Reviews

Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai

jess_mango's review against another edition

3.0

3.5 out of 5. This novel was well written but I just wasn't that driven to read it. In other words it didn't make me want to stay on the train reading instead of going to work.

hbelle01's review

emotional reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

gaybf's review against another edition

4.0

owww!!! :( 

fav quotes:

• ‘But you wouldn’t want to return to life as it used to be, would you?’ Bim continued to tease her in that dry voice. ‘All that dullness, boredom, waiting. Would you care to live that over again? Of course not. Do you know anyone who would secretly, sincerely, and his innermost self really preferred to return to childhood?’
• But now something had gone wrong. The needle stuck in a groove. ‘Dream-in, dream-in, dream-in’ hacked the singer, his voice growing more and more officious. Shocked, Baba’s long hands moved with speed to release it from the imprisoning groove. Then he found the needle grown so blunt and rusty that, as he peered at it from every angle, and turned it over, and over with a melancholy finger, he accepted it would do no longer. He sighed and dropped it into the little compartment that slid out of the green leather side of the gramophone, and the sight of all the other obsolete needles that lay in that concealed grave seem to place a weight on his heart. he felt defeated and infinitely depressed. Too depressed to open the little 1 in.² tin with the picture of the dog on it, and pick out a clean needle to insert in the metal head. It remained empty, toothless. The music could come to a hall. Out in the garden of koel called its wild, brazen call. It was not answered so it repeated the call, more demandingly.
• Tara shuddered. ‘I hate to think about it.’ ‘Why? It was the great event of our lives—of our youth. What would our youth have been without it to round it off in such a definite and dramatic way?’ ‘I was glad when it was over,” Tara’s voice trembled with the passion she was always obliged to conceal. ‘I’m so glad it’s over and we can never be young again.’
• Reading, (Raja) seemed to form a picture of himself, an image, that Bim, not his college acquaintances, was the first to recognize. 
• Baba sat there, on the veranda steps, beside a pot of petunias that flowered now in the dark with a kind of lunar luminosity, giving out a maidenly white scent that made one feel cooler, calmer. Babas presence, too, was so much less than a presence, that it could not intrude or chafe. He did not turn to Bim or speak. He had his handful of pebbles that Aunt Mira had given him years ago and with which he played perpetually so that they were quite smooth and round from use. Everyone in the household knew the sound they made as he scattered them across the tiles with a little, quiet unfolding gesture of his hand, then gathered them up again with that curiously remote and peaceful smile on his thin face. It was the sound of the house, as much as the contented muttering of the pigeons in the veranda. It gave time a continuity and regularity that the ticking of a clock in the hall might convey in other homes. Bim was at times grateful for it and at times irritated beyond endurance by it, just as one might be by the perpetual sameness of clock hands. 
• ‘Raja must recover, he must take his father’s place—‘ Bim gave a laugh, or a snort. An ugly sound that stopped him short. In the sudden silence they heard a handful of pebbles fall with a clatter on the veranda steps, making them aware, too, of Baba’s presence. The doctor had not mentioned Baba (…) “father’s place?” Bim mocked, then stopped: she would not reveal more. The hedges round the garden grew high—to hide, to conceal. She would not cut them short, or reveal. 
• ‘You do care for music, don’t you?’ Persisted Dr Biswas who was always very reluctant to leave although he got no encouragement and hardly any attention from her. ‘Do I?’ wondered Bim. ‘I don’t know—I seldom hear any—apart from that—‘ she jerked her chin slightly. ‘But Miss Das, you should, you must,’ he pleaded seriously. ‘Music is one of the greatest joys we have on earth. If one has that pleasure, then one can bear almost anything in life.’ Bim at last paid him the little attention that he craved. ‘Yes?’ She asked in slow surprise. ‘Does it mean that much to you?’
• Only their efforts to make him talk, failed. He would say one word at a time, if pressed, but seemed happier, not too, and could not be made to repeat a whole line. Gradually, as his family learnt how to anticipate his few needs, and how to respond, they ceased to notice his silence— his manner of communication seemed full and rich enough to them: he no more needed to converse than Aunt Mira’s cat did. 
• When Bim realized, although incredulously, that Raja was withdrawing, that his maleness and his years were forcing him to withdraw from the cocoon-coziness spun by his aunt and his sisters out of their femaleness and lack—or surfeit—of years, she grew resentful. She still sat listening to Aunt Mira’s fairy tales but with a brooding air, resenting being left there, bored and inactive, by Raja. Her resentment led her at times to be cruel to Tara. (Cutting her curls…)
• She pulled them high above her waist, up to her chest, tucked the bunches of her frock into them, then drew them close about her waist. Reaching into the cupboard again, she found a belt with which to fasten it around her. Tara was doubled over with laughter, stuffing her hands into her mouth, and crying tears of laughter to see the preposterous figure of her sister in the bunched up old khaki trousers over her flowered frock, with her black hair tumbling about her hot, excited face. Then Bim found another pair of trousers, the white ones Raja wore for tennis, and handed them to Tara. Tara had even more trouble than Bim putting them on over her frock and tightening them about her smaller, slighter figure, yet she managed it more neatly and emerged looking like one of those slight, elegant young boys who play girls’ roles on stage, pressing her hair close to her head to make her face more boyish. They pranced about the room in their trousers, feeling grotesquely changed by them, not only in appearance but in their movements, their abilities. Great possibilities unexpectedly opened up now they had their legs covered so sensibly and practically and no longer needed to worry about what lay bare beneath ballooning frocks and what was so imperfectly concealed by them. Why did girls have to wear frocks? Suddenly they saw why they were so different from their brother, so inferior and negligible in comparison: it was because they did not wear trousers. Now they thrust their hands into their pockets and felt even more superior—what a sense of possession, of confidence it gave one to have pockets, to shove one’s fists into them, as if in simply owning pockets one owned riches, owned independence. 
• Tara saw how little she had really observed—either as a child or as a grown woman. She had seen Bim through the lenses of her own self, as she had wanted to see her. And now, when she tried to be objective, when she was old enough, grown enough and removed enough to study her objectively, she found she could not—her vision was strewn, obscured and screened by too much of the past. 
• ‘No one,’ said Bim, slowly and precisely, ‘comprehends more than children do. No one feels the atmosphere more keenly - or catches all the nuances, all the insinuations in the air - or notes those details that escape elders because their senses have atrophied or calcified.’ Bakul gave an uncomfortable laugh. ‘Only if you stop to think, surely, and children don’t. They’re too busy playing, or chattering, or-‘ ‘Or dreaming,’ mused Tara, dreamily. 
• ‘Look, Bim, here are your nieces again,’ she laughed and Bim, struggling to free herself from the night and reach them, reached out to touch their faces and draw them to hers to be kissed.      She had not held anyone so close for years. Their young faces loomed, their brightness and pinkness filled her vision, and the scent of their fresh skin and fine hair and the soap and water with which they had just washed wafted down to her, making her draw back into her cushions, overwhelmed.    ‘Are you tired, Bim-masi?’ They laughed at her. ‘Aren’t you awake yet? What have you been doing all night? Your room looks like a storms been through it.’ …. ‘What are you wearing, masi?’ They teased. ‘The very latest fashion - a caftan! Ma, you never told us how fashionable Bim-masi has grown.’ No one mentioned that her face seemed made of clay - old dried clay that had cracked. Only Bim felt it, with the tips of her trembling fingers.    ‘You’re making fun of me now,’ said Bim, finding her way back to her aunt-self, her aunt-persona. ‘Come along,  come out to the veranda - I want some light - I want my tea. Have you seen Badshah? Have you seen my jet black cat?’

