Manju Kapur

Home tells the story of a middle class merchant family, the Banwari Lals, who specialize in the creation and sale of saris and and other traditional Indian garb. The story begins when Sona, the beautiful teenage daughter of another merchant family of somewhat lesser standing, enters the store with her mother, and the eldest Banwari Lal son falls immediately in love with her. Reluctantly, his family agrees to arrange a marriage. Theirs is a love match, and the couple are happily married with one not-so-small problem: after 10 years, Sona has been unable to conceive. Her sister Rupa is in the same situation.

The first half of [Home] focuses on Sona's adjustment to living with her in-laws and, later, the other sons' new wives and children. As the only childless wife, she is forced to "mother" Vicky, son of her husband's sister whose unhappy marriage ended when she burned to death in a suspicious "cooking accident." Sona dislikes the boy because he is dark-skinned and sullen, and Vicky isn't treated much better by the rest of the family. When Sona finally gives birth, Vicky is more or less left on his own. At this point, the book shifts attention to her daughter, Nisha, a beautiful child who (for reasons left unstated here) falls victim to violent nightmares and is sent to live with her aunt, Rupa, and her husband, who care for her as if she were her own child. As she reaches adulthood, Nisha's longing to be a modern woman clashes with her family's traditional values.

The book started out slowly slowly for me, and I had a hard time empathizing with Sona and her many complaints. Things got better when Nisha was the focus, but unfortunately, the ending was a real disappointment, one that I wasn't expecting and that knocked my rating down by a full point. On the positive side, Home provided some insight into traditional Indian families and their values and how both are being forced to adapt to social change.… (more)

'A woman without her own home and family is a woman without moorings'
By sally tarbox on 17 Jun. 2012
Format: Paperback
An interesting read that opens with the cremation of the narrator's mother. She subsequently tries to understand her mother's life better, researching her history and recreating events.
The mother, Virmati, was one of the difficult daughters (the narrator, who only tells us a little about herself, was the other). Resentful of having to spend her teenage years assisting her constantly pregnant mother, she dreamt of further education and fell in love with a married professor...
This isn't a love story as such because the professor comes across as such a curiously selfish and unpleasing individual that I found it hard to see how Virmati maintained her feelings for him. Also it isn't a story of a 'strong woman' breaking society's norms - although she does indeed go against her family, she lets her husband choose her university course and fears to join political activists for fear of his disapproval.
Set in the 1940s, the backdrop of the Partition of India gives added interest to a very readable novel.… (more)

Home tells the story of three generations of a cloth merchant family, once living in Lahore and now operating an expanding business in Delhi having moved there after Partition. Kapur has a knack for creating vivid character description, but unfortunately few of the cast of characters were people I ended up feeling much empathy for. The plot also meanders a lot, and while the way some characters drop away and plot threads are abandoned may be realistic—no one's life has a tidy narrative arc—it can be frustrating for the reader. And that ending... I couldn't decide if it was trite or darkly subversive, but either way it felt abrupt and anticlimactic.

[Those of you with triggers may want to note that this book contains extended graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse.]… (more)