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A review by mtstellens
The Centre by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi
2.0
A translator mainly working with Bollywood films wants to be taken more seriously so signed up for a language course she has heard about that promises to make her completely fluent in any language of her choosing. All she needs to do is pay $10,000 and go to a retreat for a week where she listens to a man’s life story in his native language and gives up her phone and contact with the outside world. She becomes fluent as well as friends with one of the women who runs the center. She ends up translating a book and getting great success. She keeps in contact with the women from the Center as she grows more distant from her other friends and lovers. She goes back to learn another language and this time the woman reading her life story was one of the maids that she met last time. She learns this one quickly and again spends a lot of time with the woman who runs the center. She reveals that the maid had died, but Anisa thinks something shady is going on after finding weird emails. She uses the code that she found earlier to explore the rest of the back area, but ends up passing out and waking up in her bed. She finishes this stay and then is invited to learn more about the program by her friend. She goes with her to see her father and the other founders of the Centre. They reveal that the secret of the center is that they eat the people whose life stories that they listen to. Anisa is disgusted and leaves after being assaulted/having an uncomfortable sexual experience with her friends father. She goes back to England, has another one of her friends hypnotize her to get her memories from the Centre back, remembering that she had seen the leg of the Russian women. She ends up meeting her friend from the Centre again, she has been convinced that she can change the Centre by running it. Anisa disagrees, but talks to her all night about the possibilities.
Overall, I thought this book was underwhelming. I thought there were a lot of interesting things brought up in it like identity and colonialism, but it didn't deliver. There isn't really a stronger metaphor than literally consuming the flesh of low income people (European immigrants to England in this case, but people from India when the Centre was first starting up) in order to take a huge part of their culture. The founders were incredibly underused. Minus the friend’s father, the rest of them seemed completely normal and were not criticized at all. These founders were from India, the UK, the US and Israel. I just feel like more could have been done about this. There was a scene that addressed some things between Pakistan and India, but nothing really about the other three. It really just seemed like a missed opportunity, and now (in 2023 and there is a genocide happening in Gaza as I write this) it makes the book seem incomplete. I think that it failed in what it set out to do. There's also more criticism of the way Islam is written about, especially in the scenes that include ‘black magic.’ I don’t know enough about Islam to criticize that part myself, but it does seem like the hypnotism was added not to say anything, but for the plot. I also think that the ending could have wrapped things up more. The sexual assault was weirdly added in and thought I understand that it was another sign of ownership from the founders, it felt under addressed and tied in. I think that there could have been more of a discussion on how we accept horrific things for power and how we launder it for ourselves. How we think that we can change the system from the inside and how ideas get passed down.
To end on a thing I did like, I liked the choices of books that Anisa chose to translate. The one about the man who learns bird languages and that changed the way he was in the world. Also the story from Russian about the author who could do back and change her book after publication, she continues to edit it until she dies
Overall, I thought this book was underwhelming. I thought there were a lot of interesting things brought up in it like identity and colonialism, but it didn't deliver. There isn't really a stronger metaphor than literally consuming the flesh of low income people (European immigrants to England in this case, but people from India when the Centre was first starting up) in order to take a huge part of their culture. The founders were incredibly underused. Minus the friend’s father, the rest of them seemed completely normal and were not criticized at all. These founders were from India, the UK, the US and Israel. I just feel like more could have been done about this. There was a scene that addressed some things between Pakistan and India, but nothing really about the other three. It really just seemed like a missed opportunity, and now (in 2023 and there is a genocide happening in Gaza as I write this) it makes the book seem incomplete. I think that it failed in what it set out to do. There's also more criticism of the way Islam is written about, especially in the scenes that include ‘black magic.’ I don’t know enough about Islam to criticize that part myself, but it does seem like the hypnotism was added not to say anything, but for the plot. I also think that the ending could have wrapped things up more. The sexual assault was weirdly added in and thought I understand that it was another sign of ownership from the founders, it felt under addressed and tied in. I think that there could have been more of a discussion on how we accept horrific things for power and how we launder it for ourselves. How we think that we can change the system from the inside and how ideas get passed down.
To end on a thing I did like, I liked the choices of books that Anisa chose to translate. The one about the man who learns bird languages and that changed the way he was in the world. Also the story from Russian about the author who could do back and change her book after publication, she continues to edit it until she dies