Tomb of Sand

Made it ~40% in the audiobook, but every time I see I still have ~10 hours ahead of me, my desire to finish crumbles. If only this was told a bit leaner.

2.5 stars
Perhaps I'd have liked it better had I read it at a different time
I wish the book made me feel and connect a little more. While I appreciated the flowery language and use of metaphors, it got a little difficult comprehending the tone and language used

2.5

This was at first very enjoyable to read because of the metaphors and the use of such poetic writing but it got tiresome after a couple of hundred pages of just that and jumping back and forth in time and between characters. I felt lost at times, which is maybe the purpose of the book, but I couldn't enjoy it at all. Especially Rosie's role in the book, although I can see why she was a plot device, I didn't like that she was used like that. With her being highlighted in all the blurbs as the trans woman the mother befriends, confusing the daughter Beti, who believes she was the more ‘modern' of the two, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth...

Yes, the book raises some issues and I think some parts are really well done and I enjoyed those parts, but I couldn't really enjoy and love the book.

The vastness and individuality of each character make this book seem like an epic. The wittiness of Shree and the richness of the prose made me delighted and entertained throughout the book. The narrative is often dreamlike, unjunctured, and unfiltered, which made the experience more raw. Despite a seemingly uneventful storyline (particularly in part 1) the depth of thematic exploration makes every moment significant. What i liked the most was nuanced portrayal of intricate human relationships, from the dynamic between Ma and Beti, Beti and Bade, to the complexities involving Ma and Bahu, Ma and Bade, KK and Beti, Ma and Rosie, Rosie and Beti- each interaction and internal dialogue revolves in multidimensional authenticity.
But, all of these aside, I felt like the translation tried to be too literal in the sense of the original Hindi prose, and sometimes it felt quite meandering and awkward.
P.S: I haven't read many books with an older woman protagonist, and it was such a delight to read one.
3.5 stars/5

This book is one of those that instead of telling you a story it takes you on a jurnany. Something that for sure has to be done correctly in order for me to like it.
There may not be alot happening spesificly in the book. Ok yes there is stuff happening. But there is not much of a greater storyline? You learn and see alot of diffrent realtions between people. There is a deep theme about the complexity of humen relations and how to handle grief. 
It also gives you a somewhat realistic wiev and look at how loosing somone as a wive in India might be. the loss and depression of not knwoing what to do as such.

For me this story was kinda not my taste, I tend to want a greater storyline and this simply only had smaller ones. It was not my kind of taste but also not really terrible. The writing style was also kinda denser and in need for more analysing than i wanted it to be.

beautifully written but this was not for me

Imagine being a child who brings their old and feeble parent into their house, to take care of them, to give them a space of freedom in their old age. Imagine being a child who has successfully escaped the shadow of their parents, extended family and the society at large. But, when you start living with your parent again, you realize that you are actually on the path to become exactly like them, you never escaped anybody's shadow or expectations. Just when you have hit the floor, after being shaken by this realisation, you see your parent changing, the destination has moved again and the more time you spend with them, the more you realize that you can never become like them, become as free as they are. Then, the final arc, your parent decides to go on a journey, and you are to tag along, this journey shows you that you are not the main character of any story, everything that you consider “new” and “modern” has happened before and that you have been treating the past with the same ignorance, that you have always felt the past treat the present with.

Welcome to the Tomb of Sand, perhaps better described as the “samadhi” for tales that never end.

I do believe that I can give it a better rating but there are some things which are holding me back from doing so -
a.) Out of the three parts this book was divided in, the first one is a complete slog to get through. There are some beautiful paragraphs in it but those alone aren't enough to redeem this part for me. Nothing happened, and I hate that. That leads to me the second point - 
b.) The stream of consciousness narrative which I felt didn't do anything for the story at most parts. It detracted from the plot, of which admittedly there isn't much. It has three parts to it, just like the book, and only the last one is done so well that it manages to redeem the whole book and the mess which came before it. 

Now don't get me wrong on the fact that I didn't enjoy that mess - there are some spectacular passages in it on the nature of things done using personification, and a lot stream-of-consciousness writing which employes a wide variety of figures of speech. I absolutely loved how the last part of the book is written. It's so well done that at the end of the book I felt as if I'm gonna miss this meandering fluid style of writing Geetanjali Shree has for this book. 

Since, I was reading it in translation I'm curious about how fluid the original is. All of the characters in this book are written well, and they are recognisable to anybody intimate with a Desi family. I love the fact that Ma, our octogenarian heroine, is the crux of the story. I couldn't have thought of anyone else carrying such a tale of an Indian family other than the Grandmother.

There are some heavy issues ( Women's identity and role, Transgender identity and role in the Indian society, Partition, etc) covered in a feminist mode of writing which was reflected in how the paragraph was written (onomatopoeia) . The plot gets lost in these, as they are so many instances of such discussions, for most part of the book. 

Still this is one of those books which made me believe in the power of literature, and how all encompassing it can be. How it allows the author to experiment and let those experiments flourish. There's a paragraph from the book on literature which I totally agree with and will serve as the end of this review- 

“Sometimes when we read literature as literature, we realise that stories and tales and lore don't always seek to blend themselves with the world. Sometimes they march to their own blend. They don't have to be contemporary or complementary or congruent or connubial with the real world. Literature has a scent, a soup fon, a je ne sais quoi, all its own. And that is its style. But this is the world, it never lets up. The world is in dire need of literature because literature is a source of hope and life. 
So the world finds a way to dissolve into literature via harum-scarum hidden-open paths. It quietly ends up soaked in the stuff. It tiptoes into literature. It seeks to erase its despair by revelling in unique ways of freeing itself from the world that literature employs.”

I'm not usually one to balk at long novels, but I would have enjoyed this one a lot more had it been around a third of the length. I'd be happy on one level to see someone pull out a cleaver and produce a bastardised version, leaving the narrative framework that a western reader would feel safest with and leaving dense and unfamiliar modes of address, stories and references in a messy heap on the floor, but I'd know somehow that the true heart of the novel would be left there with the offal.

I couldn't find peace with the seemingly redundant meta-commentary. “There's no harm in starting the story right here, that is, the way we're doing it right now,” it's stated early on. “Not much need be said about [whomever/whatever], as the story doesn't really concern [them/it],” begging the question of why this subject was dragged up in the first place. These explicit goiters of inefficiency, as George Saunders might refer to them, layered on frustration for me that was not shaken off by any later re-incorporation or reveal.

I am grateful for the exposure to themes of partition, despite the opening of part three being maybe the most lost I've ever been reading a book.

I wanted more on Bahu and her Reeboks.