Dark Holds No Terrors-Student's

by Shashi Deshpande

Brand New Deliver In 6-18 Working Days

Genres: Fiction, Indian Literature, India, Feminism, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Cultural

Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Novelist and short story writer, Shashi Deshpande began her career with short stories and has by now authored nine short story collections, twelve novels and four books for children. Three of her novels have received awards, including the Sahitya Akademi award for `That Long Silence'. Some of her other novels are `The Dark Holds No Terrors', `A Matter of Time', `Small Remedies', `Moving On', `In The Country of Deceit' and `Ships that Pass'. Her latest novel is `Shadow Play'.Many of her short stories and novels have been translated into a number of Indian as well as European languages. She has translated two plays by her father, Adya Rangacharya, (Shriranga), as well as his memoirs, from Kannada into English, and a novel by Gauri Deshpande from Marathi into English.
Apart from fiction, she has written a number of articles on various subjects - literature, language, Indian writing in English, feminism and women's writing - which have now been put together in a collection `Writing from the Margin.' She has been invited to participate in various literary conferences and festivals, as well as to lecture in Universities, both in India and abroad.

She was awarded the Padma Shri in 2008.

List of books by Shashi Deshpande

Dark Holds No Terrors (1982)
That Long Silence (1989)
A Matter of Time
Moving On
Small Remedies
Shadow Play (2013)
The Narayanpur Incident
If I Die Today
In the Country of Deceit
The Binding Vine
Ships That Pass (2012)
The Intrusion And Other Stories
3 Novels : A Summer Adventure, The Hidden Treasure, The Only Witness
Come Up & Be Dead
Collected Stories (Volume - 1)
Collected Stories (Volume - 2)
Writing from the Margin: And Other Essays

Reviews

[Versha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reason why I love all Shashi Deshpande’s books is because I can relate to her writing so well. Her protagonists though traditional yet are rational and practical. They have a feminist undertone which some what makes the character very real and relatable to me though dwelling upon the past like all her protagonist do is not one of them.

'Dark Holds No Terror' revolves around Sarita, a doctor by profession, an independent women, at least thats what she tries to portray but underneath, there is an emptiness in her which she is unable to fill. Is it not being a good daughter to her parents? or not being a good wife to her husband or failing as mother to children is one of the reason? She is unable to figure out. There is always something she is guilty of no mater what she does but she is not able to grow out of it. Perhaps to search that ’something’, one day Sarita leaves her husband, children, her profession and goes back to her maternal home. Wherein she is haunted by her mother's death as well as by her fathers silence. She dwells upon the past, how in her childhood days her mother used to accuse her of her brother’s death even though she was just a child then and how now she is unable to cope up with her husband and children with that past baggage. Yet, somehow she feels safe here at her maternal home, alone, at peace, out of all the daily chaos, with no one to interrupt her thoughts so that she could come to conclusion. Is Sarita’s journey to find herself is fruitful in the end? May be!

This was terrifyingly dark and haunting novel. Though the narration used to jump from third person to first still it was not odd, i could go with the flow easily. May be i am accustomed to Deshpande’s writing!

Here are few hauntingly beautiful quotes from the book…

"But why is happiness always so unreal? Why does it always seem an illusion? It is grief that has a bulk, a weight, a substance and stays real even after years. Happiness is so evanescent nothing left. Except sensations and feelings."

“People die inch by inch, bit by bit, the agony stretched out until the very last moment. But perhaps it helps, the pain. So that in the end there is nothing but pain. No dead sons, unforgiven daughter and feeble husbands,only pain and desired for death."

