She Will Build Him a City

by Raj Kamal Jha

As night falls in Delhi, a mother spins tales from her past for her sleeping daughter. Now grown up, her child is a puzzle with a million pieces, whom she hopes, through her words and her love, to somehow make whole again.

Meanwhile, a young man rides the last train from Rajiv Chowk Station and dreams of murder.

In another corner of the city, a newborn wrapped in a blood-red towel lies on the steps of an orphanage as his mother walks away.

There are twenty million bodies in this city, but the stories of this woman, man, and child--of a secret love that blossoms in the shadows of grief, of a corrosive guilt that taints the soul, and of a boy who maps his own destiny--weave in and out of the lives of those around them to form a dazzling kaleidoscope of a novel.

Beautiful, beguiling, and audacious, this is the story of a city and its people, of love and horror, of belonging and forgiveness: a powerful and unforgettable tale of modern India.

Genres: Fiction, India, Literary Fiction

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 26, 2015

About the author

Raj Kamal Jha (Hindi: राज कमल झा; born 1966) is Chief Editor of the daily newspaper The Indian Express and an acclaimed novelist. He lives in Gurgaon.

Jha was born in Bhagalpur, Bihar, and was raised in Calcutta, West Bengal, where he went to school at St. Joseph's College. He then attended the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he got his Bachelor of Technology with Honors in Mechanical Engineering. He was the editor of the campus magazine Alankar in his third (junior) and fourth (senior) years at IIT, where his first writing and editing skills got honed. After graduating from IIT in June 1988, he received a tuition waiver and full scholarship from Graduate School of Journalism at the University of Southern California to pursue a Master's program in Print Journalism; he received his M.A. in 1990.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

This started out for me as a five star read, but by the end I was thinking more a three star - so I compromised on a 4 star rating. I initially liked the absurdist, hallucinatory, almost 'magic realism' style of the prose and story, but as it went on, I found it increasingly annoying. Although I made SOME connections between the three main threads and the 'Meanwhile' sections, by the ending I was missing any coherent, cohesive understanding of what it was all about. What was the Woman's reading of the Nobel winners supposed to indicate? What was the meaning of Mr Sharma's son's camera phone and the movie by 'Johnny'? Why is Orphan aborted as a fetus, yet still alive? How does the rape of the woman at the end mesh with the story of the rape/murder on the ticker tape? So many unanswered questions - and by the end I was thinking this is 2nd or 3rd rate - if not an outright parody of - Marquez.

[Hillary]

This book went way over my head... I enjoyed the characters overall and parts of the book, but the writing really threw me off from the start. As the confusing writing is also mixed with magical realism, it was really difficult for me to understand completely what the author was trying to get at, and what the overall plot of the book is. It felt like a book with no proper direction, rather just snippets of people's lives and an ending.

In saying that, though, the ending was quite interesting and tied well together - it gave me a little satisfaction that the rest of the book definitely did not. I also enjoyed this book because it gave me more context about India; now I have a bit of a stronger understanding of the juxtaposition between the rich and the poor in the country and their difficulties.

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys*]

I didn't make it far in this one. I can't figure out if the writing is rambling, trying to be poetic and just really doesn't make any sense. (I'm going for the not making any sense one)

I received an arc copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

[Siddharth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A tale of three parallel, loosely connected narratives spun around a changing city, that starts off with a blistering drive, but mellows down with increasing spoonfuls of magical realism thrown into the mix.

A slightly disappointed 3 stars.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novel set in Gurgaon (a suburb of Delhi), though the book itself constantly refers to the location as "New City". Gurgaon is a planned development (I mean, there was a village there before, but nearly everything that exists there now has been built since the 1990s) of massive skyscrapers, highways, malls, etc. It's the home of many corporate headquarters, as well as many of the richest people in the world. But because it's come up so rapidly, and is populated by such incredible wealth, there are several fundamental problems with it as a city: there's almost no public transportation or sidewalks, the servants and workers of all those rich people have nowhere nearby to live, forcing them to commute hours, and social services for the poor are basically non-existent. All this in a suburb of Delhi, a city in which poverty is not exactly an issue of the past.

I'm going on and on about the setting, because Gurgaon itself is basically the fundamental premise of the whole book: that juxtaposition of extreme wealth and extreme poverty which characterizes a lot of India today, but is most extreme in this one suburb.

