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.

September 15, 2018
Looking back, less in anger, more in sorrow infused with gradual understanding, an Indian horticulturist recalls his abandonment by his mother as India's fight for independence merged into World War II.On the world stage, an immense nation struggles to liberate itself from a repressive colonial history; in an Indian town called Muntazir, a gifted young woman brought up by her father to love and explore the arts is also yearning for freedom, from the domineering behavior of an educated but controlling husband. Gayatri Rozario is the young, stifled wife, and it's her son, Myshkin Chand Rozario, who narrates the events of 1937, the year in which his free-spirited mother abandoned the family home for a life of creativity, encouraged by a visiting German painter, Walter Spies. Myshkin, now in his mid-60s, has never left that family home, having opted for a life of service: Muntazir's trees, shade, and flowers are the products of his job as Superintendent of Horticulture. But this isolated man's perspective is a wounded one, and his account of unhappiness--his own, his mother's, and his stepmother's--is melancholy, lit with occasional bright glimpses of gardens, colorful saris, and musical evenings. Roy (Sleeping on Jupiter, 2016, etc.) is a lyrical, subtle, finely observant writer, yet there's a spark missing in this story, hitched as it is to the real-life figure of Spies, whose residence in Bali introduces other historical figures, then gives way to glimpses of ill treatment of prisoners as war engulfs the island. Myshkin gains late insight into his mother's actions from a cache of letters to a friend, which Roy interrupts with actual extracts from a novel Myshkin is reading, by Bengali author Maitreyi Devi, depicting a story similar to Gayatri's. This synthesis of fact and artifice doesn't wholly meld, but the book achieves late peace as Myshkin departs on a journey of his own.A novel of history, both global and personal, gracefully wrought but self-consciously constructed.

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Starred review from October 1, 2018
Gayatri Rozario is proof that we are the product of our circumstances. In 1930s India, she was forced into marriage because her family saw that as the only respectable choice for her. Unfortunately, matrimony stifled the young artist's creative impulses. Up until then, Gayatri's father had indulged her desire for education and shown her a glimpse of the wider world when he brought her on a tour of Bali. But Gayatri bottles up her potential after marrying until a visitor from the past, a German man, opens new possibilities for escape. It is no secret that Gayatri eventually breaks her vows and follows her calling. What is less clear is the lasting impact her leaving has on her young son, Myshkin, who, as an old man, narrates much of this moving tale, which also outlines the unexpected effects of WWII. If at times Myshkin indulges in a little too much navel-gazing, he can be forgiven. After all, as he explains, As a child abandoned without explanation, I had felt nothing but rage, misery, confusion. Roy (Sleeping on Jupiter, 2016) peppers her novel with intricate descriptions of small-town India and weaves an eloquent and tragic story of straitjacketed lives upended when history and personal ambition intersect.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2018

In her fourth novel, Man Booker-long listed Indian author Roy (Sleeping on Jupiter) draws on historical events unfolding in 1930s/40s India--colonialism, Gandhi, World War II--to tell the story of Myshkin Chand Rozario, who, like his name, doesn't quite fit in. Myshkin, in his 60s, is looking back at his childhood, when his mother ran away to Bali with the German artist Walter Spies and dance researcher Beryl de Zoete, both of whom are based on real people. Myshkin is a grumpy old man who never married but is attached to the trees and plants he's nurtured in his role as the town horticulturist. In the chaos of World War II, he lost contact with his mother and never did find out what happened to her. But he's bequeathed a series of letters she wrote to a friend when she first left India and appreciates as an adult how, being trapped in an arranged marriage, she writes about needing to create her art. VERDICT This novel has an epic feel but also portrays the feelings of an abandoned child and captured woman while strongly evoking the sounds, scents, plants, people, and social structures of India at the time. [See Prepub Alert, 5/14/18.]--Jan Marry, Lanexa, VA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2018

With the Nazis rising, a German artist arrives in an Indian village and sweeps away Gayatri, a woman from his past eager to flee marriage and motherhood for soaring freedom. Her story is told by the son she leaves behind. From the author of the Man Booker long-listed Sleeping on Jupiter.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.