[Krutika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual Rating - 3.8/5.
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| Book Review | The Dark Holds No Terrors.
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"A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you." - Shashi Deshpande.
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I finished reading this book sometime in early March but wasn't sure how well I could come up with a review. This may partly have to do with the fact that it was a terrifyingly dark novel and also because of the complex characters that Deshpande brought out. This was my very first book by the author and I was blown away by her honesty. It's not subtle but something that stares right at your face. Another fascinating aspect of the book was the underlying presence of feminism. The protagonist is a feminist through and through and this shines all along the story. Although I liked the book, I can't be too sure if it's everyone's cup of tea.
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Sarita is a successful doctor who lives a comfortable life with her husband and two children. The family which seems normal from the outside, has problems of its own that only Sarita is aware of. Having had to lead a distant life from her parents, she decides to visit her father on hearing about her mother's death. Her stay extends for months as she comfortably falls into a routine that works well with her father and the young student who lives with him. It is here that she recalls her traumatic childhood, the cold shoulder she received from her mother all her life, her younger brother's death and finally, the memories of her leaving behind her parents to marry her husband. Her dreams of having a beautiful marriage now seems distant to her as she struggles to give her husband's occasional violent behaviour a name.
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When it comes to story and structure of the plot, there's not much to hold on to. But Deshpande makes up for it with her brilliant narration. Albeit it's hard not to like her stories, there's a subtle presence of darkness that lurkes throughout the book. In this story, Sarita's character is written fiercely, often making her seem more human and relatable. It addresses mental health and many other societal problems that are shrugged off easily even today. Sarita seemed familiar, almost like a next door neighbour and her affliction towards her past is almost painful to witness. This book is one of self discovery and goes to show it's never too late to realise or relive one's choices. This novel might even seem depressing so I wouldn't recommend it to everyone. But if you truly seek comfort from narration and the power it holds, then please do read it.

[Samruddhi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shashi Deshpande was introduced to me as an under-rated Indian writer with three decades of experience in the profession. The month's book club pick, Indian authors and their mediocre writing styles are a private pet peeve, I can't seem to get away from exploring them anyway so it becomes an endless cycle of disappointment and hope. That Long Silence is a Sahitya Akademi Award winner but I have to still get to it, doubt if I will if this one is an indicator.
The Dark Holds No Terrors has a synopsis trying hard to capture a reader's interest. The story is about a successful Bombay doctor whose reality is darker than the surface. I had been simultaneously reading Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day and it was amusing and frustrating to note how similar the style of prose and general tone of the protagonist's internal thoughts were in both novels even as they're talking about completely different women in separate time periods. The styles are lucid and both Desai and Deshpande present their conveyance on their palms and feed a reader's mouth. Looking at the standard of prose, I am reminded of my high school English text- it makes me cringe. Both of the authors have an obsession with Western Literature and constantly refer to it through their characters but I have a major problem with this- how many average women: primary school teachers or practicing doctors actually discuss Shakespeare or Harriet in the typical Indian setting? Why on earth would they compare peers to Marilyn Monroe or another Hollywood actor in the times of Madhubala, Helen or Sharmila Tagore, Amitabh Bachchan and Shammi Kapoor? Desai's Clear Light of Day repeats Byron and other Western products of the time in Literature and Cinema and I shake my head in disbelief... Here is highlighted my old problem with Indian writers who include no nuances of the country and project stories with agendas through the Whiter Lens. And these are books published in the 1980s!
Anyway, turning back to the novel, Deshpande also changes the person from first to the third and vice versa without warning and it is apparent, without reason. She could have chosen only one way of the voice and it wouldn't have changed the story, this frequent illogical switch makes the text more frustrating to read. Sarita or Saru has a caustic relationship with her mother but this has not been executed well, her mother simply comes off as a caricature who has no reason for her behaviour (or rather only a supposedly explosive one involving Sarita's sibling). The entire burden of plot or progress is on Sarita's character. Desai's Clear Light of Day and Deshpande's The Dark Holds No Terrors are both portraits more than character- driven novels, in that both are two-tone and the depth in them somehow missing. The agenda of feminism is more forefront in Deshpande's novel as many other women are included in singular lines and bring about only disgust from Sarita no matter what they do. Perpetually bleak in their moods, both novels suffer from stilted dialogues, especially Deshpande's text; it screams irregularities and tosses British cultural phrases in an Indian setting. Deshpande's text also sculpts Sarita and her character only yet, she is stationery, for the reader to remark on clinically, a divine idol. Deshpande's text must have been 'revolutionary' at the time to really dissect it in candour, flaws easily overlooked, Uppercase Savarna Lens thoroughly clicked on but throughout the text her words cut and cut albeit cleanly, they are meant to elicit shock and sympathy- I couldn't manifest either. Sarita's tone turned grating as the pages flipped. If only the prose would have been more sensitive... It seemed like an artificial distant privileged person commenting about the problems a gender faced. The themes were bold and needed thorough examination- patriarchy, sexual assault, marital rape, the male gaze, a mother's relationship with children, etc. Deshpande tried to cram too many themes in a single text without finesse or seeing them through to the end. I wish the execution would have been better...
The Dark Holds No Terrors seems more confused though that my have been a reflection of the times. Everything is Black and White, each act caustic on purpose, Desphande is obviously trying to provoke the reader by announcing 'Look at what you have done to a woman!' but the exclamation is too hard, so much so that it threatens to break. On the surface, I know Sarita is a doctor but I can't see it for myself in her internal monologues or dialogues with patients, etc. Sarita despises the 'weakness' in women yet in a huge city like Bombay, hasn't met or heard new perspectives and imprisons herself in that word, uses it as an excuse to stay in the middle of abuse when she has the privilege and choice to leave.
The entire novel is a circle, goes back to it's starting point in all the 'four' parts. I felt the segregation unnecessary because without it, the text had fluidity and the parts disrupted it. The peripheral characters have a lot of novel paragraphs but they don't get fleshed out because they ultimately go nowhere, they don't even have proper dimensions to be gauged. Sarita refers to her decisions as cold and calculative many times but her declarations and effectively, her entire monologue fall flat instead of standing at all.
My rating is mostly for the themes haphazardly explored in the novel. A read if you have nothing better to do, a disappointingly shallow insight to a contemporary Indian woman...

