A review by reubenalbatross
The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

Did not finish book. Stopped at 33%.

Ooof, this book has issues. One of the most egregious being a privileged American with Indian heritage writing about some of the poorest and most problematic elements of rural Indian culture. When I first started noticing the lack of authenticity in Shroff’s voice, I did some research on her background. From the information I’ve been able to find, Shroff does have relatives in India and visits somewhat regularly, but her family seem pretty well off and live in a big city – meaning she has no lived, or really even any close to lived, experience of the rural villages she is writing about. 

It's also very telling that the 2 reviews in the top 20 on Goodreads that are from obviously own-voice readers are critical of this. From Srivalli Rekha’s review on Goodreads: 

“I cannot ignore the attempts at presenting a poor, pathetic, ugly, dirty India with Indians who can’t think beyond caste and religion. This has been an image the developed countries love and expect from third-world countries. I’m tired of authors catering to such needs and playing an earnest brown sepoy. 
I won’t deny the existence of ugly in my country. But we have so much good too. We have people working for equality, balance, and overall growth of the country. Presenting a more balanced view wouldn’t make one any less of an activist.” 

And the fact that Shroff was using this setting to talk about so many aspects of women’s rights/oppression just made this inauthenticity feel even more shallow. As an English person, if an American who had grown up wealthy in America, but had English parents, wrote a book about one of the poorest parts of England and essentially turned it into poverty porn, I’d be mightily pissed off. The same applies here. 

Aside from this, there were plenty of other issues, including: 

The opening chapter was INSANELY fatphobic for no reason. In the scene, the only one of the four women who is described physically in detail is the fat one, and it’s almost talked about like it's a moral failing. She “blotted her upper lip with the back of her wrist. Fresh sweat bloomed quickly.”?? There are multiple references to how she used to be 'slender', and the writing definitely equates this with her being a nicer person in the past. 

Every time she’s mentioned in the first 6 pages her weight is brought up, again, FOR NO REASON. In comparison, we barely get any physical description of the main character, let alone the other two women. She’s also the most villainised of the four, which really just adds salt to the wound. And 33% into the book there hasn’t been a lick of commentary about these thoughts being problematic, so clearly Shroff just thinks she used totally acceptable descriptions. Gross. 

I never figured out when the book was set. The first three chapters had information that implied it was set in the 80s, but then in chapter 4 it’s mentioned Geeta used a mobile phone almost 20 years in the past? So it must be modern day? But 138 pages in I’m still not 100% certain when it’s set. No modern technology has been mentioned apart from that one liner about mobiles. I've googled pretty much every 'real life' thing mentioned (from rupee exchange rates, to laws, to celebrities), and it’s definitely not any earlier than the 90s. But it shouldn't be this difficult to work out! I shouldn't have to do a deep dive to figure out when a book is set. 

I was also very confused by the loan situation. For such a pillar of the book, Shroff really didn’t explain it enough. We’re literally told Saloni is rich, and Geeta has a pretty sizeable amount of savings (10x the weekly loan amount), so why do either of them need the loan?? If they only need this relatively small amount of money for their businesses, why can’t they just use their own money? Especially Geeta, with no-one to hold her back. 

And finally, the characters are really nasty people who dart between emotions at the drop of a hat for no reason. It made conversations extremely hard to follow, and I never got invested as they’re all so vile. 
 
Not for me, thanks.