The Binding Vine / Edition 1

by Shashi Deshpande, Sonita Sarker

Overview

“There can be no vaulting over time,” thinks Urmila, the narrator of Shashi Deshpande’s profound and soul-stirring novel. “We have to walk every step of the way, however difficult or painful it is; we can avoid nothing.” After the death of her baby, Urmila finds her own path difficult to endure. But through her grief, she is drawn into the lives of two very different women—one her long-dead mother-in-law, a thwarted writer, the other a young woman who lies unconscious in a hospital bed. And it is through these quiet, unexpected connections that Urmi begins her journey toward healing.

The miracle of The Binding Vine, and of Shashi Deshpande's deeply compassionate vision, is that out of this web of loss and despair emerge strand of life and hope—a binding vine of love, concern, and connection that spreads across chasms of time, social class, and even death. In moving and exquisitely understated prose, Deshpande renders visible the extraordinary endurance and grace concealed in women's everyday lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781558614024
Publisher:	Feminist Press at CUNY, The
Publication date:	09/01/2002
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Shashi Deshpande is one of India's most distinguished living authors. She has written seven novels, including A Matter of Time, as well as several volumes of short stories and a number of children's books. She is the winner of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award.

Editorial Reviews

"Chekhovian... Deshpande's story of a woman who loses a daughter is linked to the politics of India and its tradition of patriarchy." —Baltimore Sun

"Veteran Indian writer Shashi Deshpande lays out the common threads of female experience." —Kirkus Reviews

"Haunted by fears, secrets, and deep grief... Tremendously sympathetic." —Washington Post

"The river of prose travels and you are borne along with it, effortlessly, slowly. Until you realize that you are not moving towards any particular plot-destination; you are simply traveling with a splendid writer." —Ashok Banker, Femina (India)

From the Publisher

Veteran Indian author Deshpande's second novel to be published here is not a huge improvement over the first (A Matter of Time, 1999). Talky and rather listless, the narrative concerns a young middle-class woman in India who overcomes despair caused by the death of her infant daughter by involving herself in the family of a comatose rape victim and reading the journals of her long-dead mother-in-law. Urmi's nerves are jangled by any reference to baby Anu, but a chance encounter with Shakutai, the mother of a teenaged girl hospitalized after being raped and beaten, makes her aware that others are as miserable as she. Although from different classes and generations, she and Shakutai share something deeper, and looking after the mother and daughter gives Urmi time away from her thoughts. She also has begun to consider the unpublished writings of her mother-in-law. Journals revealing that Mira was forced into an unwanted marriage have prompted Urmi to view her poetry very differently and to see her death in childbirth as particularly tragic. When Urmi persuades Shakutai to take her daughter's story public in order to find the rapist, the result is yet another tragedy, but somehow the women find the means to carry on. The common threads of female experience are laid down clearly enough, but in a curiously intellectualized and dispassionate way, and a flood of undeveloped characters doesn't make the story any easier to read.

Kirkus Reviews