[Veda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I took a long looonnnggg time to finish this.

The words that kept flashing in my mind as I finished reading this book were 'aching', 'longing', 'haunting', 'pain', 'loneliness' and a few more I suppose.

That I could relate to the emotions mentioned above, along with some of the book is a little melancholic to say the least and I want to get out of that mood.

As an Indian and that too a middle-class Indian woman, one has some exposure to what Saru has gone through because of the surrounding environment. Yet, it doesn't make it any less easy to read through it again :)

I am glad I read the book though, though I am not sure if I would pick up any of Shashi Deshpande's books again if they have similar moods.

Maybe when I am at a better place in life and when I need not put up a show of being alright and being a strong, independent woman, the way Saru (the protagonist) has done, I will pick up such books again :)

[Aditi Chikhale · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received this book as gift because it is a safe bet to gift me anything written by Shashi Deshpande. I dived into the book soon after I got it.

Sarita or ‘Saru’ is the protagonist of this book. She is a doctor, working in Bombay with two kids and a husband. A husband she had married in college because they were in love. Because this person was ready to love her unlike her parents. She is estranged from her family from the time of their marriage because it is an inter-caste marriage, not approved by her parents. Presently, she hears of her mother’s death and goes back to her house after ages, hoping to find something there. Hoping to escape from a life she had envisioned as a ‘happily-ever-after’.

Saru is trapped under the weight of childhood injustices, a harsh unloving mother, and a jealous violent man who happens to be her husband. Parental rejection is probably one of the most painful feelings in the world. When her mother does that, repeatedly through her actions and explicit words, Saru experiences a grief too large for her age. That and the hovering guilt of not being able to save her brother from drowning. The author writes beautifully and authentically about these topics. The chapters are short and though this not a plot-driven story, the reader is never bored reading about Saru’s thoughts, her flashbulb memories, her fears, etc. It is a good book. Although, I would have liked the ending to be a little more concrete.

Poor little scared boy, who never grew up to know that the dark holds no terrors. That the terrors are inside us all the time. We carry them within us, and like traitors they spring out, when we least expect them, to scratch and maul.

