Author: Thrity Umrigar
Pages: 336
Read On: Kindle
How Long it Took Me To Read: 2 days
Plot Summary: When Indian American journalist Smita returns to India to write the story of a young widow Meena and the murder of her husband, it’s Smita’s first time back since her family left when she was a child. Both Smita and Meena were raised in a culture where a woman exercising a basic human right―the right to love and marry whoever she chooses―is met with brutal punishment. While Meena’s fate hangs in the balance, Smita must reckon with the privilege that becoming an American has given her, as well as face the trauma that shaped her as a child and led to her family leaving.
Dual love stories propel the narrative, as different as the cultures from which they emanate. We follow how Meena fell headfast in love with a person forbidden to her due to his religion and faced the violent consequences of her choice; and Smita's freedom to have a casual love affair and to decide, later, how much it means to her.
Moving, perceptive, and heartbreaking, this is a story about two women and what they inspire in each other as they navigate a home where terrible things have occurred, and are allowed to keep occurring, a country that they want, more than anything, to love.
Things I Like:
1. I went into this book pretty blind. I saw it on Reese's Book Club and wanted to read it, mostly because I have read two other books by this author before and enjoyed them, so I wanted to read this. I only vaguely knew about the plot...kinda...but I had high hopes. For most part these hopes weren't dashed. I started reading this and read the first 50% in one swift go and could not put it down. It had me completely gripped and caught up in this world.
2. This book is set, for most part, in Mumbai. In places I know and love and miss (now that I've been away from home for over a year). So, it made me so happy to be back in place I am familiar with. Colaba, both now and back in 1997, feel like home and any excuse to go back and spend some time there (even in a book) was absolutely delightful.
3. Smita is nicely written and brought to life. I feel we see the chaos, colour and wonder and noise of Mumbai well through her eyes.
4. There is a lingering hint of a mystery from Smita and her family's past that will keep you hooked and guessing.
5. I also really like Mohan, he is a very real and not-so-obvious leading man and I loved how genuinely kind and caring he was. Not just to Smita but everyone else in his life too.
6. The story of Meena and Abdul was, perhaps, my favourite bit in this book. Their love story, the quiet and almost old fashioned way in which they fall in love and how this forbidden love culminates in marriage and senseless, unimaginable cruelty had my whole heart. Their story comes to light and we see Meena's world in the second part of the book and, for me, this is when the book takes off. Everything else sort of pales in comparison.
7. Books and stories like these are important and need to be told and read. The stories of bigotry, patriarchy and senseless cases (far too many in this land of ours) of honour killings are ones we need to shed light on and hope through this we can, at some point, be rid of these regressive notions. The Hindu-Muslim divide and the killings and attacks done in the name of saving face and protecting honour of the family is a poison we should stop. The story at the heart of this book is devastating, horrifying and sadly all too common. We read of these hate crimes. We seethe with rage. We are shocked and frankly stupified that this happens, brothers killing sisters, fathers harming children all for some vague notion of honour. Ugh! I hope I live long enough to see this madness end.
Things I Didn't Like:
Oh boy!
There is so much I actively disliked/hated about this book. It was disappointing because this author is someone I usually enjoy, but this book is shoddy on several fronts.
1. I didn't particularly love the writing here. I remember loving The Space Between Us and writing was lovely. Something here was just off. Maybe I found the writing particularly drab because I had just read a Jhumpa Lahiri and after that this felt like a cold dish rag.
2. I know and understand Bombay of 1997. I especially know the area in which Smita and her family lived, Colaba. Something happens to them in 1996-97 that is just so outlandish. The event itself (I am being vague because it's a spoiler) could happen and probably some version of it happened during the horrible riots of 1993. BUT what happens in its aftermath and how Smita's family reacts and what they do and, especially, what they don't do...is just beyond ludicrous. I think it would have been better to set this part of the narrative in a place that wasn't Bombay in 1997. Not Colaba. And not have Smita's family be this educated, erudite and affluent family in South Bombay. This *event* and its bizarre aftermath would make more sense in rural India in the 80s or 90s. Bombay on the cusp of the new millennium...not so much. An award wining academic in South Bombay with money and means would not live like this and would not let so much nonsense fly. No. Just NO. This big revelation happens at the 80% mark of the book is a frankly so problematic.
3. While I know Bombay in 1997, I intimately know Mumbai of 2019 and you know what Ms. Umrigar..
WE DON'T HAVE DANCING BEARS ON THE STREETS OF SOUTH MUMBAI IN 2019!!!
I think writers writing about India, especially those that are of Indian origin need to do better. I have a feeling Ms. Umrigar is that kind of NRI who hasn't come to India in a long, long time and this shows so painfully obviously in her work. Because anyone who has come to Mumbai even fleetingly since the 90s should know that bears have been very strictly banned in India for a long time. First banned in 1972 and then very strictly banned in 2009. So, a child in your book being enthralled by a dancing bear outside a park in Dadar is frankly ridiculous. What next someone being riveted by a rope trick? How about some snake oil? Nautch girls maybe?
Seriously do better.
This book and this author are being lauded for being so connected to India both the ancient and the modern and I am going to very respectfully say NO. She's not. She probably needs to come down and spend a month or two here, before she writes her next disconnected and factually inaccurate book.
God!
Just no.
Rating: 1/5
Avoid.
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