Publishers Weekly
07/26/2021
Swamy’s affecting debut novel (after A House is a Body) follows a woman’s interest in dance and self-determination after growing up in poverty in 1960s Northern India. At seven, after Vidya’s father dies and her mother becomes an unreliable presence, she encounters a class of girls learning kathak, a form of Indian classical dance. By the time she’s in her teens, Vidya has become a dedicated kathak pupil, devoted to the “wild, nearly unbearable pleasure” of dance. In college, she studies engineering while continuing to work every day with a new dance teacher from Bombay. Always set slightly apart from her peers by her poverty and intensity, Vidya is surprised by the depth of her connection to another student, the solitary and brilliant Radha. Swamy writes with keen perception of Vidya’s anger and unyielding will to dance, despite her predicament (she never forgets that she is “dark, overeducated, unpedigreed”). Later in the book, after Vidya’s brief romance with Radha, she marries a man from a very different socioeconomic class, a decision that further illustrates how the odds are stacked against her as a young woman attempting to live on her own terms. Swamy confidently evokes the time and place with spare, precise prose. This writer continues to demonstrate an impressive command of her craft. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
Longlisted for the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize “Mesmerizingly poetic . . . The Archer’s beauty resides in Swamy's sequential narrative form, which reads like music—at times almost exactly like reading a musical score—but with something more; her words carry the visceral power of a dancer's intersection with air . . . [A] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love . . . A sensual, artful dance, powerfully told.” —NPR “This novel swallowed me whole. The Archer is the kind of book you always hope for: lush and sensual, tasted and felt, with striking images that play out like film behind the eyes. Swamy evokes an India that resists flat stereotype and teems with exuberance, beauty, and life. The Archer is timeless yet utterly modern as it asks what it means for a woman to make a life of art.” —C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold “Shruti Swamy is a writer to celebrate. Her fiction is provocative, precise, and gorgeously inventive.” —Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning “With its coiled energy and feverish imagery, The Archer often reads more like a lucid dream than a novel, oceans of wild feeling roiling just below the surface . . . Swamy writes about the imperatives of an artist’s life with bright, furious poetry: the singular will of a body that burns to be in motion, and a mind set free.” —Entertainment Weekly “[A] visceral first novel . . . The Archer blends the corporeal and the spiritual in a story about what it means to be a woman and an artist. Swamy’s writing is transportive, precise and almost hypnotic . . . The author’s perceptive and observant eye misses nothing.” —BookPage “Set in 1970s Bombay, the novel explores art, ambition, gender roles and class with the same shimmering prose of Swamy’s first book, the story collection A House Is a Body.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A searing portrait of the woman artist . . . Shruti Swamy has defined herself as a bold new voice in not only South Asian diaspora literature, but modern literature as a whole.” —Chicago Review of Books “Every page of The Archer holds evidence of Swamy’s talent, each sentence a performance so strong as to appear effortless. But just as with an elite dancer, only in the recognition of the effort can we truly appreciate the art. Like any rapt audience, readers will delight and despair in the fiercely wrought world of The Archer, fully aware they are witnessing greatness.” —Chapter16 “Lush and poetic.” —Ms. Magazine “Swamy’s prose is incantatory and often lovely, swirling in dancelike rhythms that sweep the story along. She builds a complex character in Vidya, whose urge toward autonomy brings results that range from ecstatic to tragic. A young woman seeks freedom through art in a mesmerizing coming-of-age story.” —Kirkus Reviews “A saga as rich and gorgeous as Kathak itself.” —Library Journal “As in her lauded debut collection, A House Is a Body, Swamy examines women’s ownership of their very selves… [and] challenges expectations and exposes the limitations of being female.” —Booklist “[An] affecting debut novel . . . Swamy confidently evokes the time and place with spare, precise prose. This writer continues to demonstrate an impressive command of her craft.” —Publishers Weekly “This is a singular work, a story of a dancer, and of a hungry self seated at the table of womanness and desire and art, told with unparalleled originality and elegance. Swamy writes with a thrilling clarity of vision that wakes the sleepwalker right into joyful consciousness. Every word is intimate, honest, ecstatic—utterly alive.” —Meng Jin, author of Little Gods “The Archer is a stunning novel, as intimate and visceral as an expertly executed dance. Swamy's arresting and immersive prose vibrates with attention, and does what the best writing does: it leaves me more alive in my own body, and renders the world around me richer—more layered—with meaning. Meditating on what it means to be an artist (and a woman), Swamy has created her own wondrous work of art—singular, unforgettable, and important.” —Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin “Alive with desire, Shruti Swamy's prismatic language glimmers with the force that drives her characters to dance, beating against the restrictions of body, society, tradition, sexuality, and the fallible self toward a liberatory devotion to life. A gorgeous, taut, deeply embodied reading experience, The Archer further establishes Swamy as a writer of thrilling talent.” —Asako Serizawa, author of Inheritors “The Archer unfolds like an urgent dream, its heroine’s desire—for artistic transcendence, love, and liberation—its driving pulse. This novel, and the many keenly rendered moments within its pages (a swirl of bright fabric, the temperature of a lover’s skin, the abrupt chilling of a mood) lodged themselves in my consciousness long after. Shruti Swamy is one of the most gifted, excitingly unpredictable writers working today.”