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China Room: The heartstopping and beautiful novel, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021

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Mehar is not so obedient a fifteen-year-old that she won’t try to uncover which of the three brothers is her husband.”

SIMON: Yeah. And when we use a verb like given, any resemblance to property is intended, I guess, isn't it? The story, inspired by Sunjeev Sahota’s family history is created with strong story-telling skills and a fair share of claustrophobic tension. The novel takes his title from the cramped china room – complete with willow-pattern plates—that the breeding mare (Mahar) must go to when requested by her officious mother-in-law to meet her “husband” and hopefully, “get with child.”

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I appreciate how this book allowed me to see into another way of life and another time period. I also enjoyed the writing style as the author has a way with words that are easy to read yet at the same time very well written. However, I had many problems with this book. China Room is partly based on an episode from Sahota’s family history. There is a picture at the end of the book of a young child being held by an elderly woman. Since the book tells parallel stories of a man and his great-grandmother, we can draw our own conclusions. essentially a novel of interior life and sensation, plot.... lightly sketched, as with much else in the novel, subtlety.....refuses to let his historical characters act as though they are in a historical novel, dramatically hushed .... China Room really shouldn’t have worked for me — it’s kind of a sentimental historical drama, dripping with desire and forbidden love — but it touched me. I cared about the characters, was fascinated by the customs, and appreciated the long view that author Sunjeev Sahota provides by splitting the storyline between two members of a Punjabi Sikh family, three generations and seventy years apart. This is unlike Sahota’s last Man Booker nominated novel ( The Year of the Runaways, which I loved), and although it feels less deep, it worked for me. Rounding up to four stars. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

Morris, Edwin Bateman (1952). Report of the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office. OCLC 1386079. There was one photo that I’d focus on, a small picture in a dark-wood frame. It was of my great grandmother, an old white haired woman who’d travelled all the way to England just so they she might hold me ………… The photo hung there quietly as I sat at the table, opened up my laptop and started to write ………… I’d been clearing the ground the better to see what was in front of me, which was the past. All sorts of pasts in fact, including the one that found me rehabilitating on a farm in India, in 1999, the summer after I turned eighteen.I re-read this book after its longlisting for the 2021 Booker Prize and had similar views to my first read. The historic timeline is set in Punjab in 1929. Mehar (whom we later find out is the young man’s great grandmother) is one of three young women, in their teens, married to three brothers. They are housed in the China Room (named for the dishes), apart from the family’s central residence. Each woman does not know which brother is her husband. They are controlled by a domineering mother-in-law, and are expected to be fully veiled, silent, and dutiful. Mehar is a bit of a rebel. She assumes one brother is her husband and eventually finds herself in trouble. This storyline is based on the author’s own family history. Abbott, James Archer; Rice, Elaine M (1998). Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration. New York City: Van Nostrand Reinhold. ISBN 0-442-02532-7. SIMON: And I know it's at the end of the book, but do you mind if we begin by asking about that photo? Mehar and two other young girls are married off in a single ceremony to three brothers. Their oppressive and controlling new mother-in-law, Mai, keeps them in the dark as to which of the brothers each has actually married. Their only encounters with their new husbands happen in the dark, behind closed doors, as they attempt to bear sons for the family.

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