Review in Khaleej Times, UAE, July 11th 2014
What women want
Mary Paulose / 11 July 2014
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan’s debut novel Seeing The Girl features some brilliant writing but takes the ‘complicated women’ narrative a bit too seriously.
Debut novelist Anuradha Vijayakrishnan is also an accomplished poet, published in titles like The Pedestal Magazine, Eclectica and Asia Literary Review. That is definitely evidenced in the lyrical prose of Seeing The Girl. This first book of hers was longlisted — while still in manuscript stage — for the Man Asian Literary Prize.
The story revolves around Janaki, an intelligent yet painfully stubborn woman, a daughter and one of the main narrators in the book. She lives, at least in the beginning of the story, with her mother and sister — Amma and Leela — who want nothing more than Janaki to be normal and get a life. Nothing wrong in that, you think, until the reader finds out that Janaki inhabits her own unique mental habitat, which no else is privy to, and listens only to herself, though she understands what everyone else wants for her perfectly well.
A prospective groom, Rohit, soon turns up as her gateway to a new life, perhaps more to the relief of her family. But she spurns him, making a choice that dramatically changes the position of her family members like pieces on a chessboard.
For once, even Janaki who ignores her family’s every request, plea and threat — and even dominates them in a way — is checkmated by the boy’s later decision, which forces her out of her place, literally and figuratively, in the house.
Until push comes to shove, and she makes a daring, dark move that throws everyone off-balance.
In the periphery of the story, her father and his cousin and once bride-to-be, Janaki’s aunt, play their own parts in complicating their lives. Leela, caught in a luckless — more than loveless — marriage, struggles to build a life and relationship that is not quite what she expected. And Rohit is caught between the results of the choice he made earlier, one that you suspect was to hurt Janaki more than anything else. But he doesn’t get to choose the feelings that follow.
In spite of POV chapters from the other women, this is Janaki’s narrative, one that she completely owns and dominates. It’s a dark and foreboding read, a web of intricate relationships that exists vindictively under the civil veneer of family ties, offering a complex and nuanced look into human nature, of having to live with the people we’re born alongside, and don’t get to choose.
There’s a reason I don’t prefer reading Indian authors. The common mention of the smell of earth and pouring rain, for starters. Then, their protagonists mostly suffer from some sort of existential angst. Janaki is a sum of such tropes. So ploughing through her roller-coaster take on things and attitude to life — she’s actually emotionally strong and knows exactly what she’s doing — can leave you feeling similarly.
The experience can be like watching acclaimed surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s famous film, The Exterminating Angel, in which a few people who get together for a dinner party are unable to leave the room afterwards for inexplicable reasons, rendering them increasingly helpless over days and bringing out their real, primal sides. The characters in Seeing The Girl seem stuck in some comparable mental prisons, unable — and unwilling — to make the choices they need to escape their situations, even when they’re getting married, finding jobs and leaving the nest, seemingly doing everything right. But then, isn’t that the case with most of us, who choose not break out of the slots we’ve been neatly put into by those around us?
In spite of the sheer complexity of its characters and narrative strength, Seeing The Girl is a trundling read. Still, the language is lyrical and pulsating, leaving you with the satisfaction of having soaked up some deft writing. It’s the kind that gets listed for literary awards, and I suppose, in a sense, that’s what matters.
marypaulose@khaleejtimes.com
Mary Paulose / 11 July 2014
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan’s debut novel Seeing The Girl features some brilliant writing but takes the ‘complicated women’ narrative a bit too seriously.
Debut novelist Anuradha Vijayakrishnan is also an accomplished poet, published in titles like The Pedestal Magazine, Eclectica and Asia Literary Review. That is definitely evidenced in the lyrical prose of Seeing The Girl. This first book of hers was longlisted — while still in manuscript stage — for the Man Asian Literary Prize.
The story revolves around Janaki, an intelligent yet painfully stubborn woman, a daughter and one of the main narrators in the book. She lives, at least in the beginning of the story, with her mother and sister — Amma and Leela — who want nothing more than Janaki to be normal and get a life. Nothing wrong in that, you think, until the reader finds out that Janaki inhabits her own unique mental habitat, which no else is privy to, and listens only to herself, though she understands what everyone else wants for her perfectly well.
A prospective groom, Rohit, soon turns up as her gateway to a new life, perhaps more to the relief of her family. But she spurns him, making a choice that dramatically changes the position of her family members like pieces on a chessboard.
For once, even Janaki who ignores her family’s every request, plea and threat — and even dominates them in a way — is checkmated by the boy’s later decision, which forces her out of her place, literally and figuratively, in the house.
Until push comes to shove, and she makes a daring, dark move that throws everyone off-balance.
In the periphery of the story, her father and his cousin and once bride-to-be, Janaki’s aunt, play their own parts in complicating their lives. Leela, caught in a luckless — more than loveless — marriage, struggles to build a life and relationship that is not quite what she expected. And Rohit is caught between the results of the choice he made earlier, one that you suspect was to hurt Janaki more than anything else. But he doesn’t get to choose the feelings that follow.
In spite of POV chapters from the other women, this is Janaki’s narrative, one that she completely owns and dominates. It’s a dark and foreboding read, a web of intricate relationships that exists vindictively under the civil veneer of family ties, offering a complex and nuanced look into human nature, of having to live with the people we’re born alongside, and don’t get to choose.
There’s a reason I don’t prefer reading Indian authors. The common mention of the smell of earth and pouring rain, for starters. Then, their protagonists mostly suffer from some sort of existential angst. Janaki is a sum of such tropes. So ploughing through her roller-coaster take on things and attitude to life — she’s actually emotionally strong and knows exactly what she’s doing — can leave you feeling similarly.
The experience can be like watching acclaimed surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s famous film, The Exterminating Angel, in which a few people who get together for a dinner party are unable to leave the room afterwards for inexplicable reasons, rendering them increasingly helpless over days and bringing out their real, primal sides. The characters in Seeing The Girl seem stuck in some comparable mental prisons, unable — and unwilling — to make the choices they need to escape their situations, even when they’re getting married, finding jobs and leaving the nest, seemingly doing everything right. But then, isn’t that the case with most of us, who choose not break out of the slots we’ve been neatly put into by those around us?
In spite of the sheer complexity of its characters and narrative strength, Seeing The Girl is a trundling read. Still, the language is lyrical and pulsating, leaving you with the satisfaction of having soaked up some deft writing. It’s the kind that gets listed for literary awards, and I suppose, in a sense, that’s what matters.
marypaulose@khaleejtimes.com
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