Review: Haveli by Zeenat Mahal

5 stars

Haveli is the most exciting thing I've stumbled across since I started making an effort to read literature from/featuring different countries. I have never read anything like it, and I'm not sure I ever will again, since I've gone on to read some of Mahal's other novellas and, while they are all good, none of them has the X-factor found here. 

Set in the early 1970s, Haveli is the story of Chandni (or C., as she calls herself), who has been raised by her grandmother, the widow of the last Nawab of Jalalabad. The begum subjected her spunky granddaughter to strict and antiquated home-schooling, but nothing has prepared her for Taimur (aka Alpha Male). He's the son of family friends, and C.'s grandmother is pushing for a union between them. When C.'s long-absent father returns, offering another marriage prospect, she has decisions to make, and growing up to do. 

Haveli a novella, but it's masterful. There's the spoilt, naive, headstrong heroine with whom one can still sympathise, the Alpha Male hero, who really isn't such an Alpha Male stereotype after all, the family entanglements, the mix of the traditional and the modern, the practical and the quaint, the Western and the--I want to find a less loaded word than 'Eastern', but nothing's coming to me. Subcontinental? South Asian? Desi, maybe. Somehow, Pakistani seems too small; the protagonist twice refers to herself and her family as being Punjabi, and the familiar context once again reminds me that the Partition is more a religio-political division than a cultural one.

The 1970s setting wasn't very tangible, but it was still integral. Without the political talk about Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and the possibility of "civil war" between West Pakistan and East Pakistan (aka Bangladesh), I would have been hard-pressed to guess at a decade, except to say that C. could not have been so unworldly in the internet age. I also assume that the nawab-without-a-title lifestyle that C. and her grandmother live is a product of its time, the 1970s being much closer to the days when the princely states retained technical independence under the British. 

For me, C.'s naivete was one of the things that made her narrative voice so strong and enjoyable, as was her irreverence, which was shown through in her banter with Taimur. The strength of C.'s personality means we only really see Taimur through her eyes, as Alpha Male. The nickname and the marriage-talk initially made me uneasy about C.'s future with him, but this was more the result of unchallenged prejudices than anything else. Once I started looking at the evidence on the page, it becomes clear that Taimur is a sweet bloke under all his bluster, and a good match for the headstrong C.

Towards the end of the story, C. makes an error in judgement, and attempts to fix it by dictating a plan to everyone, assuming that they will play the role she has allotted them. The lack of apologies and consultation means that she that it's only time that her strong-willed nature eclipses her likability, but the responsibility she takes for her actions also demonstrate her growth as a character, so I wasn't really put off by it at all. 

It's C.'s dynamic narration of the people and places around her that makes Haveli what it is. Mahal has managed to cram the characterisation and world-building of a full-length novel into her novella, and there really is no greater praise than that. 

However, as a final aside, I would also like to give her props for her name, which I suppose could either be an awesome pen name or a kick-ass actual name. The original Zeenat (or Zinat) Mahal - the last Mughal Empress of India - was the strong and politically astute wife of the last Mughal Emperor of India, and she basically ruled on his behalf until his deposition following the Sepoy Mutiny/First War of Independence. Seriously though, go and look her up. 

Review: The Rearranged Life by Annika Sharma

3 stars

The Rearranged Life by Annika Sharma was...fine. It certainly wasn't a page-turner, but it neither was it tedious. Perhaps it is most accurate to say that I wasn't a fan of The Rearranged Life as a New Adult romance novel, but that I did appreciate it as an exploration of cultural conflict.

Nithya hasn't ever really considered breaking out of the mould her Indian parents and culture have created for her. She's not quite sure if she chose pre-med of her own accord, or if it was simply the most palatable of the acceptable options for an good Indian child, but she's committed to becoming a doctor. She hasn't thought overmuch about marriage, but she always assumed that it would be semi-arranged. After all, someone outside her culture could never entirely understand or accept her Telugu-speaking Brahmin family, and this would ultimately lead to conflict. Then Nithya meets James at university, and suddenly images of a different life worm their way into her mind.

