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A review by apurvanagpal
The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy
The Earthspinner by Anuradha Roy is as beautiful in its prose as it is on the outside, an array of colours and fire in just the right places to highlight the magnificent contours of the terracotta horse, around which the novel loosely revolves.
We meet Sara through journal entries of her empty days in England, longing for home and her recently deceased father. Sitting in a pottery studio, she recounts about her passion for the craft she learnt through Elango, an autorickshaw driver by the day who used to ferry her and her sister to and from school, but a potter by heart, who taught her the patient art of working with earth and clay in his shed near a Moringa Tree.
As she confronts the bitter sweet memories of her past, she thinks of Elango and his dream of a burning terracotta horse under water, Chinna, the dog Elango mysteriously finds in the forest (or was it the other way round?) who is instantly loved by all. She thinks of where things went wrong, was it when Elango fell in love with Zohra, a girl from another religion or was it ‘Akka’, who knowingly spewed hate on grounds of religion and jealousy, spreading faster than the fire that transforms the soft clay to its hardened form.
I loved the writing and how it holds the several themes together; longing, home, superstition, religion and a deep longing for the craft. Roy’s writing has an incredible charm that pulls you in as it pulls the reigns of her characters and the passion that drives them, be it love or a search for themselves.
Another thing that stood out for me is how these different stories develop independently of each other, even though one sets the other in motion and I thought it was wonderfully done.
My only qualm with the book was that it left more loose ends in terms of completion, that frayed into existence like a letter that ends abruptly and left me wanting for more when I flipped the last page.
But I really liked it and recommend it for Roy’s writing, her incredible craft of writing about ordinary moments with a beautiful ease and the memorable characters that leave their mark on us!
We meet Sara through journal entries of her empty days in England, longing for home and her recently deceased father. Sitting in a pottery studio, she recounts about her passion for the craft she learnt through Elango, an autorickshaw driver by the day who used to ferry her and her sister to and from school, but a potter by heart, who taught her the patient art of working with earth and clay in his shed near a Moringa Tree.
As she confronts the bitter sweet memories of her past, she thinks of Elango and his dream of a burning terracotta horse under water, Chinna, the dog Elango mysteriously finds in the forest (or was it the other way round?) who is instantly loved by all. She thinks of where things went wrong, was it when Elango fell in love with Zohra, a girl from another religion or was it ‘Akka’, who knowingly spewed hate on grounds of religion and jealousy, spreading faster than the fire that transforms the soft clay to its hardened form.
I loved the writing and how it holds the several themes together; longing, home, superstition, religion and a deep longing for the craft. Roy’s writing has an incredible charm that pulls you in as it pulls the reigns of her characters and the passion that drives them, be it love or a search for themselves.
Another thing that stood out for me is how these different stories develop independently of each other, even though one sets the other in motion and I thought it was wonderfully done.
My only qualm with the book was that it left more loose ends in terms of completion, that frayed into existence like a letter that ends abruptly and left me wanting for more when I flipped the last page.
But I really liked it and recommend it for Roy’s writing, her incredible craft of writing about ordinary moments with a beautiful ease and the memorable characters that leave their mark on us!