Upturned Rainbow
Maya returns to a folklore-haunted village after twenty years and cannot tell where memory ends and danger begins.
Overview
Twenty years ago, Maya fled Ilanjipalam — a place where folk belief and history fuse and superstition runs deep — in grief and shame after her life shattered around her. Now she is back, and the welcome she receives is warmer than she expected. That warmth makes her uneasy rather than comforted.
Divya M Kizhakkeyil builds her novel around the gap between what Maya sees and what she can trust herself to perceive. Maya knows her own mind is not always reliable; she has a history of constructing stories that feel real. As three teenage girls' lives begin to intersect with hers, and as the layers of Ilanjipalam's past and present slide against each other, the question of what actually happened — twenty years ago and now — refuses to resolve cleanly.
Upturned Rainbow is psychological fiction that uses the atmosphere of a folklore-haunted Kerala setting to keep the reader, like Maya, suspended between the sinister and the imagined — until the truth arrives, and the cost of it becomes clear.
Maya is surprised at the warm welcome she receives in Ilanjipalam-the place where folklore is interwoven with history and the air is thick with blind superstitions. Maya had fled that hell in grief and shame twenty years back when her world had come crashing down. Maya's initial relief soon fades into darkness as she slowly tries to separate imagination from reality. After all, she is no stranger to making up stories in her head. Are those charming smiles and friendly faces innocent or is there something sinister lurking beneath it all? As the past and present tumble together and the lives of three teenage girls entwine with hers, will the truth finally set Maya free? Or will it turn her world to ashes?
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