What the Body Remembers [Import] [Paperback]

SHAUNA SINGH-BALDWIN (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (September 2, 1999)
• ISBN-10: 0385601107
• ISBN-13: 978-0385601108
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,834,139 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Charecters that linger in your mind!, December 11, 1999

By 

Champa Bilwakesh (Andover, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the Body Remembers: A Novel (Hardcover)

"It was the moment when his beard scratched her cheeks and his falcon eyes looked directly down upon her, held her eyes until he must have seen how very small his face was, how very tiny, reflected in her gray eyes. And in that long, long moment, she knew Sardarji expected her to lower her eyes before him."

Satya recalls, in Shauna Singh Baldwin's book What the Body Remembers, the single moment when she knew what her husband wanted but that she could never do: lower her gaze in front of him. It is this quality of hers to look him in the eye and tell him the way it is that also eventually separates him from her. That and the fact that she could not bear him a son.

With the 1947 Partition of India as the backdrop, WTBR is a loving portrait of the Sikhs - the community of people from the Northwest corner of India. Baldwin has used research and her own experiences as a Sikh to draw the three main characters: Sardarji, his wife Satya, and her nemesis Roop, the young girl Sardarji marries secretly so she could give him a son. They linger in your mind long after you close the book. Using minute layers of details of Roop's life as the ground, Baldwin has drawn Roop's character, her longings, her fears, her courage, and most importantly, her endurance. Satya and Roop, the two women married to Sardarji, so different in their personality and character, yet live under the same fear and belief: the fragility of their security. From different levels of prosperity and status they each see with clarity the ease with their lives can be blown all away at the slightest show of free will, of disobedience. It is a story lived by many women in all cultures. The Sikh women in Baldwin's story surprise us with the strength they show in adversity, the way they bend without breaking when their world falls apart and reshapes in permenantly altered states.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Engrossing, involving, fascinating, October 23, 1999

By 

Candace "thepageturner" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the Body Remembers: A Novel (Hardcover)

A wealthy Sikh engineer takes a young village girl as a second wife. His first wife, a fierce, beautiful woman who runs most of his properties, has not given him children. The relationship between these three stretch from the final days of Britain's Indian Empire, through the brutal and bloody partition of India, and into, the reader suspects, the next life. `What the Body Remembers" works on several levels. The characters are fully drawn, and live in a believable, richly imagined. English-minded Sardarji (he even has a name for the little British voice that reminds him what is and is not done) can put aside his European teaching when it suits him to take a second wife. Brilliant and manipulative, first wife Satya is his political conscience and his connection to his ancestral lands. Unformed sixteen-year-old Roop, brought on the scene to produce children, will discover the strength of her weakness and may save her family from destruction following the terrifying birth of Pakistan from India.

As a political lesson, the novel is also fascinating reading. The characters in "What the Body Remembers" are Sikhs, the religious segment left out in the splitting of the subcontinent into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. Who can they rely on when the bloodshed of Partition begins?

This is the kind of book that pulls you in quickly, and does not release you from its spell until the last page. Another wonderful novel about India for those who want to spend more time in the country is Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy"-1,100 pages of pure joy.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really, Really Good, January 25, 2002

By 

Leigh Munro - See all my reviews

This review is from: What the Body Remembers: A Novel (Paperback)

There many novels around that cover the same territory as this book: the bloodshed that surrounded Partition and the devastation wrought by the British upon India. There are many other books as well which discuss the experience of Indian women.

This book is interesting because it deals with both of these subjects and from the perspective of two Sikh women. I have many Indian friends and know a little of Hindu and Moslem culture but of Sikhism I was ignorant and this novel has been a ssuperb introduction. The story focuses to a large extent upon the experiences of Satya and Roop, married to the same man. Both of their lives and their happiness are dependent on his and it is interesting to see how the two women manage to carve their own niches within this restriction.

Major themes of this book are jealousy and fear. The fear of men, the fear of one's own body, the fear of strangers and of other religions. Jealousy and avarice too. The opening scene embodies all of these emotions as Satya inspects the young Roop, newly arrived at her husband's home wearing Satya's jewellry. It is a fantastically written introduction. However, despite his insensitivity and self-centredness, one of the wonderful things about this novel is observing the gradual transformation of Sardiji, a traditional and dominant male figure at the beginning of the novel into a thoughtful and generous one at the end. His political and personal journey is directly attributable to the influence, and destinies, of his wives.

This book is not at all formulaic and is a worthy addition to the canon of modern Indian literature. I have read many of these books and, as recommended by another reviewer, this is the best novel about India I have read since A Suitable Boy.