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Letters To Isabella Stewart Gardner (2009)

Henry James

"The sight of the flower on the tree was more beautiful that the sent"

Kali and Ponna are perfectly content in their marriage, apart from one thing. They are unable to conceive. With local gossip and family disapproval mounting, the increasingly desperate couple consider a more drastic plan. They will attend the annual chariot festival, a celebration of the half-male, half-female god Maadhorubaagan. For one night, the rules of marriage are relaxed, and consensual sex between unmarried men and women is overlooked, for all men are considered gods.Could this be the opportunity that they’ve been searching for?

Thanks to @pushkinpress for sending me a copy

One Part Woman, set in an unnamed Tamil village, is a poignant story about a husband and a wife, which is put under a lot of strain due to the couple being unable to conceive, and the desperate both they and their families take, for them to be able to do so.

What stood out most to me was the fact that Poona was the one who was subject to the worse of it all. From the very beginning, she is put under pressure to conceive, 'The only way to save oneself [from gossip and ineundoes] was to conceive in the first month of marriage...His mother, who was patient for six months, started Ponna's treatment soon after that.'  Throughout the book, Murugan does a great job of highlighting the cultural system where the wife is the one who has to bear the burden of 'infertility'.

Murugan also beautifully depicted the customs and rituals of a community, and how deep that belief is ingrained into people. As a modern reader, it may seem ridiculous to us, seeing a couple praying and offering sacrifices to be able to have a child, but Murugan manages to craft the word in such a manner that the story avoids the fate of seeming over the top. We see the beauty of the rituals and feel the pain that Kali and Poona suffer. We feel their desperation, and we understand why they act the way they do.

Book Review | Memories of Low Tide by Chantal Thomas 

‘Day after day she abandoned herself to the lake water and I to the amniotic fluid, I inhabited her rhythm. We floated, together.’

In French, the words for mother and sea — mère and mer — are homonyms. The figure of the mother and the sea are likewise inextricable in Memories of Low Tide by Chantal Thomas, a memoir which depicts the strong bond that her late mother Jackie had with the sea and that recounts Chantal’s own idyllic childhood spent on the shore of Arcachon Bay, near Bordeaux. True to its name, a series of chronologically ordered memories are unfolded, starting from before Chantal is born. Because this memoir is not about Chantal herself as much as it is a photo album, as it were, of her mother. From a young age, Jackie is drawn to water and the sense of freedom that it gives her. She’s destined to be sportswoman, but she finds herself married with a baby, Chantal, to take care of. Still, she convinces her husband to relocate to Arcachon Bay, where she spends hours, days, seasons swimming with grace and precision, as if she were one with the sea, a perennial 'summertime child'. Chantal inherits her mother’s passion. And this is not just evident through her recollections of her childhood games at the seaside. Her love for the sea is present in the simple yet graceful nature of the memoir’s prose and the lyricism as well as sensory detail with which she evokes the sea. Her early impressions of the sea eventually give way to reflections on her mother. In fact, ‘Memories’ touches upon many themes relating to womanhood, mothering, and female sexuality as Chantal matures and gradually understands her mother’s thessalophilia as well as her mental health. The metamorphic nature of the sea speaks to her femininity and her inability to abide by the pinning down of masculinist society. As Chantal stresses, the sea is not just a backdrop to human life, but also a way of living. Ultimately, Memories of Low Tide is a beautiful expression of love conveyed in waves of memory, where the sea is both a physical presence and a metaphor for the amniotic fluid that connects mother to daughter. 

This book was gifted to me by Pushkin Press in exchange for an honest review.