Beautifully detailed
4 stars
The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die is an entertaining Indian novel which shows how women's lives and expectations have totally changed within three generations. I loved the three main characters - bitter widow Pishima, determined entrepreneur Somlata, and carefree teenager Boshon. Each of the two older women's attitudes are shaped as much by the situations in which they find themselves as by their own personalities. I was dismayed at how restricted Pishima's life had been. Married at seven and widowed at twelve, social conventions then had her effectively shut away for the rest of her life, before her life had even really begun. Her anger and bitterness at the world is so very understandable and I appreciated how Mukhopadhyay portrayed this without making her a caricature.
I was surprised at how well Mukhopadhyay understood these women, being a male author himself. The novel's structure is split into four sections, alternating between …
The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die is an entertaining Indian novel which shows how women's lives and expectations have totally changed within three generations. I loved the three main characters - bitter widow Pishima, determined entrepreneur Somlata, and carefree teenager Boshon. Each of the two older women's attitudes are shaped as much by the situations in which they find themselves as by their own personalities. I was dismayed at how restricted Pishima's life had been. Married at seven and widowed at twelve, social conventions then had her effectively shut away for the rest of her life, before her life had even really begun. Her anger and bitterness at the world is so very understandable and I appreciated how Mukhopadhyay portrayed this without making her a caricature.
I was surprised at how well Mukhopadhyay understood these women, being a male author himself. The novel's structure is split into four sections, alternating between Somlata and Boshon and it wasn't until the third section that it suddenly dawned on me how the women were connected to each other. I'm not sure if I had missed clues earlier on? A feminist story at heart I think, The Aunt Who Wouldn't Die is rich with detail. It crosses genres but is ultimately a lovely lively heart warming tale which wonderfully evokes life in this singular Bengali family.