Memories of Rain

by sunetra-gupta

Of the fragile love between the assured Englishman, Anthony, and the bright but sheltered young Bengali woman, Moni, Gupta weaves a provocative and utterly empathetic tale of awakening and hard discovery, steeped in cultural protocol and taboo, in Jane Austen and the verse of Tagore.

Genres: Fiction, India, Indian Literature, 20th Century, Literature, London, Drama

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most exquisite proses that I've ever read and it is delivered via stream-of-consciousness. They say that Sunetra Gupta (born 1965) is the true heir of Virginia Woolf but for me her prose is even better because it is more contemporary; that means you don't have to imagine while reading some far away times in some distant alien land. When Gupta is explaining her settings and events by what her character the beautiful Moni thinks and feels, it is not hard for me to imagine the scenes especially those that are set in India because I also grew up in the province of a third-world country.

The story is something that has been written so many times before: Anthony, a British comes to India and he meets Moni a beautiful Indian girl who is younger than him by 10 years. Smitten by Moni's exotic beauty, he takes her to England. Fast forward to 6 years later, Moni is now a mother of a 3-y/o daughter but Anthony is now in love with another woman, Anna. At first, Moni thinks that she can live with the idea of her husband seeing another woman but then something happens and so she has no choice but to go back to India.

However, the writing is not something that you encounter everyday: almost no period as the prose seems to mimic the rain, sometimes its a downpour like when Anthony and Moni meet and fall in love. Sometimes, it is light like when Moni is feeding the doves in England and putting water in the bird bath and she remembers her grandmother saying that doves drink by opening their beaks to catch tiny droplets of light rain. Gupta's prose seem to go with the type of rain described in the story that one of the reviewers here on Goodreads compared it to Virginia Woolf's prose in the The Waves (tbr).

I was in college vacationing in our farm in a Pacific island when my father told me that I was lucky whenever it rained. The reason why he said this was that our whole family spent our early evenings whenever we were there vacationing by playing card games. There was no electricity so we could not read or see a TV show, not even read books. With an oil lamp though, we could see the prints on the cards so that was our only activity before going to bed. Then my father noticed that whenever it rained, I won. When it was not raining, I lost.

My father has been dead since more than a decade ago but I still notice that I always get lucky when it rains. It was raining when I was born according to my mother. I first fell in love with my classmate in college when it was raining and I was looking at her coming out from the mists while I was sitting on a chair in the laboratory sitting by the glass window. My daughter was conceived during my second honeymoon with my wife in Baguio two decades ago and I remember that it was raining while we were walking around Burnham Park. Not to mention the countless times when I share an umbrella with my crush and our bodies touch and it is just a wonderful sometimes strange but still wonderful feeling being close to someone.

Memories of rain. It does bring back good memories of yester-years. This book has just added to those.

Sunetra Gupta, I will be reading your other works.

[Peter · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Memories of Rain' is a dense novel about the end of the marriage between Moni, a young woman from Calcutta, and, Anthony, the Englishman who married her and took her to London ten years earlier. Anthony had entered Moni’s life at the height of a rain storm and flood when her brother had brought him into their home.

“Memories of rain” is about the passion which they had once shared and traces the thoughts and emotions of Moni and Anthony through three days. Moni has decided to return to India, taking their daughter with her, on the day of the girl’s birthday party, and intends their departure to be a cruel surprise for Anthony. Flashbacks highlight the changes in the couple’s relationship.

The book alternates the point of view of Moni and Anthony. Moni feels the pull of her own culture as well as the emotional dependence which her husband has cultivated in her. Anthony sees himself something akin to the old empire builders and sees her in terms of his own needs rather than as a person with her own.

'he had come to this land, like his forefathers had done, with the conviction that all he wanted would be his, he had come not with greed, only a desire for knowledge, for experience'

Hardly the basis for a sustainable marriage but this story isn't simply one of an immigrant bride who has been drawn into the obit of her husband.

