Clear Light of Day

by Anita Desai

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: A "rich, Chekhovian novel" about family and forgiveness from the acclaimed author of Fire on the Mountain (The New Yorker).

At the heart of this wonderful novel are the moving relationships between the estranged members of the Das family. Bimla is a dissatisfied but ambitious teacher at a women's college who lives in her childhood home, where she cares for her mentally challenged brother, Baba. Tara is her younger, unambitious sister, married and with children of her own. Raja is their popular, brilliant, and successful brother. When Tara returns for a visit with Bimla and Baba, old memories and tensions resurface, blending into a domestic drama that leads to beautiful and profound moments of self-understanding.

Set in the vividly portrayed environs of Old Delhi, "Clear Light of Day does what only the very best novels can do: it totally submerges us. It also takes us so deeply into another world that we almost fear we won't be able to climb out again" (New York Times Book Review).

Genres: Fiction, India, Historical Fiction, Indian Literature, Literary Fiction, Literature, Asia

183 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Anita Desai was born in 1937. Her published works include adult novels, children's books and short stories. She is a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Academy of Letters in Delhi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London. Anita Mazumdar Desai is an Indian novelist and Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times. Her daughter, the author Kiran Desai, is the winner of the 2006 Booker prize.

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Booker prize 1980
Read in 2017.

I usually write a review right after I finish a book but this time I needed to wait for a while as I did not exactly know how I felt about this novel. While at the beginning I did not feel any connection with the writing, it slowly grew on me and I ended up agreeing with the Booker jurors that it deserved to be shortlisted for the 1980 prize. When I say that it slowly grew on me, I mean that I almost wanted to abandon the ship at some point but something in the writing kept me aboard. As my GR friend Hugh wrote in his review, “Its strengths are quiet ones” (his review can be read here ). I cannot pinpoint what I liked about the novel, maybe there was something in the laziness of the plot, the poetic and mesmerizing prose.

At its core, this is a story about the disintegration of an Indian family during the Partition in India. The novel starts in the present with the visit of an Indian woman, Tara, to her family home in Old Delhi. She travels together with her husband, a diplomat who is not enthusiastic about spending time with Tara’s family. From the four siblings only two remain in the family home, Bim, the eldest daughter and Baba, the youngest, with special needs. The home is unchanged over the years, slowly degrading with the passing of time. The familiar stillness of the house is what Tara longs for and in the same time what makes her husband reluctant to stay.

Tara’s visit becomes the perfect opportunity for a series of flashbacks into the siblings’ childhood and young adult period. We learn more about each of the four children's personality, their relationship with each other, the love and conflicts that put a mark on their future. Raja is probably the focus of this part. Raja, the eldest brother is an aspiring poet and dreams to become a hero. His relationship with Bim is very strong in the beginning but starts to deteriorate and culminates with his move to Hyderabad and his marriage with the daughter of their Muslim landlord.

What touched me the most, was the contrast between the hopes the siblings had as children and where they ended up as adults. While Bim was the most ambitious and the smartest of all four, she had the less successful future as she had to take care of her brothers, aging aunt and the home after Raja and Tara left. As a young woman, Tara only wanted to become a mother but she ended up seeing the world and building a demanding social life.

The sociopolitical situation in India (the partition of Pakistan and the murder of Ghandi) is there just for background, it does not have a central role in the story. As I wrote before, this is a family story, about love, conflicts, anger, frustration and guilt.

[Orsodimondo · Rating 4 out of 5]

POLVERE DI DIAMANTE



Anita Desai al suo meglio. Almeno per le mie conoscenze.
E anche con un bel titolo, di quelli che a me rimangono ben impressi.

