Vanya Jaiswal

Twelve womxn. All of them black and British. This is the world of Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other and it’s refreshingly diverse, gloriously inclusive and bewitchingly complex. An exquisite tapestry of lives unfurls over five chapters as we make our way through nonconformist prose that spills into poetry. Evaristo forsakes the conventions of language, forging her own rules, much like the characters her words birth, who bury propriety in favour of a fulfilled life. It’s not that the women we meet are all contented, far from it really, but they dare, they dream, they desire. The novel that plays with both structure and form introduces one woman after another, delving into their pasts and presents, beginning with Amma. A rebel personally and artistically, Amma is a playwright who has finally got her big break. It’s hard to pinpoint a central figure in a book that features dozens of lives but perhaps it is Amma, with whose story the narrative branches out. There’s beauty in difference and Girl, Woman, Other embodies this truth in earnest. The epigraph is evidence enough. The characters we encounter thereafter identify with various sexualities, genders, ethnicities, and roots. From these textured existences arises a polyphonous medley—a song celebrating dissonance. Whether it’s Amma or Dominique who wear their homosexuality on their sleeves or Yazz who wants to experiment with categories, or Morgan who’s most comfortable with being non-binary, Evaristo endorses all ways of being. A book that lays its foundation on multiplicity is bound to reverberate with concerns of identity. We see it when the characters are faced with the choice to define themselves. We also see it when the characters shirk the chosen epithets feeling betrayed by the politics of the liberal movements, which are sullied by inherent contradictions. Amidst these decisions that are made, unmade, and remade lies ensconced the idea that identity is fluid and slippery. This Booker winner is without a shadow of a doubt a dazzling feat that shines the brightest in its portrayal of the whole gamut of women’s experience.

There's something oddly comforting about books that tend to explore the minutiae of everyday lives. When the ordinary is serenaded in literature, my heart of a common woman cannot help but sway to the music. Such occasions are, however, few and far between. No wonder then that when the opportunity arose, I flew through Anne Tyler’s latest offering, Redhead by the Side of the Road. I stepped into Tyler’s backdrop of Baltimore with complete abandon. There I met Micah Mortimer, a 44-year-old oddball as the book’s protagonist. He is the superintendent for his apartment building and heads a one-man company, Tech Hermit, that looks after the town’s tech needs and repairs. His days are set in stone. Mondays are floor-mopping days and Wednesdays are for dusting. There’s no breaking away from routine for Micah who is fastidious to a fault. Though reticent, he isn’t a lonely man. He enjoys the company of his “woman friend,” Cassia Slade. Their relationship—based on a mutual understanding of each other’s need for solitude and space—has reached that stage of stability that can only come with age. On the surface, this is a setup with little possibility of being thrown off-kilter. But such orderliness in itself is a step towards chaos. And tumult descends in the form of the son of an ex-girlfriend who mistakenly thinks that Micah is his real father. At the same time, Cassia is expecting eviction from the house she lives in. She relays this information to Micah but his apathetic response jolts her into reconsidering their relationship. From this juncture Micah’s life begins unraveling. A detached response in the face of dire circumstances, the first instance of fault-lines appearing in a father-son relationship, the family banter that reveals what one thinks about the other through the subtext of the jokes made are all unremarkable moments in the context of the large, tangled lives we lead. But Tyler’s keen eye proves otherwise by exposing the undercurrents that charge these moments with a disruptive energy. However, Tyler’s greatest gift is the ease with which she flourishes a hopeful ending, the second chance we’ve all longed for at some point.

Stories are an act of memory-making. When words are set in writing, they shed the cloak of obscurity, claiming a presence for all of posterity to sit back and take notice. Mahasweta Devi’s work has been radical in its documentation of marginalised voices. She is known to have wielded her pen like a weapon, striking the fetters of oppression with each new sentence. It would come as no surprise to you then that in Bedanabala, we are told the story of a prostitute who was rescued from a brothel, which is narrated in first person by her eponymous daughter. Bedanbala: Her Life. Her Times. is set in pre-Independence India, when the nation is waking up to nationalistic fervour and enlightened thoughts. It begins with telling us how new women are brought to the trade of sex-work - stolen when they are still babies by bribing their maids. The women are then groomed and pushed into business when they come off age. Despite what’s pre-ordained for them, the ultimate, unattainable dream for every sex-worker is to be a householder. But we know better than to believe this possible. As people who constitute the society, we know that while these women, who sell their flesh, are dirty and outcasts, the men who visit them are not. They are respectable and they marry women who live within the bounds of respectability. Yet, somehow, Bedanbala’s mother has a shot at an alternate life and her story is recounted by her daughter who is reminiscing of times past as she sits in her own home surrounded by books. At close to 80 pages, this novella has much to offer the reader. The women we meet are not introduced as representative of their work only, but as people in their own right who were actively involved in society’s upliftment. The reader is forced to look inward, instead of being a comfortable observer standing at a distance from the happenings in the book. There’s space only for introspection, not judgement and moral righteousness. Mahasweta Devi’s oeuvre speaks for itself, and no review of mine can ever live up to its legacy.