Read 76 of 2022. The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker

Title: The Cherry Robbers
Author: Sarai Walker
Publisher: Harper
ISBN: 978-0358251873
Genre: Literary Fiction, Gothic Fiction
Pages: 432
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Reading “The Cherry Robbers” reminded me of Allende’s writing, of a lot of Alvarez thrown in for good measure, and some Cisneros as well, and in all of this I was most happy to read Sarai Walker’s voice about a family and its generational trauma, taking on topics such as marriage, women’s health, depression, and solitude.

The Cherry Robbers is about Sylvia Wren, a world-renowned extremely private painter living in New Mexico, away from the public gaze. Her solitary life comes to standstill when she receives a letter from a journalist, who plans to write an exposé about Sylvia’s life: that she is Iris Chapel, the sole heiress of the Chapel Firearms fortune, who disappeared around sixty years ago.

Thus, begins a journey with the Chapel family for the reader – of knowing what happened to Sylvia’s five sisters, of how her mother was hidden away, and what prompted Sylvia to abandon her life as Iris.

For the sisters, marriage equals death – that’s the curse really, and to me it was fantastic to see how Walker takes agency and feminism and places it in 50s Connecticut, when none existed, and creates for us a feminist, Gothic tale of sisterhood and male power, and what it means to be free for a woman.

The writing is taut and, in some places, perhaps slips also but it is nonetheless magnificent. There is a high degree of suspense and thrill, the pace doesn’t slow down, and more than anything manages to explore female desire – each woman with a distinct personality, with a mind of her own, leading complex and most tumultuous lives.

The Cherry Robbers is about women constantly on the run – from their families, from the society at large, and sometimes even from themselves. It is a book that tells you of a time gone by and how rather unfortunately some of the beliefs of that time are present even now. It is a book about privilege and class, and boundaries, and restraint and yet celebrates freedom on so many levels. A wonderful read, in my opinion.

Read 42 of 2022. Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir by Kathryn Davis

Title: Aurelia, Aurélia: A Memoir 
Author: Kathryn Davis 
Publisher: Graywolf Press 
ISBN: 9781644450789
Genre: Memoirs 
Pages: 108 
Source: Publisher 
Rating: 4/5 

Aurelia, Aurélia is a memoir that is sporadic, all over the place, doesn’t make sense sometimes, but so rewarding from the first page. It is also quite random, but the writing charms you, beguiles you, and makes you stay. I haven’t read much by Davis. I think only one book in the past, Duplex which I immensely enjoyed, so I definitely had to read this one.

This book is a memoir – about the death of Davis’s beloved husband, Eric. It is about grief, its contradictions, shuffles between time – from when Davis was sixteen to present-day to recent past to the reader’s some present-day making sense of all the profundity packed into such a short book, one hundred and eight pages long.

This memoir just like her novel is wonderfully strange, turning grief into a universal emotion from a personal one, and to then talk about her cultural preoccupations and interests – from Hans Christian Andersen to the movie, The Seventh Seal, to Beethoven’s Bagatelles, and Virginia Woolf’s, To the Lighthouse.

Aurelia, Aurélia was read slowly by me, and I think that is the way to read it. I might even get back to it again before the year ends, just to also make sense of some of the writing. I loved the last chapter of the book the most – the part when Davis explains the book’s title, and how it all ties in with the core of the book.

Aurelia, Aurélia is a book about memories- disjointed ones, about a couple and their life together, about being alone (though not so explicitly), and haunting, inviting you to make sense of the limitless connections, and the knotty and most complex way of grief.

Read 39 of 2022. Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree. Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell

Title: Tomb of Sand
Author: Geetanjali Shree
Translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
Publisher: Tilted Axis Press
ISBN: 978-1911284611
Genre: Literary Fiction, Translated Literature
Pages: 730
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

A book like Tomb of Sand comes once a while – encompassing everything – all of it – maybe all our stories, or some of our stories – intermingling, intertwining, greeting each other along the way, choosing whom to converse with, whom to ignore, and how to navigate life.  Stories that have a life of their own – breathing, living creations that only need an audience and Tomb of Sand will get its audience, and should – more than its fair share, because this book deserves it all.