Unità di luogo: la vecchia casa a Delhi delle due sorelle protagoniste, Tara e Bim.
Ma nessuna unità di tempo: perché il romanzo, diviso in quattro parti, con la prima e l’ultima ambientate al tempo presente (anni Settanta, fu pubblicato alla fine di quel decennio), ha le due parti centrali proiettate nel passato, nell’infanzia e adolescenza delle due sorelle. Con tutto quello che succede in famiglia (la morte dei genitori e della zia Mira, il matrimonio e la partenza di Tara, la partenza del fratello Raja…) e nell’India (prima e dopo l’Indipendenza, cambiamenti radicali a fronte di tradizioni immutabili, e poi la partizione dal Pakistan, l'assassinio di Gandhi, tumulti, violenze…)



Sognante, ipnotica, delicata, attenta alle sfumature, la prosa della Desai ci prende per mano e conduce avanti e indietro in questo viaggio, capace di appannare e far rilucere, stimolare e acquietare, ronzare e assaporare.
La chiara luce del giorno sa essere anche abbacinante, accecante, appiattente, così come lo scorrere del tempo forse mischia i ricordi e confonde ma memoria.
Tara torna a casa dagli Stati Uniti dove è emigrata da tempo per aver sposato un diplomatico. Nella casa di famiglia è rimasta a vivere la sorella Bim, insegnante e nubile, con Baba, il fratello minore disabile.
Nelle due parti centrali, quelle dove tara e Bim sono prima adolescenti e poi bambine, facciamo la conoscenza anche di Raja, il fratello maggiore.



Tata è andata, via, in giro per il mondo, ha visto e vissuto, ha un marito e due figlie che vestono in jeans (da non dimenticare che siamo negli anni Settanta). L’altra, Bim, è rimasta sempre nella vecchia casa, si è presa cura di tutto e tutti, a cominciare dal fratello malato, non si è mai sposata, non veste alla moda ma secondo la tradizione, tra i capelli abbondano i primi fili grigi, e il cuore è altrettanto invecchiato.
Le rose del vialetto nel giardino della vecchia casa si sbriciolano al passaggio come si polverizzano i ricordi: e viene da sperare che allo stesso modo si smussino le asperità e le due sorelle ritrovino unità e comunanza. Nella chiara luce del giorno che tutto avvolge.



A quel punto rimasero seduti in silenzio, loro tre, perché ormai non c'era più bisogno di parole. Finalmente tutto era stato detto. Non restavano né barriere, né ombre, solo la chiara luce che irradiava dal sole. Ora potevano librarsi in quella luce, vasta come l'oceano, ma chiara, priva di colore, sostanza o forma. Era il più impalpabile e il più pervasivo degli elementi e loro fluttuavano in esso. Avevano trovato il coraggio, dopotutto, di immergervisi e farsi inondare dalla luce, che ora li illuminava interamente, senza lasciar loro neppure un'ombra sotto cui ripararsi.

[Samadrita · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's startling when I collide into a book like this, one which silently commands me to follow its gaze into the abyss - within and without - and then casts a mocking glance my way, challenging me to take it apart piece by piece. Theme. Plot. Imagery. Structure. Backdrop. Sociopolitical significance.

I dare you to deploy words, sentences, phrases to probe the uncharted depths of my insight into the workings of the human psyche. I dare you to remain inoculated against the power of this terrible and magnificent vision I create with these delicate brushstrokes, lush colours of a luminous childhood and the smoke grey splotches of thwarted desires, it says.

And I look away in mortification. Because how can I?

The room rang with her voice, then with silence. In the shaded darkness, silence had the quality of a looming dragon. It seemed to roar and the roar to reverberate, to dominate. To escape from it would require a burst of recklessness, even cruelty.

It is not a hitherto unencountered feeling. This deep, reverential love for an author who makes her words throb with a dull, suppressed ache for the wounds of humanity and transfer that same stir to a reader's blood and bones. And yet I tremble with the childlike joy and disbelief of an enthralled votary confronted with the spectacle of the divine for the very first time. Unable to articulate my awe, I stare with a kind of inexplicable longing and admiration at this flawless rendering of a way of life long since discontinued. Feel the pulse of an agonized city helplessly witnessing the inextinguishable fires of communal hatred consuming its most cherished values. Bow my head in silent benediction for a love that spans across years and continents, stretches itself to the breaking point yet resiliently staying intact, always, always aware of its core, its root, its starting point.

