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sidharthvardhan's review against another edition
5.0
I am hardly a nationalist but I like the fact that there is finally an Indian International Booker Winner. To be honest, I have been thinking for years now how in all the life of International Booker's new format, there hadn't been a single Indian nomination. I believe despite all challenges, Indian languages must have some great books written in them every single year. Maybe they just don't get translated enough.
So my enthusiasm has more to do with hopes that Literature in Indian languages will hopefully gain some attention - from Indians, foreigners but most importantly from publishers who mostly seem interested only in publishing easy money-making books. Hopefully, the increased attention from the western gaze (Is there such a concept? there should be - like 'male gaze' concept of feminists) is.) after this prize might now attract their greed and make them invest more in translations.
Tomb of Stone is refreshing in a number of ways. The story, when you cut down to it, is beautiful (the summary on GoodReads is somewhat misleading) but its true charms are in the telling. And many small stories get told along the way as the grand story unfolds. Only bad novels try to follow the conventional telling (the 'show, don't tell', 'don't go off-topic' etc). The best novels always show indifference to those conventions and go by their own rules. In this regard too, Tomb of Stone is doing a lot. It is always poking, pulling, and pushing at its own narrative reality to push its boundaries to new horizons and with drunken's disregard for conventions. The novel starts by naming its author by their archetypical designation (the mother, the daughter, the elder son, the daughter-in-law) and these main characters are never named with the exception of the mother in the end. Then she gave up this rule and started naming them - going so far as to name the servants of the main characters as well as a crow. At some point in the book, great wisdom and intelligence is extended to crows (the birds, not the gatekeepers from Game of Thrones) - one of whom becomes a character in the story though the story doesn't need it. Then the story reaches its natural conclusion but the novel goes challenges the conventional wisdom of those arbitrary endings.
I start reading books cynically - doubly so if the books are this big (at least the big books written after 1900). Something this big needs to work several times as hard to win the same rating - to make it worth the time invested. It is not enough for such a big book to contain a story only, it should have a whole mini-universe in it. Of course, it is always an exaggeration to claim that a book of any size (even something like Ulysses) may contain a mini-universe but some books earn the right to that exaggeration, and 'Tomb of Sand' is one such. A most incomplete list of elements that gets talked about by the rather chatty narrator of the book includes - India, the partition of India, pollution, a man that has forgotten how to laugh, wishing tree, myths, birds, India's most famous bird-watcher, climate change, Indian politicians, philosophers, painters, feminists, Gods, several sub-continental writers, painters, poets, vocalists, terrorists, Pakistan, India-Pakistan clash, Pakistan cricket team, foreigners in India, feminism, etc.
Though I could have read it in the original language, I choose to read it in English. The translator will often let escape a few Hindi verses - which she will obediently translate after transcribing them in the original language. These verses (of songs, poems, etc) were always more beautiful in Hindi.
So my enthusiasm has more to do with hopes that Literature in Indian languages will hopefully gain some attention - from Indians, foreigners but most importantly from publishers who mostly seem interested only in publishing easy money-making books. Hopefully, the increased attention from the western gaze (Is there such a concept? there should be - like 'male gaze' concept of feminists) is.) after this prize might now attract their greed and make them invest more in translations.
Tomb of Stone is refreshing in a number of ways. The story, when you cut down to it, is beautiful (the summary on GoodReads is somewhat misleading) but its true charms are in the telling. And many small stories get told along the way as the grand story unfolds. Only bad novels try to follow the conventional telling (the 'show, don't tell', 'don't go off-topic' etc). The best novels always show indifference to those conventions and go by their own rules. In this regard too, Tomb of Stone is doing a lot. It is always poking, pulling, and pushing at its own narrative reality to push its boundaries to new horizons and with drunken's disregard for conventions. The novel starts by naming its author by their archetypical designation (the mother, the daughter, the elder son, the daughter-in-law) and these main characters are never named with the exception of the mother in the end. Then she gave up this rule and started naming them - going so far as to name the servants of the main characters as well as a crow. At some point in the book, great wisdom and intelligence is extended to crows (the birds, not the gatekeepers from Game of Thrones) - one of whom becomes a character in the story though the story doesn't need it. Then the story reaches its natural conclusion but the novel goes challenges the conventional wisdom of those arbitrary endings.