Okay, so as for what actually happens: She Will Build Him a City is composed of three strands of characters, who don't reveal their connection until the very end. In one plot, an elderly woman speaks in the first person to her sleeping adult daughter, retelling the story of their (fairly normal, middle-class) life. In another plot, a newborn named Orphan is abandoned in front of an orphanage. This thread involves a lot of magical realism not present in the rest of the book: Orphan talks to dogs, narrowly escapes becoming a celebrity, learns how to disappear and how to literally step into movies. Finally, an unnamed wealthy man reenacts American Psycho for India in 2015. Right down to the constant recitation of brand names and prices, and the extreme violence against animals, woman, and children which the narration calls into question, leaving it unclear how much actually happens and how much is fantasy. Well, I suppose the critique works as well for modern Gurgaon as it did for NYC in the 80s.

The narration is all stream-of-consciousness, which I really liked for about half a page, then thought it seemed rushed and full of run-on sentences that made me feel like I couldn't catch my breath, and then finally I adjusted to it enough that it was no longer noticeable.

I did like the book, although the more I think about it, the more trite I think its ultimate message is (see, the killer represents the decadence and immorality of too much wealth too fast, and the baby is the soul of the poor that the wealthy are abandoning, but the two middle-class women have to "build him a city" by being mothers! Get it?), but ah well. There are lots of memorable characters and images, and many of the side details are far more interesting than the main thrust. I'll be checking out other books by the author.

I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.

[Manjul Bajaj · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

Jha’s brand of magic realism is somewhat akin to the work of Catalan pain­ter and muralist Joan Miro. He uses generic names (Apartment City, Taxi Driver, Security Guard) to create a sprawling, stylised canvas that is flat, with a dream-like automatism to it. Against this, he mounts a few characters and narratives in vivid, almost lurid detail, picking out each in isolation and arranging them in deliberate juxtaposition to the whole, such that the figures seem to float above the ground, separate and surreal. Again, like Miro, Jha uses the artifice of a childlike representation to magnify the sense of horror. The Red Balloon too seems to have floated right off a Miro canvas and into the novel.

READ THE FULL REVIEW AT http://www.outlookindia.com/article/e...

[Varsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was a time when Midnight’s Children was being written by not just a person, but by a nation; here comes another time when another narrative of modern India has taken birth from the womb of a nation, instead of a mind. Rajkamal Jha’s novel She Will Build Him A City published by Bloomsbury India is such a saga which tells multiple tales entwined into one narrative; just like this nation - India, known for its oneness and plurality; divided by states, united by a nation. Read the full review, here - http://reviewsindiamagazine.blogspot....

[Jairam Mohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An esoteric, unhinging ride which provides readers a peek into the modern Indian city with all its class, caste, income, status and various other forms of divides on full display. Although the author uses Delhi as an example, this book could have been set in any other Indian city and the impact would still have been the same.

Using an unconventional mixture of fantasy and reality, while being brutally honest all the time, Raj Kamal Jha forces all of us to peek inside ourselves and try and identify the best and worst in each of us.

[Lori Tatar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is almost indescribable. Raj Kamal Jha has captured something exquisite and surreal in its horror and loneliness while also showing incredible beauty and love in a setting that is also both beautiful and terrible. The juxtapositions in the story make it all the more breathtaking. This is a must-read and I look forward to re-reading it after I put it away for awhile.

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very addictive read, but it's just too dark.

[Renita D'Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful and heart breaking

[Mary Cormack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just could not get into it. Struggled to work out where the story was. Too many characters spaced out widely so I felt I was getting engaged in a character then he/she would not be mentioned for ages. Then every now and again a “dream/fantasy” sequence that made no sense.
Gave up about halfway through so maybe the characters all came together in the second half.

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the style of this book, and many of the moments in it, but I just didn't find it that engaging.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best styles of narration I've ever read - the story flows beautifully, punctuated by poetry and the occasional fantasy element. One moment you are sinking into the bleak despair of a young woman on her husband's death and the next there's a dog flying off into the sky.

At it's crux this is a story about class disparity, the man who spends 50,000 rupees on a whim to stay in a hotel next to his house for one night, just down the street from a slum where a family anguishes about saving their sick daughter with only 45,000 rupees to their name. The characters were beautifully fleshed out, everyone has a past and a motive, and the writer shows incredible compassion for them. Kalyani makes up stories about how the different kids in the orphanage got there, single line fairytales, the sheer absurdity of which intensifies the misery weighing down the situation. I enjoyed the story, the mystery keeping me hooked all the way until the end. I also liked how things like striking for lacking basic utilities in one's home or even protesting against reservation in a medical college is normalised in the story, we need more writers to set this as the backdrop to their novels instead of outlining everyday consumer activities.

