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    The Far Field
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    The Far Field
    Unavailable
    The Far Field
    Ebook503 pages8 hours

    The Far Field

    By Madhuri Vijay

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    WINNER OF THE 2019 JCB PRIZE IN LITERATURE

    “The Far Field is remarkable, a novel at once politically timely and morally timeless. Madhuri Vijay traces the fault lines of history, love, and obligation running through a fractured family and country. Few novels generate enough power to transform their characters, fewer still their readers. The Far Field does both.”—Anthony Marra, author of The Tzar of Love and Techno  

    Gorgeously tactile and sweeping in historical and socio-political scope, Pushcart Prize-winner Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field follows a complicated flaneuse across the Indian subcontinent as she reckons with her past, her desires, and the tumultuous present.

    In the wake of her mother’s death, Shalini, a privileged and restless young woman from Bangalore, sets out for a remote Himalayan village in the troubled northern region of Kashmir. Certain that the loss of her mother is somehow connected to the decade-old disappearance of Bashir Ahmed, a charming Kashmiri salesman who frequented her childhood home, she is determined to confront him. But upon her arrival, Shalini is brought face to face with Kashmir’s politics, as well as the tangled history of the local family that takes her in. And when life in the village turns volatile and old hatreds threaten to erupt into violence, Shalini finds herself forced to make a series of choices that could hold dangerous repercussions for the very people she has come to love.

    With rare acumen and evocative prose, in The Far Field Madhuri Vijay masterfully examines Indian politics, class prejudice, and sexuality through the lens of an outsider, offering a profound meditation on grief, guilt, and the limits of compassion. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrove Press
    Release dateJan 15, 2019
    ISBN9780802146373
    Unavailable
    The Far Field

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    Reviews for The Far Field

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      This is basically the story of a mother and daughter and the relationships they develop with a non related father and son over a long period of time. A traveling merchant from Kashmir develops close ties with a mother (married) and daughter in the city of Bangalore. The implication is that this goes beyond friendship. Eventually mom dies and daughter (Shalini) journeys to Kashmir to seek out what happened to mom's lover from the past. There are also political issues as the women are Hindi and the men are Muslim. This is a great first novel.
    • 5/5
      Shalini is a well-meaning but self-absorbed young woman whose mother committed suicide while she was in college. Unable to work out what she wants to do with her life, she finds herself unemployed and restless and heads off to Kashmir in search of one of her mother's friends who Shalini admired as a child. She stumbles into a simmering but temporarily calm mess in which Hindus and Muslims are seemingly living at peace with each other, while government soldiers seem intent on starting trouble and having fun beating up 'militants' when they get bored. Having grown up sheltered from such things, Shalini cannot imagine that the stories she heard about violence in Kashmir might have real world counterparts or that her actions might influence the safety of the people around her. She does finally start to grow up, but maybe not fast enough to avoid causing irreparable harm.
    • 4/5
      The death of Shalini’s mother sparks a journey to Kashmir in search of a man who seemed to one day simply disappear. Once she arrives, she is taken in by a family and soon realizes that she is not in the Kashmir of the tales she was told as child, but one of a people, culture and region in bitter conflict.
      Written in rich prose, and intriguing characters, this debut is a slow burn that will linger long after pages are finished.
    • 2/5
      This made me want to scream. The main character is so frustrating. The subtitle could be “how I went on a life changing journey and learned nothing!”
    • 4/5
      The Far Field has a lot happening. The first half mainly revolves around a middle-class family in Bangalore India during the 80s and 90s. The mother is very instable mentally and her husband and daughter Shalini never know how she will treat them. Some of her treatment of young Shalini can be tough to read. The second half Shalini travels to a small village in Kashmir to find a traveling salesman that used to visit her mother. The descriptions of India, especially Kashmir are the best parts of the book. I felt the end was rushed and became a little far-fetched, but it is clear that the author does not want the Indian military portrayed in a positive light at any point of the book
    • 5/5
      I thought this book was amazing. It shows what can happen when someone's efforts to "help" cause negative effects.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I think my favorite part of the book is that it really makes you feel very deeply. The main character is, in my opinion, a very complex person, who, although privileged, is affected, eventually, by the plight of others. Some of the choices that she makes harm others, unintentionally, which adds more to the complexity of the character and the book.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Shalini reflects on events that took place soon after her mother's death. Feeling adrift, she travels to Kashmir in search of a man who had been friendly with her mother during Shalini's childhood. Will he have the answers she seeks?

      The first few pages of the story had me intrigued and wondering exactly what was the story behind Shalini's mother and Bashir Ahmed, the traveling salesman from Kashmir. Shalini starts out an innocent, seeing things through a very childlike perspective, and only as she meets people from the towns who have experienced some of the violence between their family members and the Indian army does she realize events she thought she understood may not be so black and white. The author has a way with descriptions and I enjoyed how she paints a picture of small scenes with words. The plot, though, seemed a little lacking, a lot of secrecy and build up to final revelations that either fell flat for me (I'd already figured some out) or just made me angry.
    • 4/5
      This book took me by surprise. I often go into books not really knowing much about them. And this one I knew absolutely nothing about at all. I could tell by the author’s name that she was South Asian and I wondered what the flowers and the title meant.

      From the first chapter, we know that this is not a happy story. The narrator, a woman aged 30, talks about a man who vanished from his home in the mountains, a man who vanished partly because of her, because of things she said and things she didn’t say. And she also mentions the death of her mother. A woman who could be vicious, a woman who could be snarky.

      “It’s hard not to wonder how much might have been prevented if only I had loved him more, or, perhaps, loved her a little less. But that is useless thinking, and perilous. Better to let things stand as they were: she, my incandescent mother, and I, her little beast.”

      Shalini travels to Kashmir in search of a man who was once a big part of their lives – her and her mother’s. She doesn’t know anyone else there but somehow these complete strangers help her, let them stay with her. She becomes a part of their lives. Yet her being there threatens their safety.

      I loved reading about the mountain villages in Kashmir. I have never been to Kashmir or India but when I was in university, I traveled to Nepal to do a trek to Annapurna base camp. And while it was years ago, I can still picture all those little mountain villages we walked through and stayed at. I always remember marveling at these two young kids in school uniform – an older girl and a younger boy – skipping and hopping down the path ahead of us, out of their village and off far away to wherever their school was, something they did every day, twice a day, probably passing many other foreigners like us who were slowly clomping and stomping their way through the mountains.

      It also brought to my awareness the conflict in Kashmir, something I know little about, but wanted to know more of after reading this.

      The author writes beautifully but her main character Shalini was not easy to connect with. She sometimes seems a bit naive for her age and that proves disastrous for the people around her. But I loved reading about Shalini’s foray into village life in Kashmir, so far and different from bustling Bangalore where she’s from. And it’s these little moments that make this book a beautiful and moving one.
    • 3/5
      I applaud the writer for her stance on looking at the Kashmir problem objectively and with honesty. She has done a great service for Kashmiris by raising voice for their unjust position being crushed by the Indian army on one side and the terrorists on the other when all they want is peace, progress and prosperity as a nation be it under any government.
      The plot is unique and interesting the characters well rounded.
      Sometimes it felt more like a travelogue when she would go in too much detail for the surroundings while going to the village or going for a walk or again going back to Kishtwar though it never got boring. above all I derived a lot of pleasure reading this novel. The end is sad but was not disappointed as she handled the Kashmir problem very well . Would surely read her next book.