Gupta employs long stream of thought sentences that go on for pages at a time similar to the writing of Virginia Woolf. There is little actual action and this isn't my favourite kind of writing. I felt that I just had to work too hard to get anything out of it and whilst I can admire Gupta's writing this novel just didn't really grip me.

[Amerynth · Rating 4 out of 5]

So very glad I decided to read Sunetra Gupta's challenging and wonderful book "Memories of Rain." The novel is the story of Moni and Anthony, who fell in love in India during a torrential rainstorm. Ten years later, after a move to England and the birth of their daughter, their love has gently receded like flood water and Moni is in almost constant contact with Anthony's lover. She plans to leave him and return to India on their daughter's sixth birthday, a cruel surprise designed to say everything that she has been unable to speak.

Gupta's prose is often challenging -- some of her sentences are page long-- but it is also beautiful and evocative of water. Not so much the rain, but the sea as everything ebbs and flows together. She gives Moni, who is largely silent and mysterious a poet's voice. The blurb on the back of the book calls Gupta an heir to Virginia Wolf, and I can understand the comparison as the tone of the book reminded me of Wolf's "The Waves." Very present in the story is the division between two cultures as well.

Gupta weaves a rather simple story of love and loss, often told in flashbacks, into a unique an interesting novel. A stunning and great read.

[Lina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes when I'm reading a book I get stuck on a word that is constantly repeated and I know no meaning of. This time it was "dessicated". Just saying.

It's a book of not many dots as the reflections, memories, reality and fantasies mingle and create a dreamlike story of a choice a woman has to make. Be aware, this mingle of everything is put down on a paper in never ending phrases separated only by commas. Which I've liked.

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a long-time fan of Virginia Woolf, I approached this debut novel carefully because the cover blurb called Gupta Woolf's true heir. Ten years after reading this beautiful novel, I wish the author spent more time writing more fiction and less time involved in her PhD field of infectious diseases on the faculty of Oxford. Subsequent novels, while enjoyable, did not (for me) have quite the power of this one.

I like her stream-of-consciousness approach, the poetry of her words, and contrapuntal solidity of her observation.

[Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couldn’t not buy when a review on the back cover compared it to By Grand Central Station. And I was not disappointed! Really enjoyed it, beautifully written. Great book!

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A stream of consciousness, character based novel about the thoughts of Moni,, a Bengali born wife of an English writer, that takes place over a weekend where she plans to escape with her daughter from her unhappy marriage.

Moni has known Anthony, her husband, for ten years. Early in their marriage, Anthony and Moni move from India to England to live. Moni feels very alone and uncomfortable in England. They have a six year old daughter. Their passion for each other fades with time. Anthony has a sexual relationship with Anna that is not hidden from Moni. Moni doesn’t talk to her husband about her feelings.

It is a beautifully written novel where not a lot happens!

This book was first published in 1996.

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a failing marriage told in beautiful prose that drew me along like the steady beat of rain, slipping in and out of places and times within a sentence. I had to concentrate on every word or I would find the narrative had jumped ten years without my noticing. I couldn't read a lot at one sitting, or it would be like overdosing on chocolate.

[Jocelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

gave it a chance but had to abandon - just over the top meaningless poetic over self indulgence to me.

[Melissa Monster · Rating 2 out of 5]

An essay written in the spring of 2012 for a class entitled 'Women in Literature.'


