All the Lives We Never Lived

Starred review from September 17, 2018
The latest novel from Roy (Sleeping on Jupiter) is a lush and lyrical fusion of history and storytelling. Set in the late 1930s and early 1940s in the fictional Indian small town of Muntazir—amid India’s fight for independence from Britain and the breakout of WWII—legendary singer Begum Akhtar, dancer and critic Beryl de Zoete, and German painter Walter Spies all figure prominently in the tale of nine-year-old Myshkin, who’s abandoned by his free-spirited mother, Gayatri, and then largely ignored by his college professor and political activist father, Nek. When Myshkin, in his 60s after a career as a horticulturist, gets a package of letters his mother wrote during her self-imposed exile in Bali, it sets off his narration of Gayatri’s rebellious youth, her oppressive marriage to the strident and rules-bound Nek, her decision to leave “that monsoon day in 1937” with Spies and de Zoete—and Myshkin’s lifelong struggle to understand his mother’s radical choice. Myshkin believes Akhtar, whom his mother tends to when the star falls into one of her “spells of grief and suspicion,” may have inspired his mother’s own decision to run away and find “a different life.” “My mother knew when she left that she had poured petrol and set a match to every bridge between herself and her family,” Myshkin recalls. “After such desertion, what forgiveness?” This mesmerizing exploration of the darker consequences of freedom, love, and loyalty is an astonishing display of Roy’s literary prowess.

Vikas Adam's warm voice lets us sink into this story of love, loss, and connection. He soothes us, and we need it while experiencing Myshkin's childhood, in which he is abandoned by his mother for a German man. Adam is tender with lyrical prose that illuminates the details of life in India during WWII and afterward. His style is easy on the ears and makes the protagonist's personal tragedy and longing easier to bear. Myshkin's lingering questions about his mother, and her embarrassing non-maternal behavior, are at the core of his trip down memory lane. Adam is an experienced professional, and it shows in his ability to balance the anger and love of a son who becomes a ruminating adult. M.R. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine