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A review by steveatwaywords
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree
challenging
emotional
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
What a magnificent read. A lyrical and subtle exploration of dozens of vital questions, woven by its conclusion into some moments of wonder.
But wait. Let's get those nay-sayers out of the way first. If you are seeking a tightly-written, action-directed, straight-to-streaming IP that doubles as beach read fantasy and tear-jerking melodrama, go somewhere else. Choices for you are being churned out by writing teams and AI by the thousands.
So, despite that warning (and the several warnings the novel's narrator also provides along the way), let me say that this is an absolutely compelling page-turner and every scene felt immaculately directed to its effect. Those effects are explicitly not conventional plotting, though this exists, as well, almost (but definitely not) incidental to the larger text. How does one sustain a book that takes over 100 pages for its octogenarian grandmother to rise from her bed? How when it takes over 50 pages for her to go from a standing position to one fallen? And then, when something momentous truly does occur, it is sometimes whisked through in a page or brief patch of sentences.
Why are we reading?
For Shree's reflections, her reveries on life at all ages, her satirical digs at social mores and conservative proprieties, our posturing and political priorities, our entrenchments and blindness to the compassion and humanity requisite to gender, to disability, and to infantilizing of the aged. About the graphic and unsettling challenges to senior care--from smells and sounds in bed-sharing to bathroom routines and crises. Shree's lens is at once a marvelous and uncomfortable macro look at a single family's c0lliding myopias and also a despairing but affirming diatribe on the fundamental brokenness of South Asian social-political history and . . . everyone's.
So slow down. Don't try this book "skipping over the asides" as so many reviewers attempted. You miss not only the idea of the novel, but also its wonderful word play and turns of thought made all the more resonant by gifted translator Daisy Rockwell. Seeing what she produced here for remarkable and poetic moments made me marvel at what she must have been working with in the original Hindi. What she has given us from Shree is an English translation both subtle and beautiful.
I want very much to talk about how the book comes together at its end, but I will not spoil it. It is full worth the journey for its dazzling and significant close. But I will add this: this has been marked as a work of experimental fiction, and contrasted to mainstream Hindi literature, it certainly is that. But I would note that this is, too, a work of magical realism. We know it almost as quickly as a Buddha statue waits its moment in the grandmother's room or she inexplicably raises her cane into the air. Our mysterious, partly-connected narrator weighs in frequently in relating the story, and this too can seem an odd structural choice--but it, too, becomes a powerful idea. Slowly, over time, reverie to reflection, subtle moment to memory of substance, Shree's novel draws together difference and opens outward and outward. Readers skipping this story, missing it or glossing over it, failing to give it their attention, are indeed part of its very subject.
But wait. Let's get those nay-sayers out of the way first. If you are seeking a tightly-written, action-directed, straight-to-streaming IP that doubles as beach read fantasy and tear-jerking melodrama, go somewhere else. Choices for you are being churned out by writing teams and AI by the thousands.
So, despite that warning (and the several warnings the novel's narrator also provides along the way), let me say that this is an absolutely compelling page-turner and every scene felt immaculately directed to its effect. Those effects are explicitly not conventional plotting, though this exists, as well, almost (but definitely not) incidental to the larger text. How does one sustain a book that takes over 100 pages for its octogenarian grandmother to rise from her bed? How when it takes over 50 pages for her to go from a standing position to one fallen? And then, when something momentous truly does occur, it is sometimes whisked through in a page or brief patch of sentences.
Why are we reading?
For Shree's reflections, her reveries on life at all ages, her satirical digs at social mores and conservative proprieties, our posturing and political priorities, our entrenchments and blindness to the compassion and humanity requisite to gender, to disability, and to infantilizing of the aged. About the graphic and unsettling challenges to senior care--from smells and sounds in bed-sharing to bathroom routines and crises. Shree's lens is at once a marvelous and uncomfortable macro look at a single family's c0lliding myopias and also a despairing but affirming diatribe on the fundamental brokenness of South Asian social-political history and . . . everyone's.
So slow down. Don't try this book "skipping over the asides" as so many reviewers attempted. You miss not only the idea of the novel, but also its wonderful word play and turns of thought made all the more resonant by gifted translator Daisy Rockwell. Seeing what she produced here for remarkable and poetic moments made me marvel at what she must have been working with in the original Hindi. What she has given us from Shree is an English translation both subtle and beautiful.
I want very much to talk about how the book comes together at its end, but I will not spoil it. It is full worth the journey for its dazzling and significant close. But I will add this: this has been marked as a work of experimental fiction, and contrasted to mainstream Hindi literature, it certainly is that. But I would note that this is, too, a work of magical realism. We know it almost as quickly as a Buddha statue waits its moment in the grandmother's room or she inexplicably raises her cane into the air. Our mysterious, partly-connected narrator weighs in frequently in relating the story, and this too can seem an odd structural choice--but it, too, becomes a powerful idea. Slowly, over time, reverie to reflection, subtle moment to memory of substance, Shree's novel draws together difference and opens outward and outward. Readers skipping this story, missing it or glossing over it, failing to give it their attention, are indeed part of its very subject.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content
Moderate: Ableism, Animal death, Confinement, Death, Homophobia, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Dementia, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, and Deportation
Most of the more graphic or disturbing qualities of the work are kept off-stage and referenced. But all of these form a significant part of the plot and character-shaping of the protagonist and addressed, for the most part, in honest and healthy ways.