Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala MarkandayaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Beautiful and touching, Nectar in a Sieve follows a young Rukmani who is married to Nathan, a tenant farmer, when she is only twelve. The marriage, of course, is arranged. The story focuses on the growth of her family and the struggles a tenant farmer and his family must face in a developing India.
I had one minor issue with this book...that is that there wasn't more.
The story should be depressing because the family has to scrape by to survive. And I mean really scrape by...with very little extra ever coming their way. They lose children to death and circumstance. They live through monsoon and drought while they work the land for thirty years. But because the book is only around 180 pages, I felt like I did not get to know the characters as well as I would have liked. Their only daughter, for example, has a sad but fascinating story of her own, and I would have liked to see more of it. Several of her sons move away...far away and we don't hear anything more about them. Of course, neither did Rukmani, which was perhaps common for a woman in her situation, but I wanted to know how their lives turned out.
In any case, a story that should have been depressing was touching. They never really had a break, but I felt like they were happy in their own way. They learned to accept their hardships and never lost sight of their humanity in spite of those hardships. Mostly, they took joy in loving and forgiving each other.
The prose is beautiful. And that is probably what made this novel for me. Some writers are gifted with language in a way that sings to you. I wish I had half Markandaya's skill with words. And perhaps that is another reason I wanted more. I wanted to listen to her voice for just a little bit longer. As it is, this is going to stay with me for a long time.
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