Reviewed by Jennie Hughes
This is a gorgeous book. Desai’s prose is so rich, evocative and quirky that you can feel, see and taste the worlds she describes. Here’s an example:
“In her bed later that evening, Sai lay under a tablecloth, for the last sheets had long worn out. She could sense the swollen presence of the forest, hear the hollow-knuckled knocking of the bamboo, the sound of the jhora that ran deep in the décolleté of the mountain. Batted down by household sounds during the day, it rose at dusk, to sing pure-voiced into the windows.”
Do you see what I mean? You could just eat this book.
I can’t tell you what the plot is because, like Anne Tyler’s books, there isn’t really one. What you get are wonderful characters whose histories are so beautifully told that you feel you know these people and care what happens to them. Their lives are muddled, funny and haphazard, just like our own. They are described with detail and humour which shows the essentially random nature of Life/Fate/Stuff That Happens.
Later in the book, as the chaos caused by the uprising in Kalimpong worsens, the casually callous and cruel nature of poverty, revolution and desperation is also made clear.
There is loss – of home, of savings, of parents, of loved ones – but there is also the return of a son and the possibility, not articulated but hinted at, of some happiness in the future for Gyan and Sai. Life goes on, the world turns, the rain washes roads away and people re-build them, while watching over it all are the eternal Himalayas.
Rating: Definitely 5/5
Like this? Try: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