All right, so I’m alone. But so’s everyone else. Human beings… they’re going to fail you. But because there’s just us, because there’s no one else, we have to go on trying. If we can’t believe in ourselves, we’re sunk.

[Ahtims · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first book by this author and I was impressed. This is a dark story with psychological undertones. A woman who comes back to her paternal home after her mother's death faces her inner demons. Her mother was a cold woman who seemed to loathe her as she thinks her responsible for her brother's death by drowning, and who had ostracised her after marrying a lower caste good for nothing fellow. The father is meek and low profile, though he sticks up for his daughter on one or two occasions. There is a young boy who is now staying with her father as a paying guest, and they all set up into daily routine soon.
I loved reading the book and would be on the lookout for other works by this author.

[Ajay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astute and powerful, this book burrows into the fault-lines that often exist within middle-class families, serving up a searing human drama that can be difficult to read at times but is all the more enriching for it.

[Iza B. Aziz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saat perempuan itu memilih tujuan hidupnya, dia digelar perempuan yang mementingkan diri.

Watak Saru didalam novel ini memaparkan timbunan kesengsaraan yang dihadapi oleh insan yang bernama perempuan. Saru memikul kegelisahan yang dibawa sejak zaman kanak-kanak. Bagaimana ibunya menjadi musuh pertama dalam hidupnya.

Saru dicabar dengan pelbagai pengalaman lalu. Menyingkap penganiayaan emosi yang dilalui dari tangan ibu, ayah dan suaminya sendiri. Emosi itu makhluk yang lemah, jangan sesekali perempuan bermain emosi, ia akan menjadi manusia yang longlai. Jika ingin terus hidup dalam masyarakat ini, ketepikan emosi dan kehendak diri.
_____________________
Untuk menjadi anak yang taat itu sudah susah, apatah lagi bila menjadi anak perempuan.

Sakit rasanya berkongsi perasaan bersama Saru, kami adalah hasil dari acuan kehidupan awal yang penuh dengan salah faham, tiada punya erti dan pengabaian oleh insan yang sewajarnya menjadi sosok rujukan. Namun, ia tidak harus diubah sebagai dendam tetapi pengajaran untuk memangkas supaya ia tidak berlaku lagi.

Apa yang amat memilukan hati saya dari novel ini ketika Saru mahu mengembalikan kepercayaan kepada dirinya. Sakit betapa sakitnya dalam mencari penamat secara sendirian. Adakah penutup akan menyelamatkan Saru? Apakah segalanya memerlukan penyelesaian? Atau cukuplah sekadar Saru pilih untuk mementingkan dirinya pula.

[Elena Fu · Rating 4 out of 5]

took me a while to finish. overall i think i liked the experience: the writing really is beautiful and thought provoking. the character building of saru is intense, but well done; almost leaving the other characters (seemingly to some extent purposefully) underdeveloped. the dual time and perspective switching is jarring but also doesn’t feel purposeless. i think the ending fell a bit flat for me but i’ll have to think on that a little longer. very interesting and complex meditation on the role of women in a society that posits masculinity in terms of femininity

[Theresa Sussman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I needed this book right now. While the ending left something to be desired, the writing of the protagonist's painful and abusive relationships with both her mother and her husband stayed with me. it's been a very long time since a book made me cry. this one did.

[Vaidya · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of her best works.
Will definitely need a re-read to get it fully.

[Jasleen Kaur · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main character started off so strong and you will surely sympathize with her. But as the story progresses you feel a strong annoyance against her. It feels the author forgets where she started off but the end sums it all up nicely. We all are lost and blaming others all the time. But we forget we are villains in other people's stories too. A nice read.

[Ravina P · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
It goes as a prologue to all the novels she published after this one. So beautifully lonely, detached and fragmented. How does she do it?

[Maryanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of people (including those who recommended it to me) would rightly love this book. It's beautifully written and quite haunting but really wasn't my cup of tea. If you enjoy philosophical writing on the changing role of women in historically oppressive societies it's a wonderful read. As much as I love the idea of philosophical writing on the changing role of women in historically oppressive societies, I find very frequently that I don't enjoy the process of reading it (maybe because it ends up feeling more like a "process" than a literary journey.)

