Kanthapura (A couple weeks late)

Every once in a while when I read a book, while I can appreciate what it’s doing, I just can’t get into it. That’s what Kanthapura was for me—I could fully appreciate the importance and significance of its subject, but for me, something was off.

Why is this image so blurry? We just don't know.

                The novel depicts a fictional town/village in India in the late 1930s. The town is slowly getting introduced to Gandi and his followers. The whole book is written from the perspective of an unnamed female protagonist, an older woman in the village, who connects with the other women there to help push for Gandian policies.

                There were lots of cool things happening in this book. First, since it was published in 1938, the author didn’t know whether or not India would actually become decolonized. It’s interesting to see how he worked his way around that knowledge gap and how he planned and executed his ending to reflect that. It was also really cool to see the female characters taking action in this book. I was surprised to see how much agency they had gained by the end of the novel. It was awesome. I was impressed.

                The difficulty for me was the way the novel was written; since the author was going for a narrative spoken by an older village woman, it gets a little rambly at times. There are also a ton of names, some of which are repeated (and which you’re expected to remember) and others who you’ll never hear from again. It was a similar experience to reading Russian novels with a long list of characters, and it was distracting from some of the other things the novel was doing.

                There were also some moments that didn’t seem that… relevant? I guess? Again, it’s probably because the book is a spoken narrative, but I would get frustrated with the parts where the narrator would get sidetracked. I did like it when the narrator addressed the audience, though: she addresses whoever she’s talking to (the audience, the reader, whoever) as “sister” which added to the cool things the book was doing with gender.

All in all… 3/5