Moves in the prose:
- "She always mumbled when she was afraid, as if she hoped not to be heard." Her sentences seem to suggest so much more, they feel like surfaces to layers and layers of a person and their history. I read this and think that she (Tara) has spent a lifetime being a woman who shrinks, who is small.
- "Tara and Bakul?" cried the two sisters and, straightening their spectacles and smoothing down their hair and their saris.." Subtle. Shows that they want to impress, suddenly they are aware of their physicality, appearance. Also does a nice job of revealing what outsiders think of Tara & Bakul-- clearly these two are regarded highly.
- "At last one became aware of the presence of stars, the scent of night-flowering plants." Wow. Just beautiful. Love the effect that "at last" has on this sentence.
- Page 41, Bim recites T. S. Eliot- interesting move, having the characters recite lines, allows us to access their thoughts, allows for an aperture to be opened up for a new understanding not otherwise attained. It suggests something bigger, somehow the characters and situations they are in become in dialogue with other characters, other narrators, other works of art, etc.
- Page 41, present day, sisters are walking and Bim brings up poetry by T.S. Eliot. She says this when they are talking about Aunt Mira's death, and how Bim was haunted by images of her. Page 100, when the section follows Bim in her youth, the same lines of poetry are brought up when Aunt Mira's death has just happened. Interesting to see the recounting of the memory and the lines, and the creation of the memory and the lines being called to mind.
Handling of Characters & Their relations:
Bakul & Tara
"So, I only have to bring you home for a day, Tara, and you go back to being the hopeless person you were before I married you."
Wow, wow, wow. So much is said here about the way he perceives her.
- He thinks he has done something for her, shown her a life where she can assert herself and execute her will, but I wonder if he does not realize that he suffocates her as much as her family did. He is arrogant. He does not understand her.
Raja & Bim
- Through close-third narration on Tara, a strong bond is depicted between Bim & Raja. Bim's thoughts on Raja, harsh and bitter, are felt more because of this.
Thoughts:
- At times the presence of the author is felt too closely. I get the impression that she is trying to control exactly how we are being lead through the narrative.
- She is amazing at creating tense scenes.
- Desai wrote, "While the two women sat upright and tense and seethed with unspoken speech, the two men seemed dehydrated, emptied out, with not a word to say about anything." I absolutely loved this. She captured, in such close proximity, two completely different kinds of silences. 1. Unspoken speech. 2. Not a word to say about anything. One withholds, one has nothing to say. Love how her descriptions prompted me to think about the different kinds of silences and their implications.
- I am disappointed by her similes and descriptions of things. They feel too forced, too cliche.
- She doesn't just have characters say things. They cry, they wail, they cry 'incredulously', they respond in ways that are dramatic and draw attention to the descriptions-- this is distracting and feels false.
- A lot of her prose is redundant. Characters circle around the same conversation, repeat their thoughts again and again.
- Some of the prose is too on the nose, the dynamics between characters, the tension, what they're grappling with, it feels too obvious, she pins it down with her prose.
- She handles body language well. When it works, the descriptions of what the characters are doing with their body helps us immediately know how they are feeling, etc.
- The relationship between the character's continues to turn. They are all resentful and jealous of each other's life, no one person to look up to, no one person to look down on, they each admire and loathe different qualities in one another.
- Too often she states the obvious, we lose interest, it limits what is happening to the facts of it.
- Enjoyed how she chose certain moments in their childhood that would become defining moments for them, even as adults, and wrote them, or hinted about them, in other sections.
Lines I enjoyed:
- "love-starved"
- "Tara lifted her hair from the back of her neck and let it fall again, luxuriantly, with a sigh."
- "he blinked as if the sun surprised him."
- "Only Bim seemed to notice nothing odd."
- "Yet they had always regarded--- or at least Bim had-- the Misra girls as too boring to be cultivated"
- "and she was no longer indispensable"
- "... and with a yell they streamed out as in wild celebration at this new season in their lives, a season of presents and green mangoes and companionship."
Impressive/Compelling Dialogue:
"How everything goes on and on here, and never changes, I used to think about it all, and it is exactly the same, whenever we come home."
"Does that disappoint you? Would you like to come back and find it changed?"
... "But you wouldn't want to return to life as it used to be, would you? All that dullness, boredom, waiting. Would you care to live that over again? Of course not. Do you know anyone who would -- secretly, sincerely, in his innermost self-- really prefer to return to childhood?"
"Prefer to what?"
"Oh, to going on-- to growing up-- leaving-- going away-- into the world-- something wider, freer-- brighter. Brighter!"
"Don't you mind the noise?"
"I don't hear it anymore."
"A poet-- not knowing what he was writing?"
"A person needs to chose his death." -- Wow. What a line.
"Don't sit there staring. Don't stop me."
"I won't stop you."
"I'm going."
"Go."
Paragraphs:
- Bottom of page 11, "If she had been younger-- no, if she had been sure..." Love her prose here, it shows a mother longing for things for her daughters that she couldn't have herself, it shows a woman who does not quite realize how much she is stifled by her husband, it also characterizes Tara, how she sees her family, and how she is unlike them.
Words:
astringent
officious
turgid
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