Review: Drowning Fish by Swati Chanda.

Book: Drowning Fish

Author: Swati Chanda

Pages: 356

Read On: Paperback

How Long it Took Me To Read: 3 days

Plot Summary: East Pakistan, 1950. Nayantara flees riot-ridden Narayanbari with her two daughters, leaving behind her life as she knew it. The only link to her past is the legacy she is determined to leave her granddaughter, Neelanjana - the precious pieces of teakwood furniture that oppress the rooms of her tiny flat in Calcutta, where she arrives to take refuge.

Decades later, Neelanjana leaves for the US, in a bid to forge an independent life. But, she discovers, as she is gradually bruised by alienation and heartbreak in a country far from her own, that the burden of her family's history is one she cannot slough off easily, that rejection and violence can stretch across geographies and generations, and that 'home' is simply the place where one finally learns to accept oneself.
Compelling and deeply affecting, Drowning Fish is about lives trapped in the tumult of motivations and desires, and forged inescapably by events beyond their control.

General Thoughts: I love books about home and the idea of what home is to be people. And I love books about East Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh and unfortunate displacement of so many people from their home and hearth. The premise of this book had me at hello. I bought it in April and saved it for my Indian books in August.

Things I Liked: 

1. The writing was really good and I enjoyed the story telling style of the author.

2. Books about families are some of my favourite things ever. I especially love the stories about generations of women and women centric books.  This book is all these things and more.

3. The story of the Nayantara and her family in 1950 was perhaps my favourite thing in this book. The things they went through and survived were inspiring, heart-breaking and the reality of so many families.

4. I love that this book showed that family is not always there for you. Extended family in particular is not as loving and supportive as you would hope them to be. Brothers let down sisters. Husbands lie and cheat. Family is complicated and sometimes hurt you beyond measure and it's nice that this book shows these messy relationships honestly.

5. I also really like reading about Nayantara's life in Calcutta. Her reduced circumstances and her making do with so little. It was sad, so very sad but made for such a wonderful bit of reading.

6. Neelanjana's life in the US were also interesting to read about. Academia and adjusting to a life in the States was nice and even though I preffered the Calcutta bits, I wasn't bored in the US portions either.

7. I love books that teach me something new. I know quite a bit about 1971 and the Bangladesh war of Independence and I find it immensely interesting. But I knew nothing about 1950 and the bloodshed that took place in East Pakistan that led to so many people leaving their homes and coming to India as refugees.

8. I loved the bond between the women in this family, Nayantara, Neelanjana and Sucharitra were lovely women to get to know.

9. There are also so many other stories in this book about other people and their struggles and journey to India. I liked these bonus stories.

10. Somewhere through the course of this book as a reader, I grew to care about Nayantara's furniture. I cared about and worried about where it would end up. It came to represent so much more than mere furniture.

Things I Didn't Like: 

I loved this book for most part. But there were some things I wasn't a huge fan of.

1. I didn't really warm up to Neelanjana. I just didn't like her at all. I didn't hate her or find her portions in the book boring. But she just wasn't someone I liked and by the end of the novel I was so done with her and the choices that she makes.

2. I also wasn't the biggest fan of last 50-60 pages of the book. I didn't care about Neelanjana's married life or her suburban setup.

3. The use of 9/11 and it's aftermath also to me felt a little forced and I am a little sick of books constantly using it as a story arc.

Rating: 4/5