Author: Shashi Deshpande
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1990
Language: English
Pages: 222
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0140145982
Description
This book is, of all my novels, the one dearest to me. Perhaps this is because it is the one that came closet to the vision I had of it when I conceived it. Perhaps it is because it was this book that gave me the never-to-be-experienced-again happiness of a first acceptance reads the Note from the Author.
'Why are you still alive . . . Why didn't you die?' Years on, Sarita still remembers her mother's bitter words uttered when as a little girl she was unable to save her younger brother from drowning. Now her mother is dead and Sarita returns to the family home, ostensibly to take care of her father, but in reality to escape the nightmarish brutality her husband inflicts on her every night.
Sarita reflects on the events of her life: her marriage to the charismatic young poet who turns vicious when he realizes that his wife has overtaken him professionally, her children ... As she struggles with her emotions and anxieties, Sarita gradually realizes that there is more to life than dependency on marriage, parents and other such institutions - and she resolves to use her new found truths to make a better life for herself.
This is a tremendously powerful portrayal of one women's fight to survive in a world that offers no easy out.
An extremely talented story teller with an uncommon way with words. - - THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
Leaves the reader gasping for breath . . . - - SUNDAY STANDARD
A compelling first novel - - THE BOOK REVIEW
A very good beginning for this talented story-teller - - DECCAN HERALD