REVIEW OF CANVAS OF DREAMS by JAYA MURTY

What happens when the colour runs out?

'I did not want to talk to him at all. I could sense the pain he had once caused me returning in full force when I heard him speak.

I felt desolate.'

         Riya is a successful art curator and she has worked very hard to be where she is today, battling a bad marriage and memories of Ryan, her childhood sweetheart. Ryan; the man who promised himself to her, and then walked away.

          On a work related trip to Singapore a decade later, she bumps into Ryan again and all her carefully planned life is thrown for a toss as Ryan still has the power to send her heart and senses reeling just by being in the room beside her. No matter how much she tells herself this is the man that betrayed her and chose Sia over her, his attraction for her never wavers.

          She does the only thing she knows, she runs away. For Riya, is haunted by her dreams; dreams of a painful past. Will Ryan be able to lay her nightmares to rest or will he just add to them?

The story has been told through the eyes of Riya and maybe that is why she comes across as a better developed character. Even though it is the love story of two star crossed lovers; at the end of the day I felt it was Riya’s story and her coming to terms with what she was and what she had become. I appreciate the way Jaya Murty has taken Riya on this journey through her interactions with the various men in her life.

          I would have liked the character of Ryan to have been a bit more developed and even the reason why he left her didn’t quite come across that well.

         This is the debut novel of Jaya Murty and I believe it to be a strong debut. For me at the end of the day it was the story of Riya and it was a well told story of the passage of a young girl becoming a strong woman.