evening is the Whole Day offers up a sense of Malaysian history and culture, but also sketches familial tensions anyone can understand. By starting with a mystery—how did Paati die?—the book grabs our attention immediately, but a desire to learn more about the richly detailed—if not always likeable—characters kept us reading to the end.

Samarasan will read from Evening is the Whole Day tonight at Harvard Book Store. She was kind enough to answer some questions about the book for Bostonist.

I love the presence of ghosts in the novel. Did you envision using them from the start? Do you think that "ghosts" or reminders of the past are more prevalent in Asian cultures than in Europe or the U.S.?

I had the idea of the grandmother's ghost from the start, because she's so present while alive that it didn't make sense for her just to disappear when she died. That is the only kind of ghost I believe in in real life – a person so full, so there, that they don't simply vanish when they die; they linger in our consciousness (in this case, Aasha's consciousness). As for the other ghosts – I can't speak for all Asian cultures, but ghosts are a very important part of Malay culture (and therefore Malaysian culture in general). There's a very rich and array of ghosts, each type distinct from the others, each one wanting different things from the living. No Malaysian schoolgirl hasn't worried about the hantu kum-kum in the school toilet or the pontianak behind the bicycle shed; people speak about these ghosts in the matter-of-fact way one might discuss family members. So yes, at some point it occurred to me that it would be interesting to reflect this worldview in the novel.

More with Samarasan after the jump.

Why do you think the story needed to be told through Aasha's eyes? Is it simply a way to ensure an innocent perspective, or is there more to it?

Aasha is the character I most strongly identify with. Like her, I was a secretive child, but I didn't really have any important secrets to keep. In some ways, the book is a what-if experiment: I created a child just like me but who does have a huge secret to keep, to see what that would be like. So large swathes of the story – everything that has to do with that secret – are revealed through her eyes, but there are also substantial portions that remain unseen to her. I wanted the freedom of the omniscient narrator while maintaining a kind of allegiance with Aasha.

Is the family's relationship with Chellam typical of how families treated their servants at the time, or were they particularly heartless toward her? Is having servants still common in Malaysia and nearby countries?

I hesitate to generalise about something like this when I haven't done a real survey; my only evidence is anecdotal. But from what I saw and heard as a child, I do think that families who could afford servants were often brutal to them, more brutal, in fact, than the Rajasekharan family is to Chellam. We knew of several families who beat their servants and starved them. Horrendous physical abuse of servants – some of it even fatal – still regularly makes the news in Malaysia. The difference is that the servants now come from outside Malaysia – from Indonesia or the Philippines – but yes, it's very rare for a middle-class household in Malaysia or Singapore not to have domestic help.

Privilege likewise hangs over the entire book. Your birthplace seems to determine your potential in life. Do you think this still holds true as well? Could someone like Chellam ever hope to achieve Uma's success?

Well, I have to admit that in my opinion this is true in any capitalist society, not just Malaysia. It's not easy to drag yourself out of poverty in America and achieve what Uma does; it's not easy in Malaysia, either. If you are of Indian descent, it's practically impossible, because Indians have neither the support of the government nor of a strong, successful community. I think Chellam's situation quite accurately reflects that of poor, rural Indians in Malaysia. Which is not to say that someone like her could never hope to achieve success, only that it's immensely difficult and consequently rare.

Suresh was my favorite character--entertaining, a little wise, a little innocent. He seems the least affected by his family's problems--or maybe he just doesn't show it. What are your feelings about Suresh? Are social expectations harder on women?

I think of Suresh as a force of balance in the world of the book. He is, as you say, wise, sometimes unwittingly so. But I don't think that his unflappable public face is a result of his gender; I think that's just his personality. In a family of that social class, gender plays less of a role than it does in, say, Chellam's world.

As portrayed in the book, Malaysia is mostly a mix of Malays, Chinese, and Indians. Have the country's racial relations changed significantly since that time? Improved? Worsened?

I'm sure many would disagree with me, but I really think the country's racial relations have deteriorated visibly even since I was a child in the 1980s, let alone since the 1950s, when my parents recall race not being a big deal in the country. Several related factors have been responsible for this: non-Malays' frustration at the perpetuation of the grossly unequal economic policy; the spread of a less moderate view of Islam that discourages mixing with other races (all Malaysian Malays are Muslim); the government's ineffectual handling of race relations (trying to bury or ignore the problem instead of addressing it: for instance, undergraduates in Malaysian universities are assigned room-mates of the same race because this system is purported to “cause fewer problems.”).

I read that the state of emergency declared during the 1969 race riots is still in effect. How do you think this is shaping the current state of affairs in Malaysia?

It's not a state of emergency per se; the laws still in effect are the Internal Security Act and the Sedition Act, both of which allow the government to detain people without trial for inciting racial unrest. Of course, the government itself decides what constitutes such incitement, so that peaceful protesters who try to address racial questions can be thrown into jail without trial, while government ministers can get away with hurling racial invective and threatening horrifying violence against minorities.
I do think that the situation is changing dramatically, thanks in large part to the internet. In the last general elections in March, the party that has ruled Malaysia since independence in 1957 lost its two-thirds majority for the first time, and I think this is because the internet has enabled dissenting Malaysians to see that they're not alone, that others hold the same opinions, that we can find strength in numbers. Our parents' generation was paralysed by apathy and disillusionment; now young Malaysians are full of plans and hope for the country. I really do believe we can defeat the culture of fear that has defined Malaysian life since 1969; this was one of my biggest motivations for writing the book I did.

Do you think Uma goes on to major in pre-med or theatre?

Haha! That's for each reader to decide for himself or herself :-) .