The Rearranged Life is not actually a book about Nithya and James so much as it is what Nithya thinks about her relationship with James. The romance between the two was very low-key and completely chaste, and James himself remains more a nebulous symbol of white America than a fully-fledged character in his own right. As Nithya internally explored her options, she rehashed the same things over and over again: He'll never understand my world, I have to think of the unity of the family over myself, I don't want to rock the boat. 

When Nithya's internal debate worked, it worked well. She had a strong voice that demonstrated the difficulties navigating two worlds and two sets of norms and expectations. As another character says, first-generation Indian-Americans "have to be as Indian as the people in India and as American as the Americans" (loc. 650). Nithya doesn't know if, by bringing James home, she will alienate her parents and community, thus also losing the part of herself that values those connections. And the tricky thing is, she will never know unless she actually does it. So, even if I found the writing a bit repetitive at times, I accept that maybe that's the point: Nithya's not just reminding the reader of her situation, she's reminding herself of the stakes. 

Review: Opening Act by Suleikha Snyder

4 stars

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a book in possession of a Princess Bride reference within the first two sentences is going to be an excellent read.  And Suleikha Snyder's Opening Act starts strong with a band called 'The Brute Squad' .  For those of you who have forgotten the line that comes from, or (heaven forbid) haven't seen the movie, here's a little reminder:

But back to Opening Act.  Journalist Saroj Shah has been in love with her friend, Adam Harper - guitar player of the aforementioned band - for years.  Adam's been burying his head in the sand for just as long.  But when Adam finally wakes up and decides he wants her too, Saroj isn't sure he's serious.  After all:

He was big, doofy all-American Adam.  She was Saroj "where are the twenty gold wedding sarees" Shah...No one looked at the two of them and thought, Yes, they should be together.  That makes sense.  

Most of the novel's conflict is internal, stemming from the hero and heroine's beliefs about themselves and others. When I first finished the book, I felt vaguely disappointed with this.  I kept thinking there would be some big denouement, but there never was and then suddenly it was over.  When I sat down to write this review, it was beccause I needed to vent about reaching the end before I was mentally prepared for it.  But this is not Snyder's fault; it often happens when I read books on Kindle.  The little percentage in the bottom right corner misleads me because it often includes 10%-20% samples of other titles.  

Anyway, once I got over my trauma at being abruptly ripped out of bookland, I re-evaluted and realised that Opening Act was actually a really wonderful novella.  Too often authors try to squeeze too much into a novella, or they use the format to avoid characterisation all together.  Sometimes, they manage both simultaneously.  But Snyder developed her characters and their attitudes well (I especially like the sidekick, Johnny Ray).  To have introduced an external conflict late in the piece would have spoiled the burgeoning relationship between Adam and Saroj, and overshadow Saroj's self-realisation, in which she de-colonised her mind to the point where she went "damn straight, I'm good enough for Adam and stuff what anyone else thinks".  (That's not a direct quote, guys, I promise.  Snyder's writing is heaps better than that.  See actual quote above about doofiness and sarees.)  

So, overall, I really liked Opening Act, and I probably would have loved it if I'd had a better conception of its length and content starting out.  But I do feel a bit weird about making it one of my #WNDB reads (or having them at all).  I've been reading the author's blog and she's understandably disillusioned by white people hijacking conversations that should be for POC.  I would hate to think that, in trying to broaden my horizons, I am being like those men who appear in the comments section of anything ever written about feminism.  Not the 'what about teh menz' ones, but the ones that think that my manslpaining feminism and talking over other people's lived experience, they are actually helping the cause.  It usually ends up with something like this:

But then she also wrote another post entitled If You've Read One of Us, You Haven't Read Us All, where she says: 

“I’ve read one author of color, so I’m done now” is a real thing. We feel it when we put books out there, when we pitch to editors and agents...Can you imagine saying, “Well, I read Sarah MacLean, so I’m full up. I don’t need to read Tessa Dare or Lisa Kleypas or Nora Roberts!”?"

My first thought on reading this was 'what would I do if I had to choose Sarah MacLean or Tessa Dare?' and it made me feel a bit panicky.  Back on topic, maybe fetishising diversity and patting ourselves on the back for reading something different isn't the best way to go about things.  But, then, maybe you can only fight fire with fire.  So, after talking that through and resolving absolutely nothing, I leave you with these two tweets to think about: