The Mission House by Carys Davies

"What was it, exactly, that he liked so much? Was it because it had an aura of home, or because it felt completely strange and new?"~from The Mission House by Carys Davies

I enjoyed Carys Davies last novel West so immediately requested his new novel The Mission House. 

Hillary Byrd was no longer comfortable in a changed England and sought escape by traveling to India. He was still miserable until he learned about the beautiful climate of the hills. He rents the house of a missionary on leave and discovers the village has all the comforts he requires, the legacy of the British army. For the first time in years he was content.

His host, a padre, has taken in a young woman, Priscilla, and asks Byrd to help polish her education to fit her for marriage. While teaching her English and sewing and baking, Byrd is drawn to her. The padre despairs for her future after he is gone and seeks a husband. Byrd is jealous.

Priscilla may be deformed and dependent, but she has dreams and is determined to make her own future.

Byrd can't escape the tribalism running rampant in the world, people "wanting to be surrounded only by people who were the same as they were," seeking an imaginary ideal past. He left it behind in England only to fatally discover it alive in India.

Byrd is condescending toward the natives; even his love for Priscilla is a parable of colonialism. Byrd uses his dedicated native driver thoughtlessly, spilling out his thoughts and grievances on their daily jaunts, but he never sees the man as a person. The ending is both ironic and tragic, Byrd's last action misguided but noble.

The novel wields a big impact in 272 pages. The writing is quiet and introspective, but there is a powerful story here.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

The Mission House
by Carys Davies
Scribner
Pub Date: February 16, 2021
ISBN: 9781982144838
hardcover $24.00 (USD)

from the publisher:

From the multiple award-winning author of West and The Redemption of Galen Pike, a captivating and propulsive novel following an Englishman seeking refuge in a remote hill town in India who finds himself caught in the crossfire of local tensions and violence.

Fleeing his demons and the dark undercurrents of contemporary life in the UK, Hilary Byrd takes refuge in a former British hill station in South India. Charmed by the foreignness of his new surroundings and by the familiarity of everything the British have left behind, he finds solace in life’s simple pleasures, travelling by rickshaw around the small town with his driver Jamshed and staying in a mission house beside the local presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter Priscilla have taken Hilary under their wing.

The Padre is concerned for Priscilla’s future, and as Hilary’s friendship with the young woman grows, he begins to wonder whether his purpose lies in this new relationship. But religious tensions are brewing and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems.

The Mission House boldly and imaginatively explores post-colonial ideas in a world fractured between faith and non-belief, young and old, imperial past and nationalistic present. Tenderly subversive and meticulously crafted, it is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a modern world.

State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee

As I was reading the last pages of this uncomfortable and upsetting novel, my eyes were streaming. My grief was overwhelming.

What story set in India is easy to read? E. M. Forster's Passage to India, depicting British racism and the confused heroine nearly destroying a native Indian man's life because he was more attractive than her fiancé? Or Rumor Godden's novels and stories set in the India of her childhood, and where she returned to live with her children, their cook adding ground glass to their food? I have never forgotten her short story Mercy, Pity, and Love where a man of privilege is thinking about this thesis as his wife is on a buying spree, while on the street an starving woman holds her dying baby.

No, India holds such poverty and cruelness next to its beauty and exotic attractions that it is not easy to encounter it.

"...but then he was hopeful and it's hope that kills you in the end"--from A State of Freedom

A State of Freedom is a novel in five stories that are interconnected by characters, each story revealing that character's life and challenges. The characters include native Indians crushed by poverty and desperately hoping for a better life, and those who have gone abroad and return to their homeland to see it with new eyes, the eyes of an outsider.

Can we go home again? We leave and the world changes us so that when we return we can not become again who we were. We know too much, we have assumed new values, or perhaps we just see with fresh vision what we had ignored before, familiar things we once accepted become horrors.

The first story concerns an native Indian who has brought his child to see the land of his nativity, and then is appalled by what they see, starting with a man falling from a tall building. He us upset knowing his child is being exposed to the harsh realities of poverty.

The second story concerns a man visiting his family who becomes overly friendly with the staff; invited to visit the cook's home village he realizes he "had failed to imagine how other people live."

The third story I could not read through; children find a bear cub and ask a man to teach it to be a dancing bear--which the father and son in the first story encounter. When they found the cub they were concerned for it, but the training is cruel and inhumane; the ending is horrifying.