[Vishali · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dark holds no terrors is a journey of self discovery. This is a story of a succesful independent woman Saritha ,a victim of some unfavorable circumstances and is struggling with her inner demons.
Shashi Deshpande tries to empower a modern woman with the idea that one can be a better version of herself by being in the family and not by running away from it.
I highly doubt if this can hold true in a patriarchal society that expects women to submit themselves to conventional roles.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novel records the events that took place in the past and had left a deep impression upon Santa’s psyche. When she returned to her father’s house, she started rewind the whole film of her past life, analysed each action objectively.

Even Dhruva’s death came in for debate with her father in the conclusion of the novel. She told her father why she had decided to go out of the house on that inopportune day.

She wanted to show her child’s annoyance to her parents who had disallowed her to go to the film with Smita’s family on a fragile justification. She explained to her father that she had no mind to take Dhruva with her, but Dhruva was a headstrong, pigheaded and spoilt child. She asked him convincingly to go back to the house but he would not budge.

When Dhruva drowned, she also went into the pond, tried her best to rescue him, but in so doing, she felt she would also drown.

The entire panorama is recreated with all the aspects as if she was replaying an audio-visual film, to establish her blamelessness, to clear herself of the charge of murder that her mother had levelled against her.

She presented such an explicit depiction of the situation that her lather had nothing to say but that they did not blame her for Dhruva’s death and that her mother had not said all that was reported by Prof. Kulkarni, and that her mother had the yearning to meet her in last days of her life.

Santa travelled down the memory lane.

She remembered how her friend had taken her to her room wherefrom she had to escape to save her honour from three hooligans, how she being juvenile, was taken by the features, gestures and performance of Manohar, how she met him, and fell victim to her feminine aspiration to triumph over a superior man, how she burnt at times for love, how Manohar felt shamed due to her better position and standing in the society, how Manohar became a psychopath, how she left him Io go to her father, and how she came to accept Manohar after a stretched dithering.

The novel presents a decisive study of her past events, which left marks on her psyche. Looking back at the events gave her opportunity to give an honest analysis of each episode.

Deshpande is exceptionally practical in presenting diverse aspects of the problems and facets of a girl’s life. There is no room for daydream in this novel. She has for example, drawn a levelheaded picture of a middle class adolescent girl forced to live an isolated life, considering contacts with the boys of her age a taboo.

Therefore, her meetings with Manohar gave her joy which she had never tasted till then. Besides her mother had told her that she was not attractive enough to win the love of any male, but when she heard from Manohar saying to her in Keatsian words that longest life would be too diminutive in her love swept her off the ground.

The untested girl was trapped and married with Manohar under the spell of her first love. The feeling of being trapped came when realities abated the intensity of emotion She felt at times that arranged marriage with traditional customs was better.

The author has showed characters of women of all groups and classes — pubescents married, aged, neglected, persecuted. Evidently, the flourishing and well-attended ones have been left out, perchance because the campaigner of “the weak, the lonely, the defeated, the forsaken, the unhappy” had no concern at all with the affluent ones.

Moreover, the drama of struggle against persecution by man and fate is absent from the life of the rich persons.

Deshpande has presented a vibrant picture of a widow, neglected by the children in the character of Mavshi, of a deserted woman in grandmother, of a tortured one in that who was tied to a peg in a stable, of a persecuted one in that who jumped into the well to commit suicide, of a simpleton, insensible of the tyrannies inflicted by her husband, in Smita, of an annoyed one in Nalu, and a champion of woman’s cause in Santa.

In these character-sketches, Deshpande remains tied to the realities of life.

Each one of them is archetypal of her class often found intermingled in the Indian society.

The closest to the actuality is Santa herself.

What she advised to the girls of Nalu’s college is based on what Santa had experienced in her life and people observe and practice in day-to-day life.

This had in fact happened in the life of Santa. A doctor girl was married to a lecturer and the life really became distressing both to the husband and the wife.

