Consume: Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book as part of my directed readings course I'm taking here in India, but unlike the other books, this one was written by a women, and also unlike the other books, this one was much less focused on India and much more focused on family and everyday life.

In a way I found it kind of refreshing. Yes, it was about the Partition of India, but it was also about the partition of a family. It had a very Forest Gump feel to it. History happened, like the assassination of Gandhi, but it was mentioned as an event in these characters lives and not as some random event that shook history.

In reading this book I was reminded of just how important sibling relationship are in India (or at least, in traditional Indian values). If you stop and think about it, siblings are the ones who will know you the longest. Your parents will die, your spouse will have missed out on your childhood, and your children come much later. Siblings are the ones who are there for the longest, and yet it is not something we seem to emphasize in our own culture. Could you imagine planning your life around where your brother was going to live, or maintaining a good relationship so that marriage between your children was a possibility? This all seems very foreign to us.

Characterization was definitely the best part of this book. We have a few noteworthy ones, but Bim and Tara are the sisters that seem to be contrasted all throughout. By the end though, Desai wants us to see that while these sisters seem to be completely different, they are "not really" and "have everything in common," because no one knows all that they share (162). Watching all of the characters come around to that, to the "clear light of day," was a great catharsis. Really, "nothing's over, ever" and our pasts always have a way of making their way into our present lives no matter how hard we try to ignore them (174).  I think Desai would say that it is best to embrace it in that imperfect love for what it is and acknowledge it. 

Probably my favorite part of this book was just the complexity of the characters, recognizing that they are just as real and human as we are in our own context. Too often I think we dehumanize people out of pity or ignorance when we don't understand where they come from, and I think this book aims to shatter that.

Really, I'd probably give it a 4.5, but it started slow, and I still don't like that the cover of my edition does not match the text. Yes. I do judge books by their covers.


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