The book mildly broaches issues of mental health, while not fully sinking it's teeth into it and that probably it's main drawback. This book has one of those pseudo-endings I am not a big fan of, where the final details are not all there, it's whatever you want it to be - questions like does Orphan meet his mother or find a safe new home never get answered. I also did not understand why there was that short segment about Nidhi - rape is definitely one thing there is already more than enough of in Indian media and this seemed an absolutely unnecessary all-too graphic exploration in this book.

[Isabel Khine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars for what I think has more merit as a social commentary than a narrative. The disparate parts of society in a rapidly industrialising India that the author tries to communicate are too loosely tied for any consistent tone. I found myself invested in Kalyani’s gentle attachment to Orphan, to then find no conclusion or return to her by the end of the novel.

The core message however, is clear enough: be wary of silent men in busy streets.

[Jenny · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is all over the place. Its so hard to understand who is who and what is going on. When i did understand parts it was interesting (mainly because I learnt about india) but its not worth the read unfortunately. It also had some gross dialogue too. I read this on audable, that was the only way i could finish it.

[Nikhil Kumar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is a portrait of India - a blend of shock and tender, destitution and dreams. It reaches into the world of mundane and depicts the uncanny. It bares the superficial facde of New India with an unusual grasp of the unseen, the unreported but lived daily and stoically.

[Samantha Harrington · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wonderfully written and structured. It's a unique novel with stories that are often heartbreaking and, at times, a little grotesque.

[Rishav Gupta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Some parts are disturbing, but you stay hooked.

[Pooja T · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well-written but a little too vague for my liking.

[Ranjana · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good story but a little mythical and unbelievable in some parts

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was engaging, although a bit dark at times. The writing is well done, but the story comes to an unsatisfying and unclear conclusion.

[Nicole Hartig Koobear Siberians · Rating 1 out of 5]

Strange book couldn’t even get half way.

[Saniya Bhargav · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too dark. Too many characters and it gets pretty confusing at times. Just couldn't get the hang of it. Also, it becomes too gory to read at places.

[Santosh Jha · Rating 4 out of 5]

haunting, brutal, harrowing, intense, revealing, suspenseful and gripping.

[Mohamed Zaman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intriguing and told from different perspectives....

[Ashleigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

WHY isn't there speech marks or italics or something to differentiate the past. this book a rushed, confusing vibe. hopefully gets better...

it keeps switching between P.O.V and characters as well i have never liked second person, doesn't seem to be much of a plot, i feel like im getting glimpses of stories. is that the point?
giving it a generous 3 stars.

[Jostein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dans ce roman énigmatique et subjuguant, Raj Sharma Jha tisse les histoires de trois personnages principaux appelés Homme, Femme et Enfant.
Homme est un jeune homme, fils d’un homme simple, devenu riche en sélectionnant des projets immobiliers pour les banques. Il habite un 2000 mètres carrés à Appartment Complex à proximité du Mall, le plus grand centre commercial de l’Inde au coeur de New City. Dans le métro, dans sa voiture avec chauffeur sur les seize voies d’autoroute menant au Mall, il observe et s’évade souvent dans des délires macabres, des idées de viol ou de meurtre, des ballades irréelles à Paris, Singapour où habitent ses meilleurs amis ou dans les nuages. Un jour, il emmène chez lui une femme et sa fille qui tient un ballon rouge pour une nuit, le temps qu’elles se douchent, mangent et se reposent. Un ballon rouge qui devient un témoin, un lien entre deux mondes, la réalité et l’imaginaire, le luxe et la pauvreté. Homme vit dans le royaume de l’argent où tous les délires sont possibles, où chacun sera son obligé pour quelques roupies.

Femme est un mère vieillissante, perturbée par le retour de sa fille qui cherche un asile où on ne lui demandera rien. Que lui est-il arrivé pour qu’elle soit si triste et fatiguée? Elle qui, toute petite remerciait sa mère d’être toujours là pour elle et voulait qu’une dame de quatre mètres puisse à son tour câliner la mère. Jusqu’au jour, où le père décède. La fille l’attend, le voit depuis la fenêtre comme un fantôme qui veille sur elles. Elle ne supporte pas que sa mère ait une histoire d’amour avec un ancien étudiant de son père. A dix-neuf ans, elle fugue.