anvimridul's review

emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

laikareads's review

mysterious reflective relaxing slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

boxcar's review against another edition

emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Almost gave up on this one. It starts painstakingly slow. By the end I was so engrossed in the family, the relationships and strife that I felt like i understood each of them, empathized with them. Reminds me of Brothers Karamazov, three siblings with different personalities that bicker and love and carry the narrative through their deep characterizations and relationships. So very relatable was the pent up misgivings from the distant past, the inability to let go a perceived slight, the hesitation to apologize, the different perspectives and understanding that comes with age. I wish I could give it a better rating, and I suppose I could. But the start really was a drag, no two ways about it.

wetherspoonsgf's review against another edition

emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

on the one hand, this book deals with disability about as well as you'd expect in 1980. on the other hand, it has one of the best passages about alcoholism ever written. 

any book with a 'the girls put on trousers and realise the patriarchy exists' scene is automatically capped at 4 stars and it bungles the ending a bit but it's very well written.

racheladventure's review against another edition

4.0

I read this book as part of my directed readings course I'm taking here in India, but unlike the other books, this one was written by a women, and also unlike the other books, this one was much less focused on India and much more focused on family and everyday life.

In a way I found it kind of refreshing. Yes, it was about the Partition of India, but it was also about the partition of a family. It had a very Forest Gump feel to it. History happened, like the assassination of Gandhi, but it was mentioned as an event in these characters lives and not as some random event that shook history.

In reading this book I was reminded of just how important sibling relationship are in India (or at least, in traditional Indian values). If you stop and think about it, siblings are the ones who will know you the longest. Your parents will die, your spouse will have missed out on your childhood, and your children come much later. Siblings are the ones who are there for the longest, and yet it is not something we seem to emphasize in our own culture. Could you imagine planning your life around where your brother was going to live, or maintaining a good relationship so that marriage between your children was a possibility? This all seems very foreign to us.

Characterization was definitely the best part of this book. We have a few noteworthy ones, but Bim and Tara are the sisters that seem to be contrasted all throughout. By the end though, Desai wants us to see that while these sisters seem to be completely different, they are "not really" and "have everything in common," because no one knows all that they share (162). Watching all of the characters come around to that, to the "clear light of day," was a great catharsis.

Probably my favorite part of this book was just the complexity of the characters, recognizing that they are just as real and human as we are in our own context. Too often I think we dehumanize people out of pity or ignorance when we don't understand where they come from, and I think this book aims to shatter that.

Really, I'd probably give it a 4.5, but it started slow, and I still don't like that the cover of my edition does not match the text. Yes. I do judge books by their covers.

herreadingnook's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

jenmcmaynes's review

4.0

I loved the gorgeous, lush prose, in which the landscape is practically a character; it leaps off the page. I was also very impressed with Desai’s characterizations of the Das family; Bim, Tara, Raja, and Baba in particular. The POV shifts through both time and characters, letting you see both the deep affections and schisms the siblings shared. I was a little disappointed in the ending, which felt a bit prosaic after such a delicate build up, but all in all, a beautifully written, enjoyable book.