5 comments about What the Body Remembers: A Novel.

1. Overall, the book was an enjoyable read but it was not one of those novels where the characters and story draw you in to such an extent that you can't help stop thinking about them even after you are done. I found a few stylistic techniques annoying. For example, Baldwin would use a Hindi word or explanation and then right after the exact word would be translated in English. This repetition was distracting and too contrived. Also, the characters could have been developed more and lacked depth.



2. I loved this novel because it drew me into a world I knew very little about. It took a while for me to get passed the unexplained terms and aspects specific to this culture, especially since the author doesn't provide a glossary or any type of explanation. It is a testament to Baldwin's literary skill that those aren't necessary. The reader is forced to stretch to understand the cultures. But the reader's experience is much the richer for it. I find that I understand the cultures much better having experienced it without explanation. I came away with a real understanding of the different factions within the partition question. The horrible scenes of the trains mobilizing thousands of people back and forth across the country are devastating. The relationship between the two wives takes us behind the veil of secrecy that is so often drawn over the lives of women in polygamous relationships. The false sense of security and denial that pervaded the Indian middle class was heartbreaking as one after another myth is exploded on the road to 'freedom'. I know I will reread this novel because the richness of the story and the characterization will call me back to it again and again. I read it last year and it's sitting on my shelf waiting to be reread once again.



3. I knew about the partition of India into Muslim and Hindu states after Independence, but half a world and half a century away from the events, I had no clue about what that actually meant to the people who were living in that part of the world. It's less a novel of plot than of experience, told from the perspective of those who suffer the most when a people is squeezed on the hinges of history. I could not put it down, and I have not had that experience for a long time. I urge anyone serious about stepping beyond the predicability of a novel of plot or relationships to read this book. I cannot understand why it has taken so long for it to catch on in the U.S.



4. A little too verbose. Difficult to get through the first 1/4 of book. However, well written, historically interesting.



5. This was a very interesting story linebut the book could have benefitted greatly from the addition of a glossary. The use of Indian terms was somewhat confusing and a glossary would have made it a much smoother read.

No comments about The Story of Guru Nanak.

No comments about Sikh Gurdwaras (Let's Find Out About).

No comments about The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity (SUNY Series in Religious Studies).

No comments about The Darbar of the Sikh Gurus: The Court of God in the World of Men.

No comments about Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World.

No comments about The Making of Sikh Scripture.

No comments about My Sikh Year (A Year of Religious Festivals).

No comments about History of the Punjab, and of the Rise, Progress, & Present Condition of the Sect and Nation of the Sikhs: Volume 1.

No comments about Sikhism and History.