Enfant est un bébé abandonné sur le seuil de l’orphelinat Little House, sous le seul regard d’une chienne Bhow. Le directeur n’en revient pas, un garçon en bonne santé abandonné. Il n’y avait alors qu’un seul garçon trisomique dans cet orphelinat. Kalyani, une infirmière de vingt quatre ans dont toute la famille vit dans un bidonville s’en occupe avec amour jusqu’au jour où elle doit quitter Little House et où le bébé disparaît lors de l’effondrement d’un mur suite à un orage.
Bhow le conduira auprès de Violets Rose, une vieille dame qui hante le cinéma Europa du Mall depuis que les investisseurs ont annexé les terres de ses parents pour construire New City.

L’auteur développe les trois histoires qui semblent ne jamais se rejoindre. Il nous perd dans le mystère, la poésie, le rêve, les hallucinations sans jamais nous lâcher vraiment. Car la réalité de la vie de cette grand ville indienne est bien là avec le côtoiement du luxe incroyable et des bidonvilles. Près du Mall, de l’hôtel de luxe, juste au-delà du pont de l’autoroute, il y a un autre monde, celui des mendiants, handicapés, sdf.

Avec les vies de ses trois personnages principaux mais aussi d’autres personnages riches ou pauvres qui les croisent, Raj Kamal Jha dresse une photographie glaçante de la société indienne où les pauvres et les riches vivent côte à côte.
D’un côté, c’est la privation d’eau et d’électricité, des salaires de misère pour des travaux difficiles, des viols, le handicap, la maladie, mais on n’y pleure pas sauf si quelqu’un regarde. De l’autre, des voitures avec chauffeur, des suites de luxe, des plaisirs aussitôt satisfaits.

J’ai suivi l’auteur avec beaucoup d’intérêt et d’attente dans cette ambiance étrange ( j’ai parfois pense aux romans de Murakami) où le mouvement peut s’arrêter, où l’un entre dans une scène de cinéma, où un ballon vous emmène côtoyer les avions mais où la réalité fait vite redescendre le lecteur sur cette terre difficile pour les déclassés.
Je ne serais peut-être pas allée naturellement vers ce genre de roman sans mon intérêt pour la littérature indienne. Et j’aurais raté une lecture qui se démarque largement dans mon programme de rentrée. Le ballon rouge m’a moi aussi transportée dans un univers inhabituel pour un étonnant voyage.

[Varun Kashyap · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretentious!

This is at the same time one of the darkest and wayward novel i have read.. I am not sure about the art of writing, may be there is some in this for which it has been applauded, but it misses me..
The plot is ambiguous, there are too many surreal characters , subplots , you end up with a confused perception of author's vision..

The protagonist is alienated from his surroundings, he keep on drifting in and out of his own world where he is helping others, he is caring . where in while in reality his mind is a twisted gruesome sexually aroused dangerous tool that threatens and scares and adds a dark clot on his character..

The woman, i am not sure if the author has been able to bring closure to her character. you start with a curiosity about her, move to empathy towards her plight but end up a bit abrupt, a bit clueless as in where does she tie up the end of this debacle of a story..

Orphan , most of it is surreal. I am not sure if it is symbolic or is it to serve a purpose in the advancement of story. His experiences are superficial bounding on hallucination, but whose? and if he is not real , how does the sub plots of Kalyani, her family and Mr Sharma come into place..

There are too many characters half drawn and left to wither away - The giant cockroach, the giant lady(what does she represent) , Bhow, and all the uncle aunty etc.. Violet Roses.. there are so many subplots and characters of which you are not sure at the end what to make of..

It started of very promising, it haunted me for a 100 pages, its dark ,its scary, at some aspect it does paint the modern India, but it just ends up with too many loose ends. There isn't any closure to anything. It ends up disappointing and more so a haphazard rambling of thoughts put together, which though could have been great but here just makes me cringe with distaste..

Not recommended... Read if you are looking for something new, a dark and different kind of writing..

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like the cities of Delhi and Gurgaon, this book is in turns haunting, brutal, poetic, beautiful, harrowing, intense, revealing, suspenseful and more. I read it in two days because I simply could not put it down. I think Jha's writing is so evocative and some of his sentences so perfectly constructed that I would have to stop and sit there and think about them.

There are two EXTREMELY distressing scenes that I am struggling to get out of my head (to the point that had these two scenes not been included I probably would have given this 5 stars). But I feel that Jha's objective with this novel was to capture as accurately as possible city life in contemporary India with all its intense highs and all its horrific lows.

I liked that there were small chapters featuring glimpses of other people's lives. I also liked the magic realist elements. And the ending was so beautiful that I actually had to hold back tears.

I am keen to read more of Jha's work now. Years ago, in 2005 or so, I read The Blue Bedspread which I also loved but I came to this book from a review in the paper and did not make the connection that Jha had authored both until I bought this from the bookshop and saw the list of his other books.