Children also suffered into the bargain. The question that tormented her was why woman should always be inferior to man.

The wife should always be inferior to man — “A wife must always be a few feet behind her husband. If he is an M. A., you should be B.A. If he is 5’4” tall, you shouldn’t be more than 5’3” tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees, you should never earn more than four hundred ninety nine rupees: This is the only rule to follow, if you want a happy marriage. Don’t ever try to reverse the Doctor-nurse, Executive-secretary, Principal-teacher role. It can be traumatic, disastrous”.

[Neeta Sirvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dark Holds No Terrors by Shashi Deshpande is a powerful work of fiction that revolves around the life of Sarita (Saru), a woman deeply haunted by her childhood trauma and the emotional scars that follow her into adulthood.

Saru grows up burdened by the guilt of her younger brother Dhurva’s death by drowning. Though it was not her fault, her mother relentlessly blames her, going so far as to curse her with the cruel words: “Why didn’t you die instead of him?” This constant accusation creates a lasting wound, shaping Saru’s sense of self, guilt, and fear. Her mother’s coldness, favoritism, and domineering nature deny Saru affection and security, leaving her emotionally isolated from a very young age.

In search of freedom, Saru marries Manohar, a poet, and moves to Bombay, where she builds a successful career as a doctor. However, her professional success becomes the very reason her marriage begins to collapse. Manohar grows increasingly insecure and jealous as people admire Saru, seek her help, and acknowledge her achievements, while his own identity fades into the background. Gradually, love turns into resentment, and resentment into brutality.

Manohar’s violence is sudden, silent, and terrifying—occurring at night, leaving Saru physically and emotionally shattered. Trapped in a marriage where intimacy becomes a source of fear, Saru endures pain in silence, much like she did as a child.

After her mother’s death, Saru returns to her parental home, hoping to escape her husband’s cruelty and seeking guidance from her father. Instead, the visit forces her to confront buried memories—her childhood loneliness, her mother’s rejection, and the deep-rooted fear that has always governed her life. The house becomes a space of reflection, where past and present merge, compelling Saru to question her choices, her marriage, and her own complicity in enduring silence.

At its core, The Dark Holds No Terrors is a profound exploration of female suffering, marital power dynamics, emotional repression, and the cost of silence. The title itself is symbolic—Saru once tells her brother, who is afraid of the dark, that “the dark holds no terrors.” Yet the novel powerfully suggests that the real terrors live within us. We carry them quietly, like traitors, and they surface when we least expect them—scratching, mauling, and refusing to be ignored.

Shashi Deshpande presents a deeply moving portrait of a woman struggling to survive in a world that offers no easy escape at any stage of her life. Saru’s journey is not just about marriage or childhood trauma, but about finding the courage to confront fear, reclaim agency, and break free from long-held silence.

[Kriti singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book review
Book The dark holds no terrors
Author: Shashi Deshpande
Favourite quote :
▪️The dark holds no terrors, that the terrors are inside us all the time. We carry them within us, and like traitors they spring out, when we least expect them to scratch and maul.
▪️Book review: The book is divided in 3 parts one with deals with protagonists childhood second with her coming of age and third with her mid life. This was terrifyingly dark and haunting novel. Though the narration used to jump from third person to first still it was not odd, i could go with the flow easily. May be i am accustomed to Deshpande’s writing!
Saru’s life is unconsciously oriented towards proving something to her mother. To 'show her mother, to make her realise', Saru works hard as a student. Only her school and her books exist for her. It is like revenge against her mother because her mother makes her believe that it was she who let her brother die. Sarita still remembers her mother's bitter words uttered when as a little girl she was unable to save her younger brother from drowning. Now her mother is dead and Sarita returns to the family home, ostensibly to take care of her father, but in reality to escape the nightmarish brutality her husband inflicts on her every night.
This story is so achingly good that you kind of lose yourself in the marvellous scripture. The story has touched all sore points in a society like Preference of male child, Male ego,marital violence, why females are the inferior sex ,patriarchy. This book is a must read as it opens our eyes and forces us to look.
In one word this book is compelling.
5/5

[Santosh Jha · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Dark Holds No Terrors is one of the finest reads of mine this year. It haunts me—the pain, the agony, the process, all of it lingers long after finishing. I was so invested that it felt like reading the diary of a paranoid yet deeply human protagonist. I love stories of inner conflict—dilemma, regret, suppressed wounds—and this novel gave me that in abundance.

