What the Body Remembers - Softcover

Baldwin, Shauna Singh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385496052 ISBN 13: 9780385496056

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2001

Synopsis

Out of the rich culture of India and the brutal drama of the 1947 Partition comes this lush and eloquent debut novel about two women married to the same man.

Roop is a young girl whose mother has died and whose father is deep in debt. So
she is elated to learn she is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner in a union beneficial to both. For Sardaji's first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him children. Roop believes that she and Satya, still very much in residence, will be friends. But the relationship between the older and younger woman is far more complex. And, as India lurches toward independence, Sardarji struggles to find his place amidst the drastic changes.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, What the Body Remembers is at once poetic, political, feminist, and sensual.

About this title

Review:

No, no child is an innocent. Especially not a girl-child. Why, men of every colour and creed find blame in girls for rain that comes or doesn't come, but mostly, men blame girls for living.

. It is 1938 in the Indian Punjab and Sikh couple Satya and Sardarji have been childless for many years. So, although Satya is still beautiful at 42, her well-born husband has taken another younger wife, Roop. What the Body Remembers follows the evolving relationships between the three: the older woman's intense jealousy of and ultimate cruelties towards the younger (who innocently believes she has found her salvation through this marriage); the fears and vulnerabilities of the newcomer as she desperately tries to please; the expediency of the man. The tension intensifies as the two women find very different ways of coping with their predicament. These central relationships cast shadows on other characters who crowd onto the page, giving the novel colour and vibrant life. The men--particularly Sardarji--sometimes seem two-dimensional but they too are trapped by the expectations made of them.

Most of all, the novel makes flesh its social and political backdrop--the pluralist India of 1938 moving towards and through its independence: "Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, they are like the three strands of [Roop's] hair, a strong rope against the British, but separate nevertheless". The country as described is complex, seething and sometimes violent and the descriptions are disturbingly beautiful. What the Body Remembers is powerful, evocative and affecting. It is both a vivid account of a pivotal period of the history of India and a moving portrayal of what survival entailed for the women of that society. --Christina McLoughlin

Review:

?This ambitious debut shines. Entertainment Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0385496052
• ISBN 13: 9780385496056
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496