The fourth story concerns Milly who works for the wealthy family in the second story, Her mother sent her away at age eight to be a domestic worker. When she asks when she will return home again, her mother tells her, you won't come back. The girl is desperate to learn, to find a better life. Every few years she is moved to a new position. She finds herself virtually imprisoned in never-ending work. Until rescued from her tower by a clever man.

The last story is stream-of-consciousness, the thoughts of an ailing construction worker desperate to complete his job, his mind wandering to the boy in a car he had seen, wishing he could be "the pampered son of a rich man." But he is betrayed, for neither he or the boy escape their mutual fate.

The novel is dark and painful. Why would I choose to endure such unhappiness? Why should one read this book?

One cannot change the way of the world, or the workings of a foreign society, but one can learn to see beyond the narrow limits of our comfortable world. We can understand how others live, we can learn mercy, pity and compassion.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

A State of Freedom: A Novel
by Neel Mukherjee
W. W. Norton & Company
Publication Date: January 2, 2018
Hardcover $25.95
ISBN: 9780393292909

From the publisher:

A devastating and powerful vision of a people defined by that most unquenchable human urge, the striving for a different life.

Can we transform the possibilities we are born into? A State of Freedom wrests open the central, defining events of our century: displacement and migration. Five characters in very different circumstances—from a domestic cook in Mumbai to a vagrant and his dancing bear—find the meanings of dislocation and the desire to get more out of life. Set in contemporary India and moving between the reality of this world and the shadow of another, this novel of multiple narratives—formally daring, fierce but full of pity—asks the fundamental question: how does one imagine the ways one can live in the world, or even outside it?

About the Author: Neel Mukherjee was born in Calcutta. His first novel, A Life Apart, won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award for best fiction, among other honors, and his second novel, The Lives of Others, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Prize.

The Perils of Sudden Wealth: The Windfall by Diksha Basu

I love a good comedy of manners. A little social satire mixed with a light romantic comedy is the perfect pick-me-up between more weighty tomes. And I loved Diksha Basu's first novel The Windfall. It was a delightful read that had me laughing out loud, calling out, "listen to this one!"

Mr. Jha has sold his website for an $20 million and after two years has decided it was time to be "movin' on up" to a modern home in a posh upscale neighborhood.

For twenty-five years The Jha family has lived in an apartment building with the same neighbors with whom they have their little tiffs and warm friendships. But why wash in a bucket with a cup when they can have walk-in showers? It is time to buy toilet paper and install squirting water guns near the toilet. Mr. Jha has caught the conspicuous wealth bug, buying a Mercedes and ordering a Swarovski-studded couch. He wants to live according to their income.

Mrs. Jha is content with their old life. She enjoyed her job seeking our craftpersons and promoting their traditional hand crafted items. She sees no need to put aside her bucket and cup or to wear flashy diamonds. She is glad their son Rupak in America is studying for an MBA; she wants him to be a self-made man like his father. His family does not know that Rupak is failing his classes and is conflicted over having an American girlfriend, believing his parents would disapprove.

When Mr. Jha meets their new neighbor Mr. Chopka it sets off a war of who has the best toys. Mr. Jha is driven to assume the lifestyle of the wealthy, and Mr. Chopka needs to keep proving he is on the top rung of the ladder.

At first Mr. Chopka assumes Mrs. Jha is the maid, and later when the Jhas are at the Chopka home the maid appears dressed similar to Mrs. Jha! Mrs. Chopka is addicted to her iPad and Angry Birds, and thinks nothing of loosing a diamond earring.

I loved the characters. And I especially loved Mr. Jha's inner dialogs. He ponders the summer Delhi heat and wonders, "what was the point of all this new money if he couldn't escape the blistering midday temperatures? It should be possible, Mr. Jha thought, to have a small portable air conditioned Plexiglas cubical built to walk around in." He imagines a portable cooled environment, "perhaps with wheels. But then that would be a car."

The Jha's old neighbor Mrs. Ray meets Mr. Chopka's brother. The Jha's old neighbors the Guptas are pushing their niece, also studying in America, to meet up with Rupak. Mrs. Ray and Rupak struggle with convention, expectation, and love as they weigh their choices.

Through the Jha family I learned about modern India, the old and the new, the class struggle, and the battle between the West and traditional for the souls of its youth. It is a very funny novel about issues that are universal, while also allowing Westerners to appreciate and better understand Modern India.

I received a free book through Blogging for Books in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Windfall
By Diksha Basu
Crown
$26 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-451-49891-5

Rumer Godden

Rumer Godden is one of my favorite 'forgotten' authors so I am thrilled that Open Road Media is bringing Godden's books to the reading public in ebook form. Two of Godden's Catholic novels were made available to me through NetGalley.