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A History of Silence: Uses of Discourse in Memories of Rain

I’ve always been fascinated by the structure and features writers use to tell their stories. The example I always use is from a movie I once saw on cable. In one of the beginning scenes a couple knocks a flower pot off a window sill. Scenes later, after the audience has forgotten about the flowerpot, it comes crashing down to hit someone on the head. Another similar example is in one of my favorite films, Inception. In the beginning of the film, Arthur is teaching Ariadne about dream architecture. He shows her that in dreams anything is possible, even the Penrose steps. Later in the film, after the audience has been aptly distracted, Arthur is trying to escape being killed by projections and uses the Penrose steps to elude his pursuer: “Paradox.” The fact that the author has made these creative, conscious choices to enhance the telling of their story amazes me. (There’s a moment associated with this awe called the “Damn, why didn’t I write that,” moment.) However, not all choices are conscious. What sub-conscious choices has the author made? What choices has the story itself made? My reading journal for the novel Memories of Rain is full of questions about the way it is written. Why are there four sections? Why are there Tagore songs interspersed throughout the novel? One interesting choice made in the novel is the use of free-indirect discourse.

Free indirect discourse has been is used by many different authors, as in the works of Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde and Roberto Bolano, for many different purposes. One of the ways it is often used and the way in which we will view its implementation to interpret Memories of Rain is, to create a first person experience in a third person narrative. The third person narrative creates omniscience (or the false feeling of omniscience) which provides the reader with the sense of an insider perspective, while the free-indirect discourse brings them closer to the actual minds of the characters. We discussed in our reading group on Memories of Rain that Gupta might use this tool to emphasize the presence of silence in her novel. Moni’s voice, and well as the voices of all other characters appear to literally be stolen from them by this omniscient narrative power.

In a review posted on The Independent’s website, Shusha Guppy shares her opinion on Moni’s character. She paints her as a woman that stands up to her unfaithful spouse and her adopted country by leaving and moving back to India with her daughter. However, Shusha goes a little far in illustrating the ‘safe house’ feel of India for Moni, “My only reservation is that Moni conforms a little too much to the Western ideal of the 'Oriental Woman' - a lovely odalisque, sensual, passive, 'clay in his hands'(Guppy10.)” I disagree with this critique as it is geared towards one culture and not the other. Moni does not “conform to the Western ideal of the ‘Oriental Woman,’” she is that ‘Oriental Woman,’ she embodies that ideal. That is made plain by the narrative and by the silence that invades Moni’s life in India as well as in England. Women fight against a patriarchal ideal in almost, if not, all areas of the world. All women are fighting against a silence that is ingrained in society. Pushing it off on one culture or another is to look over the importance of the issue. Through her method of discourse, Gupta shows a trend of silence in both cultures, providing a cultural and historical commentary not just for England but also for India.

Cultures cannot be written or experienced in black and white. Every society has something to be proud of as well as something to hide. In her book Culture and Customs of India, Carol Henderson gives us a look at lives of different women in India. She begins this chapter, entitled ‘Women, Marriage and Family,’ by saying although “the hard life of the Indian woman is proverbial… India is one of the few nations of the world that has had a woman as head of state (Henderson123.)” As, in the western world, some women are privileged and some are not. We all fight our own battles. I believe that Gupta, as a privileged feminist, seeks to illustrate and thus liberate those less fortunate, those that are afraid to be their own masters, through Memories of Rain. By taking away their voices through her mode of discourse, she brings attention to the silence of women in society as well as in their private lives.

Silence as a cultural topic is introduced through the novel in many ways. The main character Moni goes through two major moves: From her parent’s house, into the house of her husband and then back to her parents. This struck me as odd when reading. Why does Moni always have to live under the roof of a man? Why didn’t Moni ever consider living by herself with her child? This is one of the first thoughts that comes to Western thinkers. We are raised as independent beings, conditioned to the act of “moving out” on our own as an act of growing-up. When a friend tries to convince Moni to get a divorce with the charming sentiments, “You should just leave the bastard,” surely he meant for her to get a place of her own in the city, not to move back to Calcutta, into her family house. However, in India the role of the woman in the family is essential. In fact, most women “lack social empowerment to inherit, buy or manage land (Henderson126.)” These women lack what Virginia Woolf claims in her essay A Room of One’s Own to be essential to women’s independence, creativity and success; a room to call their own and a steady income with which to support themselves. They have no space of their own. In parts of Northern India women are forced to follow certain societal norms such as: secluding herself from unrelated men, obtaining permission to leave the family compound, and not directly addressing their husbands or senior men (Henderson127.) It would appear that these women do just as Moni does in Memories of Rain, they slowly disappear. They become a type, words on a page, something to be looked over and then forgotten. Henderson says in her book, “Rajarthan said that women aspired to become the perfect wives (Henderson130-1.)” Gupta says in hers, “The pride of martyrdom ran deep in her race (Gupta168.)” Gupta, as one of the privileged, gives a voice to women who have been silenced, who have disappeared, by putting a spotlight on their silence through her mode of discourse.

