When I Hit You

A powerful and reflective story about domestic abuse in India, based on the author's own marriage. After a quick courting period and marriage, there's no idyll, instead the marriages falls apart immediately. He starts to mentally and physically undermine her independence. He isolates her and controls her every action. He takes over her email account, monitors her phone calls and sabotages all her work opportunities. When she tries to rebel against these shackles, he uses physical violence all the way up to rape in order to push her back down.

At the beginning, from my Western POV, I was attempted to victim-blame (she's clearly educated, why didn't she get out earlier?) but the more the book goes on the more it becomes clear how deeply misogynistic Indian culture is. (Which isn't a surprise considering the child/women abuse articles that usually come from there. But I definitely hadn't heard about the common practice of Bride burning beforehand). Society is so patriarchal it won't listen to women, it doesn't even ask women for their opinion. Even her parents tell her to wait it out, to obey her husband.

It's a hard subject to read about, but Kandasamy's writing is smart and witty and sad and lyrical, all at the same time.