Alexa-Alessandra — A Story of Love by Anita Sumariwalla. Published in 2009 by Xlibris Corporation, 1663, Liberty Drive, Suite 200, Bloomington, IN47403, USA. Pp: 745. Price: $ 23.99 (Paperback), $ 34.99 (Hardback).
In a rapidly changing world where traditional boy meets girl love stories are sneered at, one must give credit to Anita Sumariwalla for her novel Alexa-Alessandra — A Story of Love. Not only is it her debut novel but it is also 745 pages long which is an amazing achievement.
The story line is simple and one which we have read over and over again. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl and finally boy wins girl. The novel traces the life of Alexa, a Swiss student who wins a scholarship to study the flute under the Italian maestro Verducci in Rome. There she meets an Arab artist, Munir, from the Kingdom of Mukhtar and this is the beginning of a life-long romance which is tarnished by the deception and manipulation of families on both sides. Alexa’s mother cannot come to terms with her Swiss daughter falling in love with an Arab, just as the Arab family feels that a Swiss girl would not be an ideal match for a son who has been promised at birth to the daughter of another powerful Arab family, an alliance which would result in the perfect political nexus. To heal a broken heart Alexa is whisked off to London where she meets Gordon Charles, the son of an Earl. Alexa’s broken heart gradually begins to mend and she slowly and surely, as expected, falls in love with Charles, eventually marrying him. But on a diplomatic posting Alexa meets Munir again and though she loves her husband dearly, she is susceptible to the charms of her first love, a love from which she has never really recovered.
Anita Sumariwalla: ambitious debut
The novel begins well and the first 200 pages which deal with the lives of Alexa and Munir in Rome are deftly and skillfully written. Through their young love, Sumariwalla creates a very vivid picture of innocence and powerful emotion. The trials of Alexa to find a footing in the world of music are convincingly portrayed as she labors six days a week practising her flute for a very demanding and exacting professor. The romance leading to the breakup is presented convincingly and Sumariwalla shows she can create vivid characters and place them in plausible settings. The scenes have a sense of wonder and the trip to Venice is evocatively and effectively portrayed with the right amount of description of popular tourist destinations. The reader initially gets drawn into the world of the lovers and gradually gets deeply concerned with their fate. But some of the events are needlessly stretched out. One such episode takes place in the church. Alexa questions Munir about his religion and Sumariwalla spends several lines describing the story of Sarah and Abraham from the Bible. This could merely have been alluded to instead of being described at such great length because apart from being a fairly well known Biblical story it slows down the pace of the narrative.
Then suddenly the scene shifts to England and it is here that the novel suddenly seems to lose steam. During the second half of Alexa-Alessandra the plot drags and the scenes in England and later in the USA fail to arouse the reader’s interest and keep his attention as Sumariwalla does in the earlier half of the novel. The meeting with Charles, his courtship of Alexa and their subsequent married life are pointlessly stretched out. Several incidents are described when they actually take place and then repeated at full length when they are narrated to other characters. One such incident is the time when Alexa decides to surprise Munir with a horse riding lesson and chooses the mildest horse in the stable not realizing that he is a very accomplished rider and a respected member of the Olympian equestrian team of Mukhtar.
The scenes, needlessly protracted, hamper the pace of the plot. But by this time one has ploughed through almost 300 pages and is not inclined to abandon the story as one is mildly curious as to how the saga will end. One guesses that the lovers will be ultimately united but curious to know how Sumariwalla will achieve this ending. Here again one is disappointed. Apart from being conventional and anticipated, the finale lacks realism and seems contrived with the sole purpose of giving the romantic novel a happy ending.
In contrast, some sections which could have been expanded to add a touch of plausibility both to character and events are glossed over in a summary fashion. While Alexa’s mother is instrumental in the aborting of the relationship between Alexa and Munir, the royal family to which Munir belongs does its utmost to ensure that their liaison comes to a sudden and brutal end, even going to the extent of ensuring that a doctor diagnoses Alexa as having tuberculosis with the sole intention of getting her out of the way. Suddenly, by the end of the novel, both families are ready to accept the ‘other’ without any reservations. No explanation is given for this sudden volte-face and the reader finds it very difficult to believe that such unconditional acceptance can be given at one fell swoop. It is also unreasonable to expect the couple to be so charitable as to forget the past and the unfair treatment they had suffered from the other’s family. One feels that the reconciliation should have been gradual and that Sumariwalla is merely trying to tie up loose ends, creating situations which seem to spring from the exigencies of the plot rather than from the necessity of human motivation and character.
And this is a disappointment because Sumariwalla does create marvelously drawn characters when required. Two such characters stand out in the novel. One is Alexa’s mother and the second is her Uncle Peter. Here, Sumariwalla has excelled in portraying two extremely lifelike and convincing characters even though Alexa’s mother’s sudden acceptance of Munir at the end may seem contrived. Alexa loses her father at a very young age and this event scars the lives of both mother and daughter for a very long time. Alexa’s mother drowns herself in social causes to fill the void and Alexa shifts her affection to her father’s twin brother Uncle Peter who gallantly steps in to fulfill the role of a father figure in her life. Sumariwalla has sketched a charming portrait of an elderly man who is a lawyer by profession and who is open-minded, just, reasonable, extremely affectionate and willing to go the extra mile to cater to Alexa’s least whim or desire. The early relationship between Alexa and her mother is fraught with discomfort and tension. Her role in separating Alexa and Munir and the way she carries out her plan shows her as a despicable character who would go to any extent to have her own way. She has no qualms about intercepting the correspondence between the young lovers and even prevents Alexa meeting Munir when he wants to see her for one last time and hand over a portrait he has drawn of her. The change in her character, though sudden, is described with great feeling and compassion and the building up of mutual respect and trust between mother and daughter is sensitively portrayed.
It is too ambitious to expect to retain a reader’s attention for almost 750 pages with such a thin story line and that to in a first novel. The novel could have done much better with stringent and ruthless editing.
Born in Geneva, Switzerland Sumariwalla lived in France, Italy and England before migrating to USA in 1961. Married to Russy Sumariwalla, the writer worked for the Peace Corps and took up art and painting. One is curious to see what shape her next novel will take as she mentions on the rear cover her decision to continue "to give life to the characters and stories in her mind and heart.”