While we don’t actually hear character’s voices, we do hear their thoughts. Surrounding this method of discourse is a stream of consciousness narrative, pages without punctuation, aside from periods. Mary Lago writes in a short review of the book published in World Literature Today, “The stream-of-consciousness method works well to keep all these ideas afloat (Lago3.)” Stream of consciousness also works to keep the characters afloat. Having no way to express one’s self is stressful and tiring. As we see in the novel, at the end of Moni’s stay in England she finds it hard to retain her quiet calm. She begins telling uncomfortable and gruesome stories, most of which she has made up and rearranged for shock value. By using stream of consciousness the novel reads like an omniscient journal entry. It gives the characters an outlet. It gives Moni and Antony a chance to meditate on their lives and the decomposition of their marriage. Moni is not the only one who is silenced by method of discourse. Anthony is also quieted in the novel. Although personally I think he’s an ass and deserves to have his tongue metaphorically cut out, it illustrates equality of gender that Anthony also struggles with silence. Women are not the only ones that are affected by societal norms; men also struggle to fit into the roles set out for them.

One of my favorite literary examples of this struggle is something that I read very recently on a classmate’s blog for my Writing for Performance class. One of my classmates wrote a great theatrical piece in which two of the characters are sharing their very different experiences with the character of Papa. The Mother has these lines, “I mean, look at the generation he grew up in, men weren’t allowed to express any emotion except anger. That was the only way he knew how to deal with it I guess (Riopelle).” The rest of the piece was wonderful but these lines in particular struck me with such a truth and resonance that they have followed me. Anthony reminds me of these lines. He too has a silent battle with emotions. He silently watches his marriage fall apart, his affair is murmurs echoing throughout his house but he never says a word on the subject. He and Moni don’t seem to speak to each other at all. He gives her the courtesy of lying to her about what he’s doing but that is all. He cannot speak openly about his emotions. The man is often stereotyped as the strong logical character. The emotions belong to the women. Especially with the emergence of the word “homosexual” men are even more urged towards manly/logical pursuits. They must be the manly man, the alpha male. To not be this character risks being the woman, the lower creature, the body. The chain goes like this: To be emotional  is to be like a woman  is to be homosexual  is to be unaccepted in society.

I think it’s this emotional instability that brings out feelings of animosity in the reader. In our group discussion on Memories of Rain, my group voiced an extreme aggravation with the novel. Anthony struggles between an unconditional love for his wife and a loss of romantic love. He tries to write off his infidelity as a cure for their passion. With every new affair he remembers his love for her. To escape the thought of hurting the one he loves he stays in silence. Gupta narrates, “he would love her forever, even though their passion was spent (Gupta18.)” But the reader can see that it is better to tell the truth than to continue in the cycle of pain that comes with lies. The honesty of the narrator has allowed the audience a very clear perception of the situation.