—Mimi Lok, author of Last of Her Name “Shruti's Swamy's The Archer combines exquisite prose with a kind of rare narrative propulsion. I found myself reading slower and slower, to make the sentences last even longer. By the end I was exhilarated and deeply moved. The Archer is a flat-out gorgeous piece of work.”—Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown Others
Library Journal
★ 12/03/2021
Following her story collection A House Is a Body, which was nominated for PEN/Robert W. Bingham and Los Angeles Times Book Prize First Fiction honors, Swamy offers an accomplished first novel about art and self-definition within the context of Indian social class. At its heart is Vidya, growing up hard in 1960s Bombay (now Mumbai), who ends up shouldering all the responsibilities of the unruly mother she loses but is saved because she discovers Kathak, a rigorously gorgeous form of dance that takes over her life. As she says, "One minute I was a girl dancing, …then, suddenly, the feet began to gather the rhythm into them, to understand it, and the world flared open." In college, she studies engineering while promising a new, more challenging dance teacher that she will never desert Kathak, but she is forever split between dance and social expectation and her own uncertainties in a world that values male over female, rich over poor, and fair over dark-skinned, as she is. VERDICT This lusciously detailed work allows us to enter Vidya's longing and confusion and indeed her sheer physicality, so that we become the dancer just as she becomes the dance, and we finally understand with Vidya that dance is a way of looking at and finally being in the world.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal
SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile
Narrator Sneha Mathan mesmerizes listeners with this coming-of-age story set in 1960s and 1970s Bombay. Using soft tones and subtle Indian accents, Mathan smoothly transitions between characters of different ages and genders. Her performance especially shines in her ability to channel Vidya, the story’s strong, flawed female protagonist who grows up in poverty with her brother. Longing for her absent mother, Vidya immerses herself into kathak, a rigorous traditional dance, through which she can finally express herself. Mathan’s pleasing voice and understated performance are the perfect match for Vidya’s quiet strength in the face of prejudice against her gender, social class, and complexion. The author’s reading of a brief essay at the end adds to the intimacy and artistic beauty of this dazzling, immersive production. V.T.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
SEPTEMBER 2021 - AudioFile
Narrator Sneha Mathan mesmerizes listeners with this coming-of-age story set in 1960s and 1970s Bombay. Using soft tones and subtle Indian accents, Mathan smoothly transitions between characters of different ages and genders. Her performance especially shines in her ability to channel Vidya, the story’s strong, flawed female protagonist who grows up in poverty with her brother. Longing for her absent mother, Vidya immerses herself into kathak, a rigorous traditional dance, through which she can finally express herself. Mathan’s pleasing voice and understated performance are the perfect match for Vidya’s quiet strength in the face of prejudice against her gender, social class, and complexion. The author’s reading of a brief essay at the end adds to the intimacy and artistic beauty of this dazzling, immersive production. V.T.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2021-07-14
An ancient dance form becomes a paradoxical route to escape for a girl growing up in poverty in India.
Swamy’s debut novel focuses on the life of Vidya, a girl growing up in Bombay in the 1960s. During her early childhood, her unhappy mother disappears twice, the second time for good. That leaves Vidya to raise her younger brother, Rishi, while their father works long hours. The girl is studious but shy and reserved, damaged by her mother’s absence. Vidya’s chief joy is her study of kathak, a rigorously traditional Indian dance form. Advancing in her skills, she becomes the student of an acclaimed dancer who is a demanding teacher. In college, studying for an engineering degree, Vidya encounters prejudice because of her low social class and dark skin as well as her gender. She also falls in love with Radha, another young woman, although neither of them can express their desires in word or action. Asked to perform a dance as part of an amateur theatrical, Vidya agrees. She hopes her dance will pierce Radha’s heart, and it does, but it’s fateful in unintended ways. The third portion of the book finds Vidya in an unlikely marriage to Rustom, the spoiled son of a wealthy family. Their union, and their choice to live in a seaside cottage apart from their families to pursue their artistic dreams—he’s a poet—upends just about every expectation of Indian society. But another fateful event will bring Vidya full circle, confronting the life she tried to leave behind. Swamy’s prose is incantatory and often lovely, swirling in dancelike rhythms that sweep the story along. She builds a complex character in Vidya, whose urge toward autonomy brings results that range from ecstatic to tragic.
A young woman seeks freedom through art in a mesmerizing coming-of-age story.