It seemed to her that the dullness and the boredom of her childhood, her youth, were stored here in the room under the worn dusty red rugs, in the bloated brassware, amongst the dried grasses in the swollen vases, behind the yellowed photographs in the oval frames-everything, everything that she had so hated as a child and that was still preserved here as if this were the storeroom of some dull, uninviting provincial museum.

Anita Desai's enchanting prose-poetry reproduces the perfect musical cadences of Urdu couplets and Eliot's 'Four Quartets', seamlessly uniting vignettes from a family's past and present caught up in the swirl of a rapidly altering sociopolitical milieu, that mirror the fate of a modern nation struggling to maintain its grip on high ideals in an age of eroding values. At once an examination of blood bonds and an elegy for a city futilely resisting the currents of irreversible change, this tour de force is also a haunting, melodious ode to the inevitability of disintegration, to mortality itself. It eulogizes the courage of quiet acceptance, regeneration in the midst of decay, and the marvel of eternity nestled within a moment. And offers a libation in honour of those unsung heroines who wander through the disorienting maze of life, fearlessly braving storms that wreak havoc, unappreciated, unloved, forgotten, perhaps even misunderstood, but manage to step out into the clear light of day which purges all the darkness lurking in their hearts and ushers in enlightenment and forgiveness, paving the way for a reconciliation, however belated, with the ones they love and loathe with a baffling intensity.

Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.

Gorgeous. Redemptive. Affecting. And all too real.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I need to reread this one. Read this so long ago when the author was a guest professor at my college for a year. Took a class with her. She introduced me to Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Salman Rushdie - beyond Satanic Verses (read that one as part of an Islam class), and others. She didn't teach her books, which I appreciated (nothing worse than a teacher so vain as to teach only their published materials). She's the one who sparked my curiosity and love for India. So it made me curious about her books. This was the first of her books that I read. I remember wanting more. Feeling nostalgic. I think I'll reread it.

Update: reread it. It’s a completely different experience over 30 years later. I know India so much better than I did back then. I’ve had to renew my visa multiple times, have had romance with Indian people, have participated in local holiday celebrations, travelled throughout the country, and am now preparing to move over there as a retiree. I’m also older, wiser, braver, better adjusted, and more worldly. So of course my reading is going to be different.

Today, I am more understanding of Raja, less tolerant of Bim, more compassionate of Baba, and completely bland of Tara. Mira breaks my heart a bit more too. Mostly, I want to scream at them all to stop assuming and start talking.

[Hugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my final book from the 1980 Booker shortlist and possibly the one that surprised me most. Its strengths are quiet ones - at heart it is a family story in which very little happens - indeed the Hindu family at its heart is part of the Old Delhi owning class, for whom work was not always a necessity. The book deals with siblings orphaned and parted at the time of the partition of India, and specifically the relationship between Bim, who has remained at home partly to look after a younger brother Baba who has learning difficulties, and Tara, who married a diplomat when very young and spends most of her life abroad.

In the first part of the story we meet Tara as she returns to her decaying childhood home with her husband, who would rather be with his own family in new Delhi. This section is slow moving but necessary to establish the situation, and the tensions within the divided family gradually appear. Bim is educated and works as a teacher, and is contrasted with the younger sister Tara, who was an apathetic dreamer as a child but has moved on to better things unlike her more ambitious sister. Much of the story concerns the elder brother Raja, who has moved away to Hyderabad and married the daughter of their Muslim landlord and former neighbour, creating resentment in Bim who is left looking after the house and what is left of the family. The middle two parts are set further back during their shared childhood, and the moving final section (which for me moved it into the five star bracket) brings them back to the present with a kind of incomplete resolution.

Music is a recurring theme - Baba spends much of his time listening to old records on a wind-up gramophone, the doctor who failed in his courtship of Bim is a violinist who plays western classical music with a mother who sings Tagore's Bengali songs, and a neighbour is an aspiring singer of Indian classical music. Poetry is another theme - Raja aspired to write Urdu poetry as a teenager and shared his interest in Eliot, Byron and Tennyson with Bim - their works are often quoted.

Desai's writing is often very powerful - she often returns to themes mentioned in passing, for example a cow that drowned by falling into a well, and she draws you into the story mesmerically.

