The Far Field

Starred review from October 29, 2018
Vijay’s remarkable debut novel is an engrossing narrative of individual angst played out against political turmoil in India’s Jammu and Kashmir state in the late 2000s. Unmoored by her mother’s death, 24-year-old Shalini apathetically floats from job to job while receiving financial support from her affluent father. In an effort to find closure, Shalini leaves her native Bangalore to search for Bashir Ahmed, her mother’s only friend, who she hasn’t seen in years. Upon arriving in tumultuous Jammu, Shalini is taken in by a Muslim family in Kishtwar and struggles to understand the fractured nature of her surroundings: the role of the omnipresent Indian Army, the disappearances of local Muslims, and the frequent violence against and perpetrated by both Muslims and Hindus. Her search eventually leads to a Himalayan village, whose generous inhabitants temporarily give her a sense of purpose amidst staggering natural beauty. However, Shalini’s ignorance and inability to be honest with herself and others results in dangerous consequences for everyone she comes in contact with. Interspersed with flashbacks of Shalini’s relationships with her dazzling yet mentally ill mother, the mysterious but kind Bashir Ahmed, and her withdrawn father, Shalini’s misguided attempts at love, fulfillment, and friendship are poignant. Vijay’s stunning debut novel expertly intertwines the personal and political to pick apart the history of Jammu and Kashmir. Agent: Claudia Ballard, William Morris

DEBUT Set in Bangalore, India, Pushcart Prize winner Vijay's birthplace, this novel follows a young woman in search of herself. After losing her job, 30-year-old Shalini leaves her comfortable life and treks far north to Kishtwar to locate a salesman named Bashir Ahmed, whom she recalls from her childhood. There she learns the extent of the mysterious relationship between Ahmed and her mother and develops an unexpected relationship with Ahmed's son Riyaz and his family. Shalini immerses herself in the simplicities of life, even learning to milk a cow, and also becomes an English tutor to the daughter of a key village member. But in this remote region she also comes to understand firsthand the hard, dangerous truths of class struggles, politics, and gender in her country. VERDICT Narrating Shalini's journey in chapters that alternate between past and present and utilizing strong characterizations throughout, Vijay has crafted an engaging, suspenseful, and impressive debut. [See Prepub Alert, 7/9/18.]--Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA

November 15, 2018
The chain of events connecting a privileged young Indian woman, her volatile mother, and a tale-spinning Kashmiri merchant leads to tragedy in a story of religious conflict and domestic damage set in contemporary India.Taking the classic form of a journey, Vijay's vivid debut moves from sophisticated contemporary Bangalore to a harshly beautiful Himalayan mountain village as Shalini, a 30-year-old woman haunted by memories of her sarcastic, restless mother, recounts her painful accumulation of wisdom. As a child, Shalini's home was periodically visited by Bashir Ahmed, a clothing merchant, one of a very few people attuned to Shalini's mercurial mother. Although Bashir Ahmed could tell magical stories, his home life in Kashmir was becoming threatened by Hindu-Muslim tensions provoked by militant activism and the brutal response of the Indian army. Now, attempting to resolve her feelings about her mother's death nine years earlier, Shalini feels Bashir Ahmed might hold the key and travels to remote Kashmir to find him. Her comfortable life is replaced with something more basic as she discovers small communities, kindly individuals, friendship, attraction, a possible new role for herself--and secrets. But Shalini is naïve, and her efforts to help others, and herself, ultimately prove catastrophic. Shuttling between past and present and exploring complicated themes of parental fealty, identity, and religious schism, Vijay's ambitious novel is at its most magnetic when recounting Shalini's immersion in a different world, her embrace by new kinds of family, and the lessons she learns. But its epic length sets up expectations of equally immersive political history, and here the storytelling is cloudier, staffed with clichéd characters. Most memorable are the scenes of stripped-down joy in the mountains where the author's elegant, calm prose and intense evocations of people and places come into their own.A striking debut, stronger on the micro than the macro.

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Starred review from November 15, 2018
Living back home in Bangalore after attending university, Shalini is adrift since her mother's recent death. When her father encourages her to come up with some sort of plan, she surprises even herself with a ready response: in fact, she's planning a trip to Kashmir. Secretly, she hopes to find a friend of her mother's whom she hasn't seen in years, a traveling salesman named Bashir Ahmed who stopped visiting when the political unrest in his region took too great a toll on him and his family. On her travels north, Shalini is struck repeatedly by how ill-prepared she was for such a journey, and by how little she wants it to end. Alternating chapters address Shalini's time in Kashmir, where she is introduced to others' astonishing struggles?and welcomed into their care?in a way she's never before experienced; and flash back to her childhood, unraveling the mysteries of her sharp-edged, dearly beloved mother and the man Shalini has crossed a country to find. Vijay intertwines her story's threads with dazzling skill. Dense, layered, impossible to pin?or put?down, her first novel is an engrossing tale of love and grief, politics and morality. Combining up-close character studies with finely plotted drama, this is a triumphant, transporting debut.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)