Five for Sorrow, Ten For Joy explores the role of the Catholic faith in the lives of women in a small, isolated community of nuns. The nuns bring baggage from their past lives, seeking refuge in the love and forgiveness of Jesus. Godden slowly reveals the journey of Sister Marie Lise du Rosaire in a series of backflashes and alternate voices.

Elizabeth Fanshawe has been in a series of prisons. As an orphan she lived with a demanding Aunt. Only 20 at the end of WWII, Lise is caught up in the wild celebrations. Drunk and lost, she is taken home by Patrice, a wealthy, older man. He takes her in, and she believes he loves her; this illusion is another prison since he wants her for his brothel--another prison.

"I was green as a lettuce leaf...I thought he loved me...It didn't occur to me I was a whore."

Lise became Madame Lise Ambard, working in a high class house of ill repute. Scared in a fight, she is reborn as La Balafree and at twenty-three manages the brothel for Patrice. She still is under the illusion that he loves her best.

Lise rescues a drunken waif, Vivi, a fourteen-year-old girl who had been living on the streets for two years. Her Papa had abused her and her sister; the sister secretly gave birth to a baby which they left to die. Lise found Vivi clutching a rosary in her hands. Lise hopes to sent Vivi to school but Patrice is stunned by the girl's beauty and takes her as his new favorite lover, displacing Lise. When Vivi lusts for a local boy, Lise assists her to run away with him. The results are disastrous. Lise's illusions bring her to murder thinking she is saving a former whore, Vivi, from reentering the brothel. She justly serves ten years in prison.

While in prison for murder, Lise meets the Dominicaines of Bethanie nuns whose message of love and forgiveness changes her life. Upon her release at age thirty-seven she enters the convent, intent on becoming a novitiate. When asked if the convent were not another prison with its rules and obedience, Lise replies, "Not prison, freedom. That's the paradox. I believe it will be such freedom as I can't imagine now.'

Lise's past catches up to her, meeting Vivi again. She is impelled to help the irredeemable Vivi, which results in another murder.

Although the novel is about faith and redemption, another aspect of the novel is especially relevant today: The treatment of women by men.

"There were, of course, the irrecuperables, the unrescuable, who seemed to have evil in their skin, as if the devil had sown the seed that made them bad through and through--but many, Lise was certain, were in prison not because of what they had done, but because of what other people, especially men, had done to them, and some of us, like me, thought Lise, were in prison for their illusions."

A fellow newly released prisoner, Lucette, follows Lise and wants to stay where she stays. Lise explains Lucette must have a calling. "It's as if God put out a finger and said, "You, " Lise explains. Lucette retorts, "God hasn't got a finger. He can't have because there isn't a God. If there were he wouldn't have let what happened, happen to me--or you." "That's what I used to think, but that wasn't God; it was us." Lise responds. "Us? Not us, it was them...I see you are going to escape here where there are no men..I don't blame you...I hate men, all of them."

Lise, Vivi, and Lucette were all victims of men who abused them. A side story of Jackie, a girl the Bethanie nuns tried to save, ends in suicide; the girl could not recover from a gang rape. Reading this book I was reminded of The Real La Traviata by Rene Weiss, how as a child Marie Duplessus was forced to trade sexual favors for food, was pimped by her own father, became a mistress and the inspiration behind Hugo's novel Camille and the opera La Traviata.

Lise and Lucette find solace in faith and the religious life, the community of women whose acceptance is transformative. It was prison that sets Lise free. She sees the divine spark in all lives, especially the wicked. Marie Lise is able to use her experience to help other women in prison. She never gives up hope for Vivi's redemption.

The novel has it's flaws. I wish there was more about post-war France and how it impacted the women who take refuge in the brothel, and Lise's role as Madam is given as historical fact but lacks authenticity; I can't imagine her as a procuress of young women. But Lise's story is compelling and the theme is still relevant.

Black Narcissus is Godden's most well known novel, especially because its the film adaptation starring Deborah Kerr.  The novel again concerns a group of women, Anglican nuns, in a closed, isolated community, struggling with personal demons and their commitment to God.

"They saw the great slope of hill and the valley and hills rising across the gulf to the clouds; then they saw what they had missed at first, because they had not looked as high. Across the north the Himalayas were showing with the peak Kanchenjunga straight before them."