A very enjoyable book.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

We have passed every day from morning to night in pain,
We have forever drunk tears of blood,

Truth is, I like reading stories of uprooted and marginalized characters whose search for identities are embedded in a sense (or memory) of place rich with imagery. Maybe for personal reasons I love when books explore the lives of characters who are considered "outsiders;" those who may never fit a cultural expectation due to a myriad of reasons beyond their control. (Pardon my personal experiences that trickled into this book and later became the highlight of my reading ponder: Anita Desai grew up with a German mother in India; I grew up with an American grandmother in Liberia; we both saw countries take different forms due to conflict). I'll try not to digress with my very personal musings. For here is a robust story of siblings who grow up similarly, yet each takes a different path to adulthood. When the past and present merge, who is ever satisfied with his or her choices, and why is it so easy for another to begrudge a person's path in life? Can one ever truly return home?

A part of her was sinking languidly down into the passive pleasure of having returned to the familiar- like a pebble, she had been picked up and hurled back into the pond, and sunk down through the layer of green scum, through the secret cool depths to the soft rich mud at the bottom, sending up a line of bubbles of relief and joy.

Everything merges. As with change, there is a mixture of the old and new (Old Delhi and New Delhi). There is separation of family, of religion, of culture and then reconciliation. The growing upheaval of the family erodes into that of the country (or vice versa), when Hindu and Muslim brothers and sisters find themselves at war. There is Baba's music which offers him a voice: an interspersion of expression, language, and just the right kind of vibe to ease the tension around him. There is literature to add nuance to a delicate situation: Bim's expensive history books and Raja's poetry (Urdu poetry and T.S. Eliot), both adding nuance to a delicate situation. There is the examination of womanhood and what it means for both Tara and Bim. And there are just too many layers of this short novel to even try to explain; too many parallel subjects. Only a skilled artist combines so many themes into a book less than two hundred pages.

Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes and wounds in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.

There are so many ways to patch together the simplest forms of love and hurt; this novel finds such a way. Each sibling is an exemplification of some force of life, some measure of change. It is just the novel I needed to read on such a day of snow flurries, when the schools have shut down early and the city prepares for a night covered in a blanket of snow.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Whatever novel I read after Middlemarch was going to have a hard time. It was a rare thing to inhabit the mind of George Eliot for two weeks, nothing after that was going to be even half as good, probably. Anita Desai drew the short straw and she won’t be happy about that. Sorry, Anita. Your novel is okay-ish, that is, it’s not terrible, but er… well… hmmm….

Actually, between you and me, I didn’t think it was up to much. It gets a lot of Goodreads love but I could have done without it. I can’t think I would ever bitterly regret not having read this novel. Four middle-class kids grow up in Delhi, the parents are distant bridge-playing don’t bother me I’m busy types. The kids are frankly kind of cliched – arrogant son who expects sisters to obey his every whim, older plain Jane sister at war with everybody & taking all responsibility, younger pretty sister something of an airhead, youngest brother mentally impaired. He is obsessed with an old wind-up gramophone. He plays the same bunch of 78s over and over. That would get on your nerves. I like “Lili Marlene” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” as much as the next guy but I couldn’t take them every day of the week. And I thought the number of times Anita Desai detailed this obsessive behaviour was verging on the obsessive itself.

Half the book is set in the present where the family has disintegrated – cue much moping and maundering about the past, the past oh the past and how the house needs repainting now and wasn’t it sad when the cow fell in the well; and the other half is in 1947 just before Partition when fortunately for this family they avoid all the mayhem.

One of the major conflicts in the story is when Bim (older sister) is trying to decide whether to sell the shares in their father’s insurance company. I mean, it’s not Dostoyevsky, is it.

2.5 stars

[Raul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful book set in 20th century India, about family, loss, grief and realisation. Raised by a doting poor aunt and neglected by their parents, Bimla, Tara, Raja and Baba grow up in the backdrop of political conflict, their lives filled with poetry and play. As they grow older and as life drifts them apart, their house in Old Delhi becomes a monument of times past as the main characters Tara and Bimla struggle to bridge past and present while confronting their failures and disappointments. Although a slow read, especially the first half of the story, it is filled with so many beautiful passages that I loved.

