Scan barcode
A review by shanviolinlove
Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
4.0
Anita Desai is one of those names one encounters often in the literary - particularly postcolonial - circles. I scanned the titles at my local library and found the description, promising a glimpse of family relations in India and America, inviting. I was expecting a comparison of sorts of life negotiated across two continents and a life rooted in one's home country.
Part One greatly trumps Part Two, the former focusing on Uma, disgraced eldest sister of a traditional Indian family of which she is positioned almost as an indentured servant of sorts (her two dowries being constantly alluded to as an accusation of uselessness). Part Two follows her younger brother, a student at an American university. Desai creates two distinct family portraits, presenting India, its heat, its familial battles, its traditions, and its neighborly negotiations, as passionate and intimate, while the American family, transfixed upon charred meat and supermarkets, unacknowledged suffering, and blatant consumerism, seems detached.
Having read and enjoyed works by Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, I'd say that this book ranks with them in its discussion of cultural identity(ies) and one's reconcilement with one's family.
Part One greatly trumps Part Two, the former focusing on Uma, disgraced eldest sister of a traditional Indian family of which she is positioned almost as an indentured servant of sorts (her two dowries being constantly alluded to as an accusation of uselessness). Part Two follows her younger brother, a student at an American university. Desai creates two distinct family portraits, presenting India, its heat, its familial battles, its traditions, and its neighborly negotiations, as passionate and intimate, while the American family, transfixed upon charred meat and supermarkets, unacknowledged suffering, and blatant consumerism, seems detached.
Having read and enjoyed works by Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, I'd say that this book ranks with them in its discussion of cultural identity(ies) and one's reconcilement with one's family.