aruna in fasting and feasting
Fasting, Feasting – Anita Desai
January 27, 2008 by lizzysiddal
2007 was the year in which I failed to finish the Indian novels I started. I read 2 and faltered at the 500 page mark in both. I found Vikram Chandra’s amalgam of literary fiction and crime in Sacred Games remarkably tedious. But my failure with Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy was downright weird. An absolute 5-star epic, I was enjoying it. Unfortunately I had listened to an abridged audio a few years before, so I knew where it was heading and I couldn’t motivate myself to read the extra 1000 pages I needed to reach the end.
So 2008 heralds a change of tactic. For starters, a short novel by an Indian authoress.
Desai was born and educated in India and has spent many years teaching in the States. Well placed, therefore, to write about the similarities and differences of both cultures and she does this with a text that is by turns witty, farcical, poignant and shocking. It’s quite a mix and one that kept the pages turning ….. right to the end!
It could be argued that this novel is actually two novellas linked only by the character who moves from India to America. Each section is self-contained. Yet separating them would dilute the impact of the message that modern culture (be it Indian or American) is dissatisfying with gender inequality rife in both.
In India, MamaPapa (so in tune with each other, they cannot be divided) are raising their two daughters and a son. Aruna is beautiful. Uma is clumsy and plain. But both must be married off. Aruna has her pick of suitors but finding a bridegroom for Uma is a desperate task and the squandering of two dowries is source of much entertaining farce. Flip the coin, however, and the farce becomes tragedy. A failure to marry means a life of humiliating servitude to parents and a life of spinsterly loneliness and suffocation. My heart aches for Uma but it bleeds for Anamika (Uma’s cousin), denied her Oxford scholarship and married off
January 27, 2008 by lizzysiddal
2007 was the year in which I failed to finish the Indian novels I started. I read 2 and faltered at the 500 page mark in both. I found Vikram Chandra’s amalgam of literary fiction and crime in Sacred Games remarkably tedious. But my failure with Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy was downright weird. An absolute 5-star epic, I was enjoying it. Unfortunately I had listened to an abridged audio a few years before, so I knew where it was heading and I couldn’t motivate myself to read the extra 1000 pages I needed to reach the end.
So 2008 heralds a change of tactic. For starters, a short novel by an Indian authoress.
Desai was born and educated in India and has spent many years teaching in the States. Well placed, therefore, to write about the similarities and differences of both cultures and she does this with a text that is by turns witty, farcical, poignant and shocking. It’s quite a mix and one that kept the pages turning ….. right to the end!
It could be argued that this novel is actually two novellas linked only by the character who moves from India to America. Each section is self-contained. Yet separating them would dilute the impact of the message that modern culture (be it Indian or American) is dissatisfying with gender inequality rife in both.
In India, MamaPapa (so in tune with each other, they cannot be divided) are raising their two daughters and a son. Aruna is beautiful. Uma is clumsy and plain. But both must be married off. Aruna has her pick of suitors but finding a bridegroom for Uma is a desperate task and the squandering of two dowries is source of much entertaining farce. Flip the coin, however, and the farce becomes tragedy. A failure to marry means a life of humiliating servitude to parents and a life of spinsterly loneliness and suffocation. My heart aches for Uma but it bleeds for Anamika (Uma’s cousin), denied her Oxford scholarship and married off