I am gushing. I shall gush some more. So be it. Some novels do more than just provide entertainment or are more than means of passing time. They demand to be read, reread, reread some more, till they enter your consciousness and then refuse to leave. Sputnik Sweetheart is one such book for me. This one is definitely another.

Tomb of Sand on the surface seems like a book with a very simple plot-line. A mother of a family and her relationship with a transgender person, in the wake of her husband’s death. This causes some kind of confusion in her daughter who always thought of herself to be more progressive of the two. However, let this plot not fool you. This could very well be a book without a plot for the first two-hundred pages or so, and honestly it wouldn’t matter to the reader or deter the reading experience.

Tomb of Sand is so much more than just a story of a family or of a woman trying to come to terms with the past and the present as it shapes itself around her. Tomb of Sand is a book about families, about life lived in-between contemplating how to live it and the parts that you so want to live but cannot, and more than anything, it was for me – a novel about redemption, about so many what ifs, about the choices we make – intentionally and unintentionally, about empty spaces we choose to fill and sometimes the void is even more glaring than it was, and it is a novel about boundaries, about how we limit ourselves through identity and gender, about how we are much more than we give ourselves credit for.

Geetanjali Shree experiments with language, makes it her own, makes it fall flat on its head, and doesn’t bother with the rules of grammar. She makes her own rules as she goes along. I say this after also having read major portions of the book in Hindi as well. The translation by Daisy Rockwell is a different book – a unique entity, if I were to call it that. Daisy takes the book in Hindi and gives its English readers a new landscape to imagine and embrace. I do not mean the translation doesn’t do justice to the original, in fact, if anything it takes the playfulness of Hindi – makes it more than palpable to English and doesn’t transpose or transliterate, just for it to sound right, but gives it its own vocabulary, adding if I may call it the “Rockwell Touch”.  Her translation doesn’t miss a beat. It is lucid, clear, and gives the reader what they need, and also what they thought they didn’t need.

Tomb of Sand also seems like a rather simple novel, which again it isn’t. I do not mean only when it comes to structure or who is the narrator, or what is happening but also language that I have spoken about earlier. There is a sense of calm to the choice of words – both in Hindi and English – which makes the novel so relatable. I think that the “Indianness” of the novel is what lends it the added layer of appeal. For instance, the entire angle of the mother staying with the daughter in the daughter’s house while the son has his own family is something not permissible in an Indian household. The mother has to stay with the son. Shree breaks this mould and presents a new way of life. Rockwell takes that new way of life and brings to life the conversations between the two women (of course from the original) – without discussing a man – they discuss their bowel movements, they discuss childhood, life, what the mother thinks, what Beti feels, but not a man. This is perhaps intentional but does the job of meeting the Bechdel test than most other novels and movies.

Another instance that intrigued me the most was the class difference and the way Shree has highlighted it throughout the book. Domestic help have names attached – full names and personalities – from what they do to who they are and their role in the family. On the other hand, the members of the household are not known by names, except for one son called Sid. The rest are nameless, known by their roles and what they add to the plot.

Tomb of Sand also becomes a partition novel somewhere after four-hundred pages, and it didn’t surprise me at all, when that happened. I was so immersed in the world created by Shree and her magnificence, that I submitted myself more than happily to this plot-twist, if I can call it that. This again makes the novel even more profound and complex.

Tomb of Sand is shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022. I hope it wins. I hope it is known widely. I hope because of this other Indian language books get their place in the sun. Tomb of Sand is a delight to read and reread. If you have already read it, I recommend you go back to it. If you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? Please read it. NOW.

Read 35 of 2022. Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir by Farah Bashir

Title: Rumours of Spring: A Girlhood in Kashmir
Author: Farah Bashir
Publisher: Fourth Estate India, Harper Collins India
ISBN: 978-9354224218
Genre: Memoir, Nonfiction
Pages: 240
Source: Publisher
Rating: 5/5

Farah Bashir’s book “Rumours of Spring” is an extremely poignant account of life as an adolescent in Kashmir of the 1990s, the Kashmir that was full of conflict and uncertainty. Nothing has changed for Kashmiris as of today, but we shall not go there.

I was gutted. As I was reading the book and when I finished reading it as well. I am still reeling from Bashir’s experiences as young girl in the valley – what her family and friends had to go through, and the trauma that will never go away. Some wounds never heal. Maybe that’s how it is meant to be.

