A review by vagaybond
Mother Ocean Father Nation by Nishant Batsha

5.0

My general synopsis: This book has two revolving points of view, through a brother and a sister who live different lives but are in each others lives as adult siblings are. Bhumi is studious and Jaipal is a romantic, and they come from a family who came to this small island generations ago and worked to try and carve out a place for them. There's a story about their grandmother escaping an abusive marriage (abusive as in, she escaped a murder that was arranged by her family). There's a lot of different extreme stories of the lives that they go through under what is pretty much a genocide in the streets, mixed in with the mundanity of trying to go to work or school and encounter love and friendship. There's a lot that's sentimental and poetic, and the characters are hard not to love. Even the ones who are angry all the time (Bhumi and Jaipal's father). They all have their ways of feeling and expressing love. And times when they share the unspoken things with others because it might be the last time, and the inability to speak on what they want to in what could be the last opportunity.


The island of the book is never mentioned by name, but I had some very small familiarity with the politics of the place it is based off of (only that there were Indian people brought there under indentured servitude) and ended up going through reviews until I came across someone else mentioning that it is based off the place that I thought it was. (I'm not going to name it, you can find the reviews yourself.)

It's been a while since I read a book that had this kind of seriousness to it and I think I will think about this book a lot far into the future too. There are things I know it is teaching me about grief that I will need to mull over a lot. And love. Maybe I'll come back to this review one day and add more.