Anthony is not the only one whose silence is aggravating to the audience. The fact that Moni allows herself to be abused is equally infuriating. She uses similar faux-romantic phrases like, “For he had undertaken to fashion her dreams (Gupta166.)” While continuing to play the role of dutiful housewife and mother, continuing an identity forged in her blood by her home country. Moni makes double references not only to her marriage as dying but to her home country. In this metaphor, the narrator describes “The beauty of this rotting paradise (Gupta126.)” Anthony has destroyed Moni with his adultery as poverty and filth slowly eat away at the country of India. Both create silence. Moni fears, “the sin of living in the land of the plenty (Gupta108.)” She fears what the consequences have become for leaving her home to live with this husband that takes her for granted. She fears, she questions, she hurts but she does not vocalize. Even though she comes from a priveledged family in India she is inscribed with the oppressive societal norms from both countries. She is born with both definitions of perfect, both definitions of woman, both definitions of right, and she allows all to overpower her. She is born from a race of martyrs.

These aggravating silences made the novel practically unbearable to read. Fortunately, knowing that there was a rich historical and cultural context to back them up was a light to be guided by. I have always loved the culture of India, from its major religion of Hindi to the fun and corky musicals of Bollywood. I often fear, however, that the true story of India gets lost in the fashion and the glamour of it. That India itself is silenced. Gupta gives a voice to what Moni calls the “sin of living in the land of the plenty.” She lets the reader know that while they’re sitting on the couch in their college apartment watching Mother India that thousands are actually currently starving in India.

Furthermore, the story of two lovers, one from India and one from England seems to me to be playing at least a little on the history of the two countries, England’s colonization of India. In this interpretation, Moni and Anthony become a type of star-crossed lovers from two cultures that threaten to explode when mixed. This interpretation also furthers the silence of women in India. During colonization between 1858 and 1947 the entire country was silenced to the will of England, just as in the novel Moni takes on her role of dutiful wife and mother and silences her needs to those of her Englishman husband.

Although I did not enjoy actually reading the novel, I have enjoyed researching and picking it apart to create this essay. In the light of this interpretation, the novel Memories of Rain becomes an homage to silence. And in a way that’s exactly as it should be. We have to pick and stab at the objects that reflect our societies and hold our history because if not we let important lessons slip through our fingers. By taking away her character’s voices in Memories of Rain, Gupta puts on spotlight on silence, giving voice to those silenced in England as well as in India. She shouts it from Virginia Woolf’s mountaintop, use your voices, use your talents, and never forget to love and celebrate. By prodding her subject will an ice pick Gupta’s novel opens up a fissure of awareness that stands to help end the silence that it curates and create awareness, a new history, a new language.

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Works Referenced

Guppy, Shusha. "When the Twain Met." The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 28 Sept. 1992. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. .

Henderson, Carol E. "Women, Marriage, and Family." Culture and Customs of India. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002. 123-40. Print.

Lago, Mary. "Memories of Rain by Sunetra Gupta." Review. World Literature Today 1993: 445. Jstor. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. .

Riopelle, Emily. "Layers of Being." Web log post. Strings of Words. Blogger.com, 24 Feb. 2012. Web. 20 Mar. 2012. <201riopelle.blogspot.com>.

[Tina Tamman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book I both loved and hated intensely. The story is very simple and moving, of a failing marriage, but it's the way it is told! Gupta's text is relentless: whole pages that are just one sentence, whole pages with no paragraphs, practically no dialogue. Very easy to get lost: are you in Calcutta or in London, is it the husband or somebody else? Quite a few times I got myself confused but going back and checking is hardly practical, not with this loose sentence structure. The writing is certainly atmospheric but it is not an easy read. Not quite 200 pages, it took me an age to read it. And yet, some sections are simply hauntingly beautiful.

[Ken Moraff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really great writing style, and a compelling story to go with it

[Nathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Memories of Rain was a beautifully challenging text for me. I did not find the story enjoyable to read but liked poetic language of Gupta. The novel was one of those experiences where I felt inadequate as a reader. The structure was mostly Faulknerian sentence-paragraphs with no clear breaks for dialog or inner monologues. The stream-of-consciousness flow of the book was much like Virgina Woolf's approach but with more lyricism. The story moves seamlessly between Moni's current broken marriage to Anthony. This lecherous English man enchants Moni while he is in Kolkatta studying Bengali theatre. Shortly after their wedding night Moni realizes that he has a roving eye. As a new mother and immigrant living in England, she feels that she can not leave Anthony even after he takes up a younger lover. The heart of the novel is how Moni plans and follows through leaving her husband as she and her daughter make a new life.

