Clear Light of Day - Hardcover

Desai, Anita

3.71

3,630 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 006010984X ISBN 13: 9780060109844

Publisher: HarperCollins, 1980

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Subtly evokes the traumatic history of India after the British departed in a haunting story of a Hindu family in Old Delhi and the relationships among four absorbing people

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Review:

Clear Light of Day is an examination of contemporary India and a family history in which two sisters, Bim and Tara, learn that, although there will always be family scars, the ability to forgive and forget is a powerful ally against life's sorrows. Twenty years ago when Tara married, she left Old Delhi and a home full of sickness and death, while Bim continued to live in the family home taking care of their autistic brother, Baba. Now Tara has returned, her first visit in 10 years, for their niece's wedding. Bim refuses to attend; she can't visit their brother Raja who, like Tara, left her many years ago. Instead Bim dwells bitterly on her feelings of abandonment and the impact on her of her country's recent history: the violent conflict between Hindus and Muslims, the death of Gandhi and the ensuing struggle for political power and the malaria epidemic that killed so many. In Bim's presence, Tara once again feels "herself shrink into that small miserable wretch of 20 years ago, both admiring and resenting her tall striding sister", while "Bim was calmly unaware of any of her sister's agonies, past or present". With language that describes both the harshness and beauty of family and the land, Anita Desai takes the reader with Tara and Bim on their struggle to confront and heal old wounds. --Alex Freeman, Amazon.com

Review:

"A wonderful novel about silence and music, about the partition of a family as well as a nation" (New York Times Book Review)

"A rich Chekhovian novel by one of the most gifted of contemporary Indian writers" (New Yorker)

"Anita Desai has created an entire little civilization here from a fistful of memories, from a patchwork of sickroom dreams and childhood games and fairy tales. Clear Light of Day does what only the very best novels can do; it totally submerges us. It also takes us so deeply into another world that we almost fear we won't be able to climb out again" (Anne Tyler New York Times)

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