Review: The Far Field

Shalini had a complicated relationship with her mother. When she dies, Shalini is devastated and angry. Uncertain about what to do next, she decides to travel to Kashmir to track down Bashir Ahmed. Ahmed was a traveling salesman whose visits seemed to bring her mother rare moments of happiness. But the towns and villages of Kashmir are very different from her privileged upbringing in Bangalore. Shalini doesn't know if she wants to be involved in the complicated relationships and secrets that permeate the Ahmed home, but she may not have a choice.

It is almost difficult to write about The Far Field, because it encompasses so many things. It's a story about the shift from naive childhood to adulthood, about grief and finding the edges of your knowledge of someone you loved and lost. It's a story about privilege and poverty and politics, and realizing that you know so little about the world around you. In the opening pages, Shalini tells readers that "I am thirty years old and that is nothing." After that, the book moves in parallel timelines, as she remembers growing up with her unpredictable, vibrant, sometimes cruel mother, and tries to learn more about her mother and herself in the present.

The book is beautifully written. It's hard to believe that this novel is Madhuri Vijay's debut, because she reveals human emotion and failing so well, while simultaneously making you feel that you are really walking narrow mountain pathways or wandering through the streets of Bangalore. The Far Field is an intimate and sprawling story at the same time, as Shalini comes to terms with the loss of her mother and learns what her place is in a tumultuous, uncertain world.

The Far Field
By Madhuri Vijay
Grove Press January 2019
432 pages
From the library