Review by New York Times Review
THE STRIKING OPENING section in Anuradha Roy's Booker-longlisted novel "Sleeping on Jupiter"is a model of economy. In brisk, almost breakneck strokes, Roy depicts the violence of a war that suddenly engulfs the citrus-scented birthplace of its central character, Nomi, brutally claiming her father, then her brother and mother, and leaving Nomi to be consigned by boat to an unknown future. The next section is even more arresting. Three older ladies strike up a conversation with a young woman on a train from Kolkata, then watch in horror as she tries to escape the lustful advances of two men on the platform outside at a stop. Their last glimpse, of one of the men closing in as the train pulls away, conjures all the ghastly headlines of violent sexual assault against women in India. The rest of this compulsively readable novel follows a series of intersecting stories set in the train's destination of Jarmuli, a fictional temple town on the Bay of Bengal. The young woman is Nomi, who after growing up as an adopted child in Norway has returned (under cover of a documentary assignment) to look for the ashram where the boat deposited her many years ago. Perhaps this will help her achieve closure with the scarring abuse she suffered at the hands of its pedophile leader, Guruji. The seniors have their own demon - age - which one of them, Latika, fights with burgundy-dyed hair and another accepts by serenely wading toward dementia. The third has a son caught up in a privileged-class existentialist funk, who, unbeknown to her, is also visiting Jarmuli at the same time. Rounding out the socioeconomic scale are Badal, the temple guide, who has developed an all-consuming crush on the tea boy Raghu, and Raghu's employer, the enigmatic tea seller, who may or may not be a figure from Nomi's past. The book deftly captures an India where women encounter harassment at every turn, and a female teacher might appear with mysterious wounds and lips "like two swollen rubber chilies" in class one day. "If you fish a woman out of the water you can lay her or sell her or set her to work," a fisherman declares, summing up a view too much of the country's population still shares. Roy's central theme is oppression, and the opportunistic violence that accompanies it, aimed not just at women, but anyone vulnerable - particularly children. Nomi and her fellow orphans are subjected to such extreme atrocities that the author spaces them out, in escalating doses. Raghu and Badal bond over the merciless thrashings each has endured; even a stray dog is beaten with a cricket bat until it is "a mess of broken bones held together by bloodied fur." But Roy's Jarmuli is also evocative of love and beauty and deep longing, of memories of emerald paddies and guava trees that float across the beach in the tea seller's song. Possibilities for intimacy are always kindling - be it the future Badal imagines with Raghu or the flirtation Latika indulges in with her driver - and though these must eventually die, they ward off the darkness of past disappointments at least temporarily. One of the pleasures of this book is Roy's prose. A saucepan is "leathery with old layers of burnt grease," underpants are "gray beyond the powers of detergent," the day's heat is described as "gathering ferocity somewhere on the horizon." A scene where Badal steals a kiss from Raghu is written with such lyrical precision that it leaves one breathless, able to discern the "salt and sea and rust" Badal tastes on the boy's lips. OUT OF A host of complex, skillfully realized characters, Badal stands out in particular. By making him an enormously sympathetic foil to Guruji, possessed of all the humanity and self-doubt the god-man isn't, Roy forces us to ponder an uncomfortable parallel. Nomi and Raghu have "two halves of the same face" - yet, Raghu would clearly be better off under Badal's loving patronage than Nomi was under Guruji, with more prospects possible than those of a frequently thrashed tea boy. Does that make his exploitation defensible? What if this is the best future a developing country like India is able - or willing - to offer him ? The book is not without flaws. Sometimes, Roy allows herself to be overwhelmed by symbolism: Nomi sees "foaming blood" in the sea, then is blinded by "sheets of falling blood" in her hotel, then claims "the juice inside poured out in red spurts" from a melon at breakfast the next morning. (Note to tourists: Beware the notorious spurting melons of Jarmuli!) More perplexing are omissions in the narrative, presumably in deference to conciseness. For instance, after raising reader anxiety and emotional engagement to a fever pitch at the end of the book's second section, there is no further mention of the thug chasing Nomi - we must make do with the bland information that she boarded the train. In Jarmuli, Nomi neither follows up on newspaper articles about a denounced Guruji, nor tries to track a beloved fellow orphan through formal means - she is content to root around for sentimental artifacts in the ruins of the ashram instead. And then there are the coincidences - perhaps forgivable, since there are so many unruly strands to tie together. But the author seems to get a bit addicted to them. These quibbles fade in the radiance of Roy's accomplishment. The world she creates is ambitiously imagined, her characters possessed of an inner verity. They remind us how strongly our identities are forged by our experiences, how difficult it is to counter the gravitational pull of our own lives and escape to new realms. MANIL SURI is the author of "The City of Devi." He is working on a book that combines fiction with mathematics.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 2, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
In Roy's latest novel, following The Folded Earth (2012), the Indian seaside town of Jarmuli is the site for a confluence of the lives and stories of a disparate group of people. All are burdened with secrets, and all are seeking answers along Jarmuli's shoreline, in its temples, and from the people with whom they interact. Gouri, Latika, and Vidya are three elderly ladies on a junket that may prove to be the last trip their declining health and advancing years allow them to take. Badal is their languid tour guide, tormented by his taboo love for a young grifter. Nomi, a filmmaker on assignment with her assistant, Suraj, is drawn to the area because of the notorious role it played in her past. As each character delves more deeply into his or her own personal dramas, the duplicitous aspects of Indian society are exposed, especially religious and moral hypocrisy. With her mastery of atmosphere and setting, Roy illuminates pervading themes of misogyny, abuse, identity, and desire to luminous and provocative effect.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Travelling to India, to a fictional Vishnu temple in a beachside town, Nomi is returning to the land of her birth as well as to the place that haunts her memory. Having lost her family during an unspecified war, Nomi, at age seven, was brought to an ashram, kept captive, and sexually abused by the guru. She escaped at 12, entered an orphanage, was adopted, and taken to Europe. Now living in Sweden and in her mid-20s, Nomi comes back to India to work on a documentary film; Roy's novel sets the stage for her research, as she wanders the beach where she may have last seen her mother and the crumbling bricks and broken glass of what was the ashram compound. The cast of characters includes an earnest temple guide, three older women on pilgrimage, and Nomi's local production assistant, Suraj, who's going through a divorce. Many of the flashbacks, though they're essential for depth and clarity, feel forced, as Roy (The Folded Earth) tries to stitch together the child's trauma with the adult's insight. At the same time, however, the overlapping stories make for a rich and absorbing consideration of where the past ends and the present begins. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
