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Book Review: THE TOSS OF A LEMON by Padma Viswanathan

“She had always thought of her life as a series of submissions to God. What if she has been making her own decisions all along?”

India, 1896.

Ten-year-old Sivakami is married to Hanumarathnam, a respected healer and astrologer. The marriage is a happy one, and they become parents to their beautiful daughter Thangam and ambitious son Vairum. But a shadow hangs above it all-- Hanumarathnam has long known that his horoscope foretells his own death in the tenth year of his marriage. When the worst comes true, Sivakami adapts to the traditions and customs expected of widows, save for one act of rebellion...she does not stay to live with her family, but decides to raise her children in her husband’s house. What follows is an expansive tale, unpacking several generations of Sivakami’s descendants as Indian independence and political tension looms.

I found this novel in an old book sale a few months ago, and I’m super glad I stumbled across it! A little over a decade old now, The Toss of a Lemon is Viswanathan’s debut novel. It’s an ambitious, expansive undertaking of over 600 pages; the story’s timeline spills over many decades, and has a huge cast. There’s really not a singular core storyline, which makes for an unusual (but intriguing!) reading experience. Without the traditional building action and resolution, this novel reads more like a blurred anthology of stories. I had hoped for more focus on the storyline of Muchami, one of the novel’s main characters; he is the lifelong servant of Sivakami, and his experiences as a gay man during this time-frame interested me, but were largely glossed over or merely implied. In any case, this remains an excellent case study of a large family’s episodes of love and loss in a period of immense change in India.

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What exactly in this story makes for a No-Trump Vote? Is it that she is an immigrant to the US and was an immigrant to Canada before that, a brown woman on both sides of the border, viewed with suspicion that sometimes gets explicit? (I should say that while I don’t have space for my father in this short story, more’s the pity: he deserves his own.) Is it my mother’s humility, her belief that good works are their own reward, that seems such a firm, quiet rebuke to the puffed-up blowhardery, the taking of credit where no credit is due, the self-advertisement that is the Trump persona and the Trump brand? And to what or whom do I dedicate my vote—to her (she would be embarrassed), to both my parents, to the children and families whose lifelong gratitude my mother will lightly dismiss with a hug, to all those—especially immigrants, especially volunteers—who give because they believe in the essential dignity of service? Yes: I dedicate my No-Trump Vote to all of that.

DEDICATE YOUR NO-TRUMP VOTE: Padma Viswanathan.

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Ashwin Rao, the solitary, emotionally detached psychologist in Padma Viswanathan’s ruminative new novel, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, practices an esoteric variety of psychotherapy known as narrative therapy in New Delhi. His patients tell him their troubles and he writes their accounts as stories, holding a mirror up to the psychically wounded in an effort to lead them toward transformation. The book opens in 2004 with Ashwin leaving India to research a book on grief in Canada, where he intends to interview families who lost loved ones in the bombing of an Air India flight from Montreal almost 20 years earlier. Ashwin does not disclose to his subjects that his sister Kritika and her school-age children, his beloved niece and nephew, perished in the same tragedy. Yet the prospect of finding out “by what means” others have coped with sudden, devastating loss—presumably better than he has—jolts Ashwin out of his own malaise, his “paralyzing fog” of self-doubt and inaction.

Parul Kapur Hinzen reviews The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan.

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Stroman was convicted of murder. The survivor, Rais Bhuiyan, was tangential to Stroman’s swift trial, where the defense lawyer never even tried to argue that his client was not guilty of the killings. The real battle was in sentencing: the law in Texas (and possibly elsewhere) doesn’t list a hate crime against a stranger as eligible for capital punishment. Even though Stroman declared before and after that he was an “American Terrorist,” bent on revenge for the Twin Tower attack, the prosecution had to use Stroman’s thwarted request for money in the last shooting to elicit the death penalty, only accessible for a murder committed in the course of another crime—in this case, a robbery.

Padma Wiswanathan reviews The True American by Anand Giridharadas.

#Anand Giridharadas #The True American #Rais Bhuiyan #Mark Stroman #Padma Viswanathan #reviews #lit #politics

I think writers read their own work like a scientist who explores a growth under his or her microscope. I don’t own an English microscope; I am almost able to read it as if it was not my own book, and it isn’t anymore.

Icelandic novelist Kristín Ómarsdóttir talks about reading her novel Children in Reindeer Woods as translated in English in a Rumpus interview with Padma Viswanathan.

#Children in Reindeer Woods #Iceland #Kristín Ómarsdóttir #Padma Viswanathan #lit #literature in translation #interviews

The Toss of a Lemon

Padma Viswanathan

ISBN 0307356329

In south India in 1896, ten-year old Sivakami is about to embark on a new life. Hanumarathnam, a village healer with some renown as an astrologer, has approached her parents with a marriage proposal. In keeping with custom, he provides his prospective in-laws with his horoscope. The problem is that his includes a prediction, albeit a weak one, that he will die in his tenth year of marriage. Despite the ominous horoscope, Sivakami’s parents hesitate only briefly, won over by the young man and his family’s reputation as good, upstanding Brahmins. Once married, Sivikami and Hanumarathnam grow to love one another and the bride, now in her teens, settles into a happy life. But the predictions of Hanumarathnam’s horoscope are never far from her new husband’s mind. When their first child is born, as a strategy for accurately determining his child’s astrological charts, Hanumarathnam insists the midwife toss a lemon from the window of the birthing room the moment his child appears. All is well with their first child, a daughter, Thangam, whose birth has a positive influence on her father’s astrological future. But this influence is fleeting: when a son, Vairum, is born, his horoscope confirms that his father will die within three years. Resigned to his fate, Hanumarathnam sets himself to the unpleasant task of readying his household for his imminent death. Knowing the hardships and social restrictions Sivakami will face as a Brahmin widow, he hires and trains a servant boy called Muchami to help Sivakami manage the household and properties until Vairum is of age. When Sivakami is eighteen, Hanumarathnam dies as predicted. Relentless in her adherence to the traditions that define her Brahmin caste, she shaves her head and dons the white sari of the widow. With some reluctance, she moves to her family home to raise her children under the protection of her brothers, but then realizes that they are not acting in the best interests of her children. With her daughter already married to an unreliable husband of her brothers’ choosing, and Vairum’s future also at risk, Sivakami leaves her brothers and returns to her marital home to raise her family. With the freedom to make decisions for her son’s future, Sivakami defies tradition and chooses to give him a secular education. While her choice ensures that Vairum fulfills his promise, it also sets Sivakami on a collision course with him. Vairum, fatherless in childhood, childless as an adult, rejects the caste identity that is his mother’s mainstay, twisting their fates in fascinating and unbearable ways.

#historical fiction #indian #Padma Viswanathan #lit #novel #fiction #The Toss of a Lemon

On the seventh day after her arrival, he gives her a leather-trimmed kaleidoscope and they take turns being dazzled, lying on the bed and aiming it at the lamp fire, gawping like children at the tumbling stars.

The Toss of a Lemon, Padma Viswanathan