[N · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was a really fun read! It is a tender hearted, sweet novel about siblings, their differences, and the ties that bind them: Bim, Tara, Raja and Baba- so different, yet the same. Set during the Partition of 1947, the novel explores the conflicts that Pakistan and India shared- Muslim vs Hindus. But it's a colorful, comedy of manners reminiscent of a witty and multicultural EM Forster or Jane Austen. What a sweet little chamber performance.

[Himanshu · Rating 5 out of 5]

If a quote from the book could suffice for a review, it'd be this -

It seemed to her that the dullness and the boredom of her childhood, her youth, were stored here in the room under the worn dusty red rugs, in the bloated brassware, amongst the dried grasses in the swollen vases, behind the yellowed photographs in the oval frames-everything, everything that she had so hated as a child and that was still preserved here as if this were the storeroom of some dull, uninviting provincial museum.

This book is everything that one loves reading books for. The sheer ability to get one invested in the fates of a seemingly dysfunctional family right from the beginning. Takes you by your hand through different times in the characters' lives, into their minds to eventually place you right at the point where you feel like you are sitting in that room with Baba, Bim, Tara, Raja, and everyone else knowing exactly how their lives have come to be.

I turned the last page with a feeling of that wholesome bookish satisfaction which you get when you are blown away unexpectedly by something profound and of such beautiful artistic valor.

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every three years, Tara and her husband, Bakul, travel to Old Delhi to visit her sister, Bimla, the central character. Tara fondly remembers their shared childhood when everyone got along. Bim has never married. She lives in the old family home, teaching school and caring for her younger brother who has autism. The storyline follows the Das family conflicts and uncovers their sources. Bim is estranged from her other brother. There are lingering jealousies and rivalries between the sisters. In the later parts of the book, the narrative flashes back to the days of Partition, with its civil unrest. Finally, we come back to the present and find Bim reassessing her relationship to her family.

The primary theme relates to changes that occur due to the passage of time. Music, poetry, and arts are referenced throughout. There is not a lot going on in this novel. It is a family story that delves into the details of the characters, and their past and present lives. It explores Partition to a certain degree, but it is not the primary focus of the story. It is slow in developing and beautifully written. It will appeal to those who enjoy reflective stories about family relationships.

“Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes and wounds in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.”

[Mala · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sad book made sadder by the possibility that such fictional families might actually exist anywhere in the world.
A family is one's anchor; sometimes it also becomes the millstone around one's neck: filling the one who goes out & ahead in the world with chronic guilt and the one who is left behind with lasting resentment. Desai's small unit, torn apart, standing in for a nation partitioned & unable to come to terms with its loss. The emotional poignancy & an astute evocation of childhood making up for the sluggish beginning, I warmed up to it only from the third section onwards. The writer tries a new spin on the tired old narrative of the all-sacrificing elder sister by showing that we don't get to choose renunciation—sometimes it's just thrust upon us.
3.5 stars rounded off to 4 because more people need to read Anita Desai.
Sharing some quotes:
"No one,’ said Bim, slowly and precisely, ‘comprehends better than children do. No one feels the atmosphere more keenly—or catches all the nuances, all the insinuations in the air—or notes those details that escape elders because their senses have atrophied, or calcified. (173)

She could not help noticing Bim’s excessive meanness—the way she would scrape all left-overs onto saucers and keep them for the next meal so that some of the meals that arrived on the table were just a long procession of little saucers with little portions smudged onto them, like meals for a family of kittens. Tara felt ashamed of them, knowing how Bakul’s fastidious nostrils would crinkle at the sight. (171)

The mosquitoes that night were like the thoughts of the day embodied in monster form, invisible in the dark but present everywhere, most of all in and around the ears, piercingly audible. Bim could hear Tara’s voice repeating all the cruel things she had so gently said—‘Do you ever see Dr—Dr—what was his name?’ and ‘When one is old, one has all kinds of fears