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A review by brew_and_books
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
3.0
It took me four months to read this and another month to bring myself to write about it. For all its rich language, brilliant narration, and atmospheric writing, this book left me fatigued.
Tomb of Sand takes us through the life story of an 80 y/o woman (Amma/ma/mata ji), recently widowed, who has taken her back to her family (and the world in general). As a reader, we are taken through one rollercoaster of a ride - into the pitfalls of the depressive states of Amma, her subsequent realization that it all isn't over and there's much more to life, followed by taking a series of bold decisions for a woman her age like leaving her son's home to live with her daughter, befriending and maintaining a heartfelt friendship with a hijra, transcending borders, etc. Despite an overwhelming length of 700+ pages, the story flows seamlessly and swoops you in right from the first page. The narrative is interspersed in chapters ranging from a single page of two to three lines to some spanning thirty pages. The story transits so smoothly that I never knew when it turned from a witty, humorous tale of an older woman with knacking descriptions of her changing relationship dynamics and outlook towards life and the world to one plunging deep into the explorations of deep-rooted memories and the torment that comes from partition.
It made me laugh, cry, long, bored, and frustrated, but above all, it gave me a unique reading experience of its own. I went slow with it and took a long time to finish. The story digresses a lot, and so did I shuffle through my reads while reading it. I am convinced I cannot read a digressing story as this one, with overpowering stream-of-consciousness writing, in one go. It is rife with thematic diversity (old age, abandonment, widowhood, falling apart from children, partition and loss, gender fluidity, etc.). Its amalgamation left me unimpressed and somewhat exhausted, tbh.
Big shoutout to Daisy Rockwell for the stellar translation that captured the absolute essence of the story and kept the subtle undertones intact. If you are good with big books and patient enough for a multi-dimensional and layered tale like this one, I much recommend it!
Tomb of Sand takes us through the life story of an 80 y/o woman (Amma/ma/mata ji), recently widowed, who has taken her back to her family (and the world in general). As a reader, we are taken through one rollercoaster of a ride - into the pitfalls of the depressive states of Amma, her subsequent realization that it all isn't over and there's much more to life, followed by taking a series of bold decisions for a woman her age like leaving her son's home to live with her daughter, befriending and maintaining a heartfelt friendship with a hijra, transcending borders, etc. Despite an overwhelming length of 700+ pages, the story flows seamlessly and swoops you in right from the first page. The narrative is interspersed in chapters ranging from a single page of two to three lines to some spanning thirty pages. The story transits so smoothly that I never knew when it turned from a witty, humorous tale of an older woman with knacking descriptions of her changing relationship dynamics and outlook towards life and the world to one plunging deep into the explorations of deep-rooted memories and the torment that comes from partition.
It made me laugh, cry, long, bored, and frustrated, but above all, it gave me a unique reading experience of its own. I went slow with it and took a long time to finish. The story digresses a lot, and so did I shuffle through my reads while reading it. I am convinced I cannot read a digressing story as this one, with overpowering stream-of-consciousness writing, in one go. It is rife with thematic diversity (old age, abandonment, widowhood, falling apart from children, partition and loss, gender fluidity, etc.). Its amalgamation left me unimpressed and somewhat exhausted, tbh.
Big shoutout to Daisy Rockwell for the stellar translation that captured the absolute essence of the story and kept the subtle undertones intact. If you are good with big books and patient enough for a multi-dimensional and layered tale like this one, I much recommend it!