Shobha Rao: Girls burn brighter (2018)
307 pages
English language
Published April 5, 2018
A searing, electrifying debut novel set in India and America, for readers of Rupi Kaur, about the extraordinary bond between two girls driven apart by circumstances but relentless in their search for one another. Poornima and Savitha have three strikes against them. They are poor. They are driven. And they are girls. When Poornima was just a toddler, she was about to fall into a river. Her mother, beside herself, screamed at her father to grab her. But he hesitated: "I was standing there, and I was thinking...she's just a girl. Let her go...That's the thing with girls, isn't it...You think, Push. That's all it would take, Just one little push." After her mother's death, Poornima has very little kindness in her life. She is left to take care of her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. So when Savitha enters their household, Poornima is intrigued …
A searing, electrifying debut novel set in India and America, for readers of Rupi Kaur, about the extraordinary bond between two girls driven apart by circumstances but relentless in their search for one another. Poornima and Savitha have three strikes against them. They are poor. They are driven. And they are girls. When Poornima was just a toddler, she was about to fall into a river. Her mother, beside herself, screamed at her father to grab her. But he hesitated: "I was standing there, and I was thinking...she's just a girl. Let her go...That's the thing with girls, isn't it...You think, Push. That's all it would take, Just one little push." After her mother's death, Poornima has very little kindness in her life. She is left to take care of her siblings until her father can find her a suitable match. So when Savitha enters their household, Poornima is intrigued by the joyful, independent-minded girl. Suddenly their Indian village doesn't feel quite so claustrophobic, and Poornima begins to imagine a life beyond the arranged marriage her father is desperate to secure for her. But when a devastating act of cruelty drives Savitha away, Poornima leaves behind everything she has ever known to find her friend. Her journey takes her into the darkest corners of India's underworld, on a harrowing cross-continental journey, and eventually to an apartment complex in Seattle. Alternating between the girls' perspectives as they face ruthless obstacles, Girls Burn Brighter introduces two heroines who never lose the hope that burns within them.--Amazon.
2.5 stars. This novel felt like a cross between “Shantaram” and “A Little Life,” the latter for its endless parade of horribles that befall the main characters. It’s still an exciting page-turner centered on the meaningful relationship between two women.
Pretty disappointed by this book. It started out seeming like it was going to be an awesome feminist lesbian romance but it ended up a tragedy porn with some admittedly good writing and not much else. Overall, I understand what the author is going for but we have enough of these supposed feminist novels that just wallow endlessly in violence against women and justify it by having the characters eventually (very eventually in this case) triumph (strong word in this case) against their oppressors.
I'm not sure which audience this book is intended for. Those of us who already understand that life is hard for women, especially poor women in developing countries, will find it emotionally difficult to read with very little real pay-off. The two female protagonists spend most of the book separated and struggling against a dehumanising patriarchal system only to have the novel end as soon as …
Pretty disappointed by this book. It started out seeming like it was going to be an awesome feminist lesbian romance but it ended up a tragedy porn with some admittedly good writing and not much else. Overall, I understand what the author is going for but we have enough of these supposed feminist novels that just wallow endlessly in violence against women and justify it by having the characters eventually (very eventually in this case) triumph (strong word in this case) against their oppressors.
I'm not sure which audience this book is intended for. Those of us who already understand that life is hard for women, especially poor women in developing countries, will find it emotionally difficult to read with very little real pay-off. The two female protagonists spend most of the book separated and struggling against a dehumanising patriarchal system only to have the novel end as soon as they finally find each other again. Actually, it ends before the emotional climax of them actually meeting. We know that they're about to meet because of context and then it just ends. This book is just sorrow after sorrow after sorrow until... oh sorry we ran out of time.
Those who do not believe in women's rights will most likely just enjoy the violence and ignore the scant ending. Those of us who care about these issues will just be emotionally worn down over and over hoping for a satisfying resolution and getting none. We see narratives of women being abused and battered all the time. Why do we need to constantly be shown just how graphic this violence can be? After a point it feels like we just keep being shown these scenes not to educate us about violence against women but to revel in it. This is why I call it tragedy porn.
We can have strong female characters without having to see them be raped, mutilated, and tortured (spoilers maybe? but these things all literally happen in this book). I only lasted through this book because I thought it would pay off with the two female protagonists getting their revenge and riding off into the sunset together but, nope, that doesn't happen. It just ends on an ambiguously happy ending without any emotional resolution. And definitely without the Sapphic love I was hoping for from the very beginning.
I guess you could say that because it ends so ambiguously that you can imagine that romance if you want but I say fuck that. Why not make it explicit? Why not have a book where the two female protagonists are treated horribly by their patriarchal culture and then get back at them by revelling in their love for each other? Why do we have to keep having these narratives where women are horribly abused and they escape but never get justice against the men who tortured them? Why can't we have the heroines ending up in each others' arms? I'm just tired of it.
This gets 3 stars instead of 2 because there was some very lovely writing in it and I know the author had the best of intentions. I feel like this book was meant to shine a light on abuses of women in India and human trafficking, which I respect. I understand the motivations. I would just rather see a book like this that actually showed the women winning in the end and being happy. I've read too many books that rely on relentless tragedy to make the characters compelling without actually giving them a triumphant story or a real character arc.