I start reading books cynically - doubly so if the books are this big (at least the big books written after 1900). Something this big needs to work several times as hard to win the same rating - to make it worth the time invested. It is not enough for such a big book to contain a story only, it should have a whole mini-universe in it. Of course, it is always an exaggeration to claim that a book of any size (even something like Ulysses) may contain a mini-universe but some books earn the right to that exaggeration, and 'Tomb of Sand' is one such. A most incomplete list of elements that gets talked about by the rather chatty narrator of the book includes - India, the partition of India, pollution, a man that has forgotten how to laugh, wishing tree, myths, birds, India's most famous bird-watcher, climate change, Indian politicians, philosophers, painters, feminists, Gods, several sub-continental writers, painters, poets, vocalists, terrorists, Pakistan, India-Pakistan clash, Pakistan cricket team, foreigners in India, feminism, etc.
Though I could have read it in the original language, I choose to read it in English. The translator will often let escape a few Hindi verses - which she will obediently translate after transcribing them in the original language. These verses (of songs, poems, etc) were always more beautiful in Hindi.
lostinherpages's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
hanzy's review against another edition
2.0
2.5 stars
Perhaps I’d have liked it better had I read it at a different time
I wish the book made me feel and connect a little more. While I appreciated the flowery language and use of metaphors, it got a little difficult comprehending the tone and language used
Perhaps I’d have liked it better had I read it at a different time
I wish the book made me feel and connect a little more. While I appreciated the flowery language and use of metaphors, it got a little difficult comprehending the tone and language used
dakotahreads's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
lasyuh's review against another edition
1.5
"One dies, another becomes lifeless."(p.513)
they definitely missed taking pointers when Shakespeare said "Brevity is the soul of wit."
xna98's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
steveatwaywords's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
What a magnificent read. A lyrical and subtle exploration of dozens of vital questions, woven by its conclusion into some moments of wonder.
But wait. Let's get those nay-sayers out of the way first. If you are seeking a tightly-written, action-directed, straight-to-streaming IP that doubles as beach read fantasy and tear-jerking melodrama, go somewhere else. Choices for you are being churned out by writing teams and AI by the thousands.
So, despite that warning (and the several warnings the novel's narrator also provides along the way), let me say that this is an absolutely compelling page-turner and every scene felt immaculately directed to its effect. Those effects are explicitly not conventional plotting, though this exists, as well, almost (but definitely not) incidental to the larger text. How does one sustain a book that takes over 100 pages for its octogenarian grandmother to rise from her bed? How when it takes over 50 pages for her to go from a standing position to one fallen? And then, when something momentous truly does occur, it is sometimes whisked through in a page or brief patch of sentences.
Why are we reading?
For Shree's reflections, her reveries on life at all ages, her satirical digs at social mores and conservative proprieties, our posturing and political priorities, our entrenchments and blindness to the compassion and humanity requisite to gender, to disability, and to infantilizing of the aged. About the graphic and unsettling challenges to senior care--from smells and sounds in bed-sharing to bathroom routines and crises. Shree's lens is at once a marvelous and uncomfortable macro look at a single family's c0lliding myopias and also a despairing but affirming diatribe on the fundamental brokenness of South Asian social-political history and . . . everyone's.
So slow down. Don't try this book "skipping over the asides" as so many reviewers attempted. You miss not only the idea of the novel, but also its wonderful word play and turns of thought made all the more resonant by gifted translator Daisy Rockwell. Seeing what she produced here for remarkable and poetic moments made me marvel at what she must have been working with in the original Hindi. What she has given us from Shree is an English translation both subtle and beautiful.
