Book review: The Remnants of Rebellion is a saga of grief, inheritance and the ghosts of revolution
Author Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew debuts with an atmospheric novel that explores the layers of complexities of familial baggage and leaves readers wanting more!
A colonial-era estate sits deep in Kerala’s rubber plantations, heavy with secrets and memory. Into this house, bequeathed to her by her beloved Appacha, walks Aleyamma, 35 years old, dreadlocked, tattooed, agnostic, and to her Malayali family, the very caricature of a starving artist. Much to her surprise, and the chagrin of her clan, she inherits more than just land and timber in Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew’s debut novel, The Remnants of Rebellion.
Seeking to hold on to what remains of her grandfather, Aleyamma flees her old life for the estate. It is here that the story unfurls, as Ponnu intertwines her present with Appacha’s past — introducing us to Eesho in the 1960s. Timelines merge and the reader is invited to witness how rebellions — personal, political and emotional — ripple across generations.
The author builds this world painstakingly, inspired by her own Malayali Christian upbringing, to create clear-eyed look at the social and political undercurrents in the state. Glimpses of class divides and casteism, that still pervade certain communities across southern India, are derived from lived experiences and well-researched in the mentions of Wagon Tragedy and Mopilla Rebellion of the 1920s as well as the tapper uprisings and Communist wave of the ’50s and ’60s.
This is an atmospheric debut, both incisive and a meditation on grief spanning generations, saddled with torrid affairs and one foot firmly planted in the past.
Aleyamma is far from perfect. As we later find out, so is Appacha. Our view of him evolves and as we trace his life in post-Independence Kerala, it becomes clear that he is as much the protagonist as his granddaughter.
Remnants doesn’t promise closure, but that’s why it works so well. However, as the pace builds, one does wonder if it set out to build something bigger than what it manages to. What this reader is left with, is decidedly a ghost of a revolt than solid evidence of one.
Title: The Remnants of Rebellion
Author: Ponnu Elizabeth Mathew
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Price: ₹899
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