[Abhaga · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Sahitya Academy Award winner, it too a lot of hard work to lay my hands on this. Finally got a reasonably priced secondhand copy from US.

Not much to say. It is one of those books where every noun has adjectives and you often have little idea of what is meant. No afternoon is just an afternoon, it is dense or slowing or another kind that you can assign meaning to as per your life experiences or even just let be.

There is a nice build up in the story but it also never seemed to progresses definitively. There is present, and there is past from various points of time in the book all weaved together. After half of the book, the flashbacks became annoying - I no longer cared about what they are portraying or trying to say. I guess I can see the craft here but perhaps, not my kind of book.

[Helen Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an emotional story. Full of evocative description and poetry, it’s enormously long stream of conscious sentences can get a little wearing after a while. Illegal as it no doubt is, I was rooting for Moni to get away from the flagrant behaviour of her husband and the cruel, never-ending intrusive presence in their lives of Anna, his lover. Relying on how she is trapped in a foreign land, the story is also rather warped how much Moni & Anthony relish the pain & martyrdom in their relationship - over imagining each scene. One to make you equally cross & stay with you for it’s beautiful prose, longing to visit India.

[Christina Packard · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really tried to connect, not so much with the story, but how it was written. I don't feel it is a book for the average reader looking for enjoyment: maybe an English major would be more like it. No paragraphs. Sentences that had a look or a feel they were saying something I could hold on it, but nope. The thoughts and meanings just ran on and on. How could Gupta remember all those thoughts and not repeat himself. I just kept thinking this books must have been very stressful to write.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars actually

[Sayari Debnath · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

As such Sunetra Gupta’s debut novel, Memories of Rain, is nothing new. There have been countless of time where we have read about an Indian living abroad and the various cultural difficulties. However Gupta does approach this often used plot differently.

Here the power lies in the writing style. Gupta is very descriptive and a good number of them take up quite a few pages. It is not only material objects either, Gupta excels when she is describing the raw emotions running though her characters.

Plot-wise it is quite easy to summarise

English man (Anthony) goes to India to visit

Falls in love with Indian girl (Moni) and brings her to the U.K.

Man has an affair

Indian girl wants to escape.

As I said before it’s the words which change everything and Gupta is a wordsmith of the first degree. Plus the concept of time is all mashed together so past present and future do not have any boundaries.

Unfortunately I cannot say that I loved this novel. It can be exhaustive and at times the incredibly long sentences made me impatient but I did keep on reading and wondering how Moni will cope with her situation.

Not the worst I’ve read but not the best either.

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despairing of his constantly wandering eye and cheating ways, Moni, the Indian wife of an immature Englishman, thinks back to the various points of their relationship on the day that she has decided to leave him. The novel is a hynoptic meditation, flitting between the heavy intensity of their early days, the reality of making a life in a new country, and the pain of losing your husband to another woman. It's a little over written, lasting a little too long, but there are some beautiful images of India and some truly devastating moments at home with their young child. For a first work from an astonishingly talented woman (Gupta is a Full Professor of Zoology at Oxford aswell as a successful author), it's really quite something.

[Judith Rich · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was a fairly straightforward story of a failing marriage wrapped up as something else by using quotes from Rabindranath Tagore and over-use of flashbacks-within-flashbacks to the point of confusion - sometimes more than one flashback in the same sentence, for goodness' sake! The story itself was quite nice.

I think the Tagore poetry might lose something in translation, because I wasn't feeling its magic.

Read as one of the 1001 BTRBYD.

[Carolyn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried, but I just couldn't do it.
This writing style, with it's run on sentences and excessive detail, just isn't my thing.