The Archer
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15
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Average rating3
“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] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love.” —NPR In this transfixing novel, a young woman comes of age in 1960s- and 1970s-era Bombay, a vanished world that is complex and indelibly rendered. Vidya’s childhood is marked by the shattering absence and then the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother at the family home. Restless, observant, and longing for connection with her brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya navigates the stifling expectations of her life with a vivid imagination until one day she peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling, centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Her pursuit of artistic transcendence through kathak soon becomes the organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain future looms, she must ultimately confront the tensions between romantic love, her art, and the legacy of her own imperfect mother. Lyrical and deeply sensual, with writing as mesmerizing as kathak itself, Shruti Swamy’s The Archer is a bold portrait of a singular woman coming of age as an artist—navigating desire, duty, and the limits of the body. It is also an electrifying and utterly immersive story about the transformative power of art, and the possibilities that love can open when we’re ready.
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CW: suicide, pregnancy.
This book was nowhere on my radar and despite it being a desi author, literary fiction is not my thing and I don't think I would have specifically looked it up and decided to read. But surprisingly, I got the advance audiobook of it and then felt, why not.
First and foremost, I decided to give it a try mostly because Sneha Mathan is the audiobook narrator and she is a favorite of mine, her beautiful and husky voice giving life to even dull descriptions in her previous works which I enjoyed. And in this debut novel, the author writes with a kind of stream of consciousness style, which I thought really worked in the audio format. As someone who isn't comfortable with that style of writing or with the heavy use of metaphors in language, I didn't think I would like this one much either. But Sneha makes it a bit easier to digest as well as better appreciate the cadence of the author's words. But despite understanding that there is a wild kind of beauty in these words, it didn't wow me in any way. It was only in the scenes where the author describes the kathak dance form as well as how much the main character Vidya feels while performing - these were the parts of the story that mesmerized me. The way the author integrates stories from our mythology into the dance performance, describing it in lush and lyrical detail, really left me impressed. However, these words also evoked a deep longing in my heart for my younger days when I thought I could learn singing before I realized my dreams couldn't come true.
But I could never put my finger on what I felt about Vidya. I didn't understand what she actually wanted from her life other than the joy of dancing and I didn't find myself much interested in anything that she did. And this maybe going into spoiler territory, but the fourth part of the book is all about her experience through the pregnancy and the delivery in graphic detail - and it made me very uncomfortable due to my own personal reasons. I was also hoping for a much different ending but what happened didn't surprise me at all; I think it was the safest way to end the book and maybe I was disappointed...
Anyways, I feel like I'm only rambling some nonsense here instead of writing a coherent review, so please take my words with a grain of salt. It's just that the book left me feeling a bit unsettled. However, if you are a lover of the literary fiction genre , or lyrical and beautifully written stories about women, or even just a fan of the amazing Sneha Mathan's narration, you might like this much more than I did.