The General's Palace at Mopu has been offered to the Sisters. The Brothers had been invited first but only lasted five months before leaving. The Palace had been built by the General's father, a country palace with the finest view in India; he installed his wives in the palace and it became known as the House of Women, from which light and music emanated all night. The current General is Progressive. He turned out the women and hopes the sisters will turn the palace to good--a sanctification. A Holy Man, once famous and rich, sits near the path, his eyes fixated on the god of the mountain, unmoving and detached from the world.

The General's agent Mr Dean warns, 'It's no place for a nunnery." But Sister Clodagh looks at the orchids on the terrace and the eagles flying in the clouds and cries, "It's an inspiration just to stand here. Who could live here and not feel close to God!" Sister Clodagh has been overconfident and authoritative, but Mr. Dean recalls to mind her youthful, unrequited love.

"We call it Kanchenjunga and we believe that God is there. No one can conquer that mountain and they never will. Men can't conquer God, they only go mad for the love of Him. ..You have to be very strong to live close to God or a mountain, or you'll turn a little mad."

Each sister is drawn to worldly joys, gardening or becoming too attached to the children, slowly forgetting their commitments, order seeping away. Beautiful young people enter their doors for education, the young heir scented with Black Narcissus, dressed in silks and jewels, and the wayward beauty Mr. Dean hoists upon them when he tires of her pursuit. Oh, the ever present Mr Dean, so unsuitably dressed, with such a bad reputation, whose very presence arouses memory and inspires jealousy and desire. Especially in Sister Ruth, a troublesome nun who seeks 'self-importance'.

The novel ends in a whirlwind of disorder, with a thrilling Gothic climax.

Open Road Media has acquired twelve Godden titles and I am thrilled to think of her rediscovery. I have been collecting copies of her titles for years...

I especially love her novels set in India and her wonderful portraits of children and the young.

Learn more about the remarkable life and career of Rumer Godden at
http://www.rumergodden.com/index.php

Rumer Godden, 1947 portrait for Vogue magazine
http://www.rumergodden.com/biography.php

A Coromandel Sea Change into Something Rich and Strange

Many people are bewitched on their first encounter with India. Bewitched or repelled.

Blaise hated the bazaars, the smell of human excrement in the gutters, the cooking smells of mustard oil and ghee, the over ripe fruit with their cloud of flies, the starving children, the cheap, man made goods. But his eighteen-year-old, newly wed wife had spent a lifetime sheltered in school. "I want to see it whole," she insisted. She was tired of club people and westernized Indians.

Blaise and Mary's marriage was perhaps doomed from the beginning. After they had made love, Blaise asked her father for her hand in marriage--because her father was his boss and it was the right thing to do. She had thought she was in love. Their unsuitability is brought into deep relief at the Patna Inn on the beautiful and dangerous Coromandel Coast.

The hotel and city was buzzing with campaigning before the local election, the hotel rooms full. The young couple are given a romantic, open beach house. Mary loves it. Blaise complains about the lack of running water and privacy. When they are visited by a donkey, Mary wants to give it sugar; Blaise wants the dirty beast away.

Wandering alone at night, Mary meets the charming Krishnan, a Western educated candidate posing as Krishna to draw voters to him. He is taking a vow of silence, and dressed in a loin cloth, his lips painted blue, he will parade through the streets, his hand held in blessing.

Remember all is fair in love and war. Politics now are a war, a bitter, greedy war and I have to fight Padmina Retty in every way I can...Indian politics are corrupt, venal..."

Krishnan's idealism and personal charm draw Mary to assist him in his campaign. He sends a message inviting her to be on his lorry dressed as the goddess Radha, a Hindu goddess. The plain Mary is dressed in a gauze and gold tissue sari, her face is painted, and she decked with beads and flowers and bracelets of gold.

"It's this Kirshnan. You're under a spell...Lots of girls go in at the deep end when they first meet Indians....He's using you."

Mary will not behave appropriately as the wife to a man in Blaise's position as a rising young diplomat. In the meantime, the provocative and treacherous dark skinned beauty Kuku has fallen in love with the handsome Nordic Blaise. Things spin out of control, and no one can stop it. But in the end Mary learns how to love--everyone, anyone.

Mary doesn't know, doesn't dream...This isn't England or even Europe. It's such a violent place.

Rumer Godden's dramatic novel is filled with memorable characters with interesting side stories and vivid descriptions of Godden's beloved India.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Cromandel Sea Change
Rumer Godden
Open Road Media
ebook
Publication Dec. 20, 2016
ISBN: 9781504042055