Starred review from September 27, 2021
Poet and former human rights lawyer Arshi (Dear Big Gods) makes her fiction debut with a delicate and enveloping portrayal of a British Indian family coping with a mother’s depression. “Everything worth saying can be written on your fingernail,” believes Ruby, the narrator, who, at 11, rarely speaks. Her older sister, Rania, is a talker, a rebel, and an artist. Their father is unassuming and kind, and their mother, who feels most alive while gardening, sleeps her way through Britain’s winters. Ruby and Rania, while starkly contrasting, provide each other the support their mother cannot, especially when she’s recovering at a psychiatric hospital. Adults project their own beliefs onto the silent Ruby—some distrust her, while others, such as a teacher, seek to convert her to Christianity. However, as Ruby moves from primary to secondary school, her devilish tenacity takes root. The chapters, like Ruby, are concise, never rambling, but they contain startling depth. With piercing lines such as, “The day my sister tried to drag the baby fox into our house was the same day my mother had her first mental breakdown,” Arshi opens the door into Ruby’s dysfunctional but authentic family. Each scene is packed with emotion and memory, and it’s all carried by the diction and imagery of a poem. It adds up to a beautiful whole.
November 15, 2021
A lyrical debut novel narrated by a girl who won't speak. That Arshi primarily works as a poet will come as no surprise: Her first novel is made up of short, tight chapters--some less than a page--that are themselves made up of sentences composed with a great deal of intensity. Arshi emphasizes the lyricism of the line and the strength of the image rather than more, say, prosaic matters. Plot, for example, is not at a premium. At the book's center is a family: two sisters, Ruby and Rania, and their parents. Ruby narrates the book's events, such as they are. Her observations are poignant, unique, and frequently witty. At a party, Ruby notes that she feels "a pinch of jealousy"--a friend of hers "looks normal and beautiful, or she's done a really good job of acting that way, which is equally impressive." That Ruby is Arshi's narrator is already a point of tension in the book: Ruby doesn't speak--not to her family, her friends, or to anyone else--but as narrator, she speaks quite clearly to her readers, who quickly get a sense of her unique voice. This gimmick doesn't always work, likely because Arshi doesn't fully explore either Ruby's silence or her reason for maintaining it. Ruby's mother seems to be suffering a psychological breakdown, and her sister, Rania, suffers an act of sexual violence, but these issues, too, go undeveloped. Arshi's approach to fiction is prismatic, and while the result is frequently moving, not one of the strands of her story ends up resolved. In her first novel, Arshi prioritizes the elegance of her sentences over the development of her characters and story.
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