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A review by sam_bizar_wilcox
When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy
5.0
This book is harrowing and horrifying. This is a book that I wanted to end almost immediately after I started. This is a book that I cannot recommend to every reader for the sake of its content.
And this book is amazing. Meena Kandasamy is one of the most brilliant writers of her era, and this book stands out as a masterpiece of socially conscious, critically informed fiction writing. She is a rebel, and her weapons are sharp observations. While I wanted the book (detailing a woman's suffering in an abusive marriage) to end, my ebook is now riddled with bookmarks to highlight passages where Kandasamy writes - in plain language - observations that resonate beyond the confines of the book (I'll have to go through and record them before I return the book to the library). Citing feminist scholars throughout the novel, When I Hit You often reads as if a work of French feminist theory. Yet it is always grounded in the narration of the protagonist; the work of theory never upends the work of fiction.
Kandasamy has written a Kunstlerroman imbued with ferocious creative energy. It is at once a post-colonial treatise, a feminist manifesto, and, most importantly, an intimate character study. A book to be endured, but a book to defiantly return to.
And this book is amazing. Meena Kandasamy is one of the most brilliant writers of her era, and this book stands out as a masterpiece of socially conscious, critically informed fiction writing. She is a rebel, and her weapons are sharp observations. While I wanted the book (detailing a woman's suffering in an abusive marriage) to end, my ebook is now riddled with bookmarks to highlight passages where Kandasamy writes - in plain language - observations that resonate beyond the confines of the book (I'll have to go through and record them before I return the book to the library). Citing feminist scholars throughout the novel, When I Hit You often reads as if a work of French feminist theory. Yet it is always grounded in the narration of the protagonist; the work of theory never upends the work of fiction.
Kandasamy has written a Kunstlerroman imbued with ferocious creative energy. It is at once a post-colonial treatise, a feminist manifesto, and, most importantly, an intimate character study. A book to be endured, but a book to defiantly return to.