The book starts with the death of Farah’s grandmother, Bobeh. The chapters follow the day of her funeral, compartmentalized into Evening, Night, Early Hours, Dawn, Morning, and Afterlife. Each chapter reveals more about Farah’s life and that of her family, amidst the turmoil – life that has changed completely, leaving only memories of the days gone by.

A young girl grows up under constant curfew, sudden raids, gunfire, and talk of death all around. A young girl grows up waiting to go to school, checking when the phone works – whether the school is open, and the buses are plying – checking whether she can go to school – dependent on whether where she stays is a sensitive area or not. A young girl has to constantly hear of deaths of loved ones, of cousins, of how you have to be careful – cannot go here and must go there with someone, and then to imagine what life must be like in places that are not Kashmir.

Bashir’s writing is devoid of sentiment but full of emotional heft. It doesn’t want to make you cry, as much as it wants you as a reader to empathize and understand the way things were. At the same time, she is trying very hard not to judge – the government, the Indian army, and even the militants for that matter. She is only stating her truth – the one that she experienced, the one that her family faced, the truth where everything we take for granted is full of terror and crackdown.

Time plays such an important role throughout the book and yet not. Bobeh’s body has to be kept at home for a day, because of curfew. Time passes then – slowly for Farah and her family, as somehow relatives and friends come to console, memories rise. When you could freely listen to music, when freshly baked bread could be bought without fear, and when you could go to one room from another in your house without the fear of wood creaking, leading to the army asking questions and perhaps even shooting a stray bullet.

Farah interweaves the history of a state and a country – including its politics with her personal spaces. From her friends who are Kashmiri Pandits and have to leave without a word in 1990 to the siege of the Hazratbal shrine in 1993, when she loses all will to study and do better. Everything is acknowledged, everything is remembered with the intention of it being forgotten.

Rumours of Spring speaks of what is lost, what remains, and hopefully what will not be lost. It is a chronicle of a girlhood, but also negotiating spaces of beauty, grace, hope, and identity in the midst of chaos, terror, and death.

Read 29 of 2022. Heaven by Mieko Kawakami. Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd

Title: Heaven
Author: Mieko Kawakami Translated from the Japanese by Sam Bett and David Boyd
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 978-1509898244
Genre: Literary Fiction, Translated Fiction
Pages: 176
Source: Publisher
Rating: 4/5

Heaven triggered memories that should’ve been left alone and not touched. The memories of being bullied at school, by four boys who called me their friend, and yet would bully me every single day for five years.

Heaven by Mieko Kawakami is perhaps all our story – of the ones who were bullied at high-school, the monstrosity of it all, the nightmare, and the solace found in unexpected people.

The book isn’t an easy read. Kawakami will not make it easy and redemptive. The bullies will bully and will think of innovative ways of doing so, for instance, taking the unnamed narrator’s head and using it as a football. The description isn’t nice. It isn’t meant to be. It is raw and gritty.

The unnamed fourteen-year-old (who also has a lazy eye) goes through all of this and more, till he meets someone at school – Kojima – a kindred spirit, a classmate who is also being bullied by a bunch of vicious girls, through exchange of notes, their friendship blossoming, and they rarely meet. Over a summer break, they visit an art museum, where Kojima plans to show him her favourite painting about men and women who have discovered harmony and joy after immense suffering. She calls the painting “Heaven”.

The book is set in early 1990s in Japan and to me it was the most beautiful meditation on the nature of suffering, coming of age, and what it is like to perhaps overcome in some manner or the other. They aren’t lovers. They will never be. But they are bound by their suffering and constantly asking questions around it: What is it? When will it end? Why are they going through it?

The translation by Sam Bett and David Boyd is concise and to the point. Having read Breasts and Eggs by Kawakami, also translated by them, I can say that the tone is spot-on. The atmosphere of the school world of Japan in the 90s is clearly communicated. I loved how the translation does not ramble away to explain anything – it lets the prose be for people to see and doesn’t tell anything.

Heaven is a book that might seem YA as it did to me when I started off but worked on so many other levels. The poignancy of growing up, but to have to do so when being exposed to bullying made me go through all of my school life in my head, and it wasn’t easy at all. Perhaps it was extremely cathartic as I did find myself not reading after a point and tearing up, but it was also needed to revisit it all, for life like fiction to transform.