The writing is sharp and unforgettable, filled with lines that cut deep. Quotes like “You are alone and always will be alone” and “Silences are dangerous. Words can be dealt with, but silences need to be feared” stayed with me. They capture the essence of Saru’s journey—her loneliness, her unspoken pain, her silent battles. Other lines like “Fear is a death, slow and unseen, gnawing away at you” and “There is no protection in this world. You are always vulnerable” made me pause, reread, and feel the weight of her truth.

The novel is both personal and universal. Set in the 1980s, it still speaks directly to today—“To be a woman is to be always afraid” remains heartbreakingly real. That timelessness is what makes the book so powerful.

I was completely immersed. The story makes you sad, but in a way that forces you to confront the silences and wounds within a mother–daughter bond and a fractured marriage. It moved me, unsettled me, and I know it will continue to haunt me for a long time

[Zainab Wahab]

"She peeped into the room which had been her parents'. It had been 'their' room, but it had always seemed only his, so successfully had she managed to efface her personality from the room. And how powerful, how strong, she now thought, her mother had been to achieve that. How certain of herself she must have been!"

Returning to fiction after weeks with this one. Having read Shashi Deshpande's short stories, I knew this would be the perfect book to get me out of my slump.

118 pages in

Wow this book turned out to be so mediocre. The prose does not shine. It appears as if Deshpande ran out of ideas that could've added layers to the plot and started repeating the themes that had already been established. Yes, i know Saru didn't feel loved by her mother and she suffered due to her apathetic passive aggressive husband, can we please move beyond that??

[Shweta Kudrimoti · Rating 2 out of 5]

Khatam, tata, byebye, goodbye, gaya *sigh*
The last book of the semester 2 novel module and I am sick of every novel I read except the guide.
This book is legit so depressing that it should be named as a girl's PTSD of mother issues makes her a doctor but still faces assault from her husband.
Her PTSD is so bad that she legit blames herself for drowning her brother in the lake and faces humiliation from her mom who never loved her but idgaf about it. And her dad is such a wuss, he doesn't even defend her. And when he does it's after his chick had died. Like wut the frack bro?
Mahn, I guess I need a pick-me-up book.

[Chris Hormis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Violently sobbed so much while reading this. I don't know if I'll ever reread this book again but it has etched a special place in my heart. It felt like looking at a mirror and being forced to confront parts of myself I despised, but at the same time watching a life that almost could have been mine in absolute horror and relief, and at the same time deeply curious about how different mother-daughter relationships are because mine is nothing like this. Ah, I'll think about this a lot.

[Mariam · Rating 5 out of 5]

My one repeated thought reading this was how had I not come across this before? Such a powerful & beautiful novel of guilt, rejection & pain stemming from childhood trauma pervades adult life. The recurring theme of emotionally attuned parenting hits particularly hard. A wonderful story filled with undeniable truths. Now for more books by this wonderful author…

[Gulshan Kumar Agarwal · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of book that you have to read two, three, maybe four times to fully take it in. I don't have enough words to describe what this book makes me feel. I feel like this is one of those books I will keep coming back to again and again over the years and find it different each and every time.

TW: mention of rape and emotional abuse.

[Ravi Prakash · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very nice novel showing the inferiority of man before a successful woman in a marriage bond... awesome!!

[Aradhana Yadav · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best feminist novel.

[Navya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really the usual kinda books I like to read but it was definitely a good change to read something a little deeper. Thanks to my bestie for recommending this :)

[Nasra]

solid read but it felt like a rough draft for the concepts in A Matter of Time.

[Sarah Din · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it for uni.

[Blessings of Twilight · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this book. It's so captivating.