Customer Reviews

Point of Return

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In this sensitively imagined and astutely observed novel, Babu, son of veterinarian Dr. Dam, reminisces about his father's life, trying to understand him--at least to the extent that sons can ever understand their fathers. Acutely aware that every generation views events and experiences through knowledge gained during own lifetimes, Babu recognizes that though he and his father have shared many events, their views of these events are vastly different, in each case conditioned by their separate, though sometimes intersecting, pasts.

The Dam family is Bengali, managing to escape the 1979 civil war there by fleeing to Assam, a remote, northeastern province of India nestled between Bangladesh and Bhutan. Supporting his elderly parents and several brothers and sisters, and marrying and starting a family late in life, Dr. Dam has spent his career as an honest civil servant within a corrupt Indian government. Babu, born in India, has never known the places which shaped the lives of his father and grandparents and which still live in their hearts. Separated by both temperament and by dissimilar backgrounds, Dr. Dam and Babu are remote from each other until they are brought together dramatically through Dr. Dam's debilitating stroke.

Deb's straightforward and often elegant prose is particularly effective for its subtlety. Lacking the lush description so frequently found in novels with Indian settings, the novel concentrates instead on universal values and the father-son search for understanding. The novel is less exotic, despite its unusual setting, than some other Indian novels, but more accessible to readers from other cultures and more potent in its observations about life. In an ironic twist, the author uses his clear, unadorned prose to provide Dr. Dam's personal history in a chronology which, though linear, moves backward in time, as Babu, aged seventeen, recalls what he knows of his father and the events and people which have influenced him.

The reverse chronology is much like the history we all create for our parents whenever we try to mine our own experiences for insights into their lives in an effort to find common ground and understand who we think they are. We recall past events in their lives which we think are important based on our own experiences, not theirs. With its focus both on a man coming to terms with his father's life, and on everyone's yearning for a homeland, even after it is gone, Deb provides observations which expand our own view of what forms our characters, and gives us new insights into universal truths. Mary Whipple

With its fractured timeline and foreign (even for Indians) Indian states, this book will swirl around you. Yield to it. Enjoy it. Be disturbed by it. Draw parallels with your own life (especially if you no longer live where you did as a child). And more often than not, be transported.

This book moves you through geography, through time, through life. And it is a journey that you will be glad that you took.

While I eagerly await Mr. Deb's next book, I am troubled by the idea that he might never write another book that is so true, and so felt. Regardless, don't let this one pass you by.

This is no light or easy read; the chronology and narrative perspective of this book change, and the shifts are sometimes unsettling. This I took to be part of the author's design, and by the end of the book I found it effective, a part of the chaos of memory that speaks true. I also found myself wishing the overleaf of the book had a map of the regions, as place is so important in the novel and I was unfamiliar with more than basic Indian geography. I would recommend that a reader unfamiliar with these regions print out a map (and also note what the country looked like in the days before Partition) before beginning on this literary journey. It's a journey I'm glad to have made, and although I have not yet undertaken a second read, that was my first impulse when I came to the end -- I felt there was so much more for me to mine from the intertwined stories of Babu's and Dr. Dam's lives as shared by Deb than I had been able to absorb in one pass. A good writer writes what he knows and speaks the truth -- much easier said than done -- and Deb has done both quite beautifully in this book.

It is an unfortunate aspect of our culture that novels by South Asian authors are so often viewed as a means to escape from the hum-drum of our Western, suburban lives, an escape to a place of monsoons and mangoes and curries. Siddhartha Deb's first novel may be set in East India, but it takes place in the heart.

Deb's novel is not a coming of age novel so much as an insightful look at what it means to be a young adult reflecting on the humanity of one's parents - the people to whom we are closest, but somehow never really know. It's also a reflection on those people and experiences that mold who we, as unique individuals, become.

Much of Deb's book, I suspect, will, as it must, be familiar with the many men and women who were, in one way or another, displaced by the partition of India, the 1971 liberation war in Bangladesh, and the communalism in which the subcontinent continues to simmer.

But the beauty of Deb's novel is not in the vivid depictions of life in social and political tumult, it is in his brilliant rendering of universal experiences - the search for grounding, for self, for home.

Debs first novel is an eye opener; the type of book that changes the way one looks at his/her surroundings, as well as reflect at his/her roots. A true classic of the 21st century. His writing immerses us in a dark, rainy and cold world where life exists among the puddles. The characters as well as the atmosphere seem to flow from the pages and form around us naturally, without rough descriptions or departures from the story. Everything is seamlessly intergrated into the flow of the life within the novel. The story instantly picks up and throws us into an unfamiliar world, yet one that is easily imaginable. With Deb at the lead, the trip seems to follow a thread through time; a mystery of where he is taking us, as well as who is taking us there. Anticipation mounts as details drip from the pages like slowly brewing coffee. The story really shines in his expression of humanity; characters are real and their thoughts and emotions can be felt althought not written. This book shows how a book can expresses a story without degrading its quality with words. True stories are expressed with emotions, and Deb perfectly expresses these emotions here. " Commercial truckers preferred to sleep through the day and pull out at night in large groups, headlights blinking and swaying against the dark slopes rising towards an equally dark sky, lit up on winter nights with the pinpoints of celestial travellers. " (Deb, 42)

This is a book to really wallow in. Just make sure you have the evening free, sit back with a drink, and enjoy.