Review by New York Times Review
This consuming novel tracks the convergence of two Indian communities: the privileged society of bourgeois Bangalore, where Vijay's flinty young narrator, Shalini, is cosseted by her wealthy father and caustically unfiltered mother, and, far to the north, a hardscrabble Himalayan village in Kashmir. The conduit for this coming together is Bashir Ahmed, a plucky Kashmiri clothing salesman who ingratiates himself with mother and daughter during Shalini's childhood, only to disappear from their life years later after a disastrous party her father throws in his honor. Prompted by her mother's subsequent death, Shalini journeys to Kashmir in search of Bashir, falling into the rabbit hole of quotidian suffering the impoverished locals endure, caught in the cross hairs of insurgent militants and government soldiers. The author teases along her protagonist's political awakening with nagging mysteries (How did Shalini's mother die? Was Bashir complicit in the mass murder of Hindu villagers?) and the occasional hoary gothic-romance trope (the sullenbut-smitten Kashmiri who admonishes the interloping Shalini, "You should not have come here"). But Vijay's command of storytelling is so supple that it's easy to discount the stealth with which she constructs her tale, shifting time frames with seamless ease and juggling a wealth of characters who cling to the heart. The show-stealer is Shalini's mercurial mother, an "outrageous queen" of capricious gestures. Vijay smartly resists psychoanalyzing her, implying that the china-shop bulls in our families can be survived but never entirely explained away.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Living back home in Bangalore after attending university, Shalini is adrift since her mother's recent death. When her father encourages her to come up with some sort of plan, she surprises even herself with a ready response: in fact, she's planning a trip to Kashmir. Secretly, she hopes to find a friend of her mother's whom she hasn't seen in years, a traveling salesman named Bashir Ahmed who stopped visiting when the political unrest in his region took too great a toll on him and his family. On her travels north, Shalini is struck repeatedly by how ill-prepared she was for such a journey, and by how little she wants it to end. Alternating chapters address Shalini's time in Kashmir, where she is introduced to others' astonishing struggles and welcomed into their care in a way she's never before experienced; and flash back to her childhood, unraveling the mysteries of her sharp-edged, dearly beloved mother and the man Shalini has crossed a country to find. Vijay intertwines her story's threads with dazzling skill. Dense, layered, impossible to pin or put down, her first novel is an engrossing tale of love and grief, politics and morality. Combining up-close character studies with finely plotted drama, this is a triumphant, transporting debut.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Vijay's remarkable debut novel is an engrossing narrative of individual angst played out against political turmoil in India's Jammu and Kashmir state in the late 2000s. Unmoored by her mother's death, 24-year-old Shalini apathetically floats from job to job while receiving financial support from her affluent father. In an effort to find closure, Shalini leaves her native Bangalore to search for Bashir Ahmed, her mother's only friend, who she hasn't seen in years. Upon arriving in tumultuous Jammu, Shalini is taken in by a Muslim family in Kishtwar and struggles to understand the fractured nature of her surroundings: the role of the omnipresent Indian Army, the disappearances of local Muslims, and the frequent violence against and perpetrated by both Muslims and Hindus. Her search eventually leads to a Himalayan village, whose generous inhabitants temporarily give her a sense of purpose amidst staggering natural beauty. However, Shalini's ignorance and inability to be honest with herself and others results in dangerous consequences for everyone she comes in contact with. Interspersed with flashbacks of Shalini's relationships with her dazzling yet mentally ill mother, the mysterious but kind Bashir Ahmed, and her withdrawn father, Shalini's misguided attempts at love, fulfillment, and friendship are poignant. Vijay's stunning debut novel expertly intertwines the personal and political to pick apart the history of Jammu and Kashmir. Agent: Claudia Ballard, William Morris (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Sometimes, pushing "stop" before a book's end might be the best course of action. Seasoned reader Sneha Mathan provides her usual nuanced, affecting narration throughout the 14 hours here, yet even her resonating performance can't prevent the frustration of a stupendous story that veers fatally toward abject disappointment. Still living at home in Bangalore, India, with her widowed father, 30-year-old Shalini remains unmoored, unable to recover from her capricious mother's suicide. After being fired from her job, she heads to Kashmir--India's most politically unstable region-in search of a traveling salesman who used to visit her mother during her childhood; only with this man did her mother ever seem to be truly engaged and joyous. Despite having only the slightest details about Bashir, Shalini miraculously finds his family in a remote Himalayan village and is welcomed by the charming daughter-in-law, who offers Shalini her first experience of true friendship. Vijay's debut is initially-mostly-a gorgeous narrative of love and loss, hope and betrayal, intertwined with a hauntingly insightful introduction to a population constantly under threat. VERDICT That breathtaking story-even enhanced by Mathan's empathic reading-turns sucker-punch when Shalini's naïve entitlement and blinding privilege lead the story into devastating predictability. ["Narrating Shalini's journey in chapters that alternate between past and present and utilizing strong characterizations throughout, Vijay has crafted an engaging, suspenseful, and impressive debut": LJ Winter 2018 review of the Grove hc.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian -BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The chain of events connecting a privileged young Indian woman, her volatile mother, and a tale-spinning Kashmiri merchant leads to tragedy in a story of religious conflict and domestic damage set in contemporary India.Taking the classic form of a journey, Vijay's vivid debut moves from sophisticated contemporary Bangalore to a harshly beautiful Himalayan mountain village as Shalini, a 30-year-old woman haunted by memories of her sarcastic, restless mother, recounts her painful accumulation of wisdom. As a child, Shalini's home was periodically visited by Bashir Ahmed, a clothing merchant, one of a very few people attuned to Shalini's mercurial mother. Although Bashir Ahmed could tell magical stories, his home life in Kashmir was becoming threatened by Hindu-Muslim tensions provoked by militant activism and the brutal response of the Indian army. Now, attempting to resolve her feelings about her mother's death nine years earlier, Shalini feels Bashir Ahmed might hold the key and travels to remote Kashmir to find him. Her comfortable life is replaced with something more basic as she discovers small communities, kindly individuals, friendship, attraction, a possible new role for herselfand secrets. But Shalini is nave, and her efforts to help others, and herself, ultimately prove catastrophic. Shuttling between past and present and exploring complicated themes of parental fealty, identity, and religious schism, Vijay's ambitious novel is at its most magnetic when recounting Shalini's immersion in a different world, her embrace by new kinds of family, and the lessons she learns. But its epic length sets up expectations of equally immersive political history, and here the storytelling is cloudier, staffed with clichd characters. Most memorable are the scenes of stripped-down joy in the mountains where the author's elegant, calm prose and intense evocations of people and places come into their own.A striking debut, stronger on the micro than the macro. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