I want very much to talk about how the book comes together at its end, but I will not spoil it. It is full worth the journey for its dazzling and significant close. But I will add this: this has been marked as a work of experimental fiction, and contrasted to mainstream Hindi literature, it certainly is that. But I would note that this is, too, a work of magical realism. We know it almost as quickly as a Buddha statue waits its moment in the grandmother's room or she inexplicably raises her cane into the air. Our mysterious, partly-connected narrator weighs in frequently in relating the story, and this too can seem an odd structural choice--but it, too, becomes a powerful idea. Slowly, over time, reverie to reflection, subtle moment to memory of substance, Shree's novel draws together difference and opens outward and outward. Readers skipping this story, missing it or glossing over it, failing to give it their attention, are indeed part of its very subject.
But wait. Let's get those nay-sayers out of the way first. If you are seeking a tightly-written, action-directed, straight-to-streaming IP that doubles as beach read fantasy and tear-jerking melodrama, go somewhere else. Choices for you are being churned out by writing teams and AI by the thousands.
So, despite that warning (and the several warnings the novel's narrator also provides along the way), let me say that this is an absolutely compelling page-turner and every scene felt immaculately directed to its effect. Those effects are explicitly not conventional plotting, though this exists, as well, almost (but definitely not) incidental to the larger text. How does one sustain a book that takes over 100 pages for its octogenarian grandmother to rise from her bed? How when it takes over 50 pages for her to go from a standing position to one fallen? And then, when something momentous truly does occur, it is sometimes whisked through in a page or brief patch of sentences.
Why are we reading?
For Shree's reflections, her reveries on life at all ages, her satirical digs at social mores and conservative proprieties, our posturing and political priorities, our entrenchments and blindness to the compassion and humanity requisite to gender, to disability, and to infantilizing of the aged. About the graphic and unsettling challenges to senior care--from smells and sounds in bed-sharing to bathroom routines and crises. Shree's lens is at once a marvelous and uncomfortable macro look at a single family's c0lliding myopias and also a despairing but affirming diatribe on the fundamental brokenness of South Asian social-political history and . . . everyone's.
So slow down. Don't try this book "skipping over the asides" as so many reviewers attempted. You miss not only the idea of the novel, but also its wonderful word play and turns of thought made all the more resonant by gifted translator Daisy Rockwell. Seeing what she produced here for remarkable and poetic moments made me marvel at what she must have been working with in the original Hindi. What she has given us from Shree is an English translation both subtle and beautiful.
I want very much to talk about how the book comes together at its end, but I will not spoil it. It is full worth the journey for its dazzling and significant close. But I will add this: this has been marked as a work of experimental fiction, and contrasted to mainstream Hindi literature, it certainly is that. But I would note that this is, too, a work of magical realism. We know it almost as quickly as a Buddha statue waits its moment in the grandmother's room or she inexplicably raises her cane into the air. Our mysterious, partly-connected narrator weighs in frequently in relating the story, and this too can seem an odd structural choice--but it, too, becomes a powerful idea. Slowly, over time, reverie to reflection, subtle moment to memory of substance, Shree's novel draws together difference and opens outward and outward. Readers skipping this story, missing it or glossing over it, failing to give it their attention, are indeed part of its very subject.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content
Moderate: Grief, Homophobia, Ableism, Death, Dementia, Murder, Gaslighting, Confinement, Deportation, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Violence, Animal death, and Death of parent
Most of the more graphic or disturbing qualities of the work are kept off-stage and referenced. But all of these form a significant part of the plot and character-shaping of the protagonist and addressed, for the most part, in honest and healthy ways.afailedlibrarian's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Reading this book made me feel like the Pakistani guards, exhausted, thinking, "Get to the point, Amma!!!" Was that THE point? Did the book not just feel like a challenge, but was a challenge? The heart of this story is so beautiful and I loved the various borders crossed, teased, embellished (including language, gender, nationalism), but I was very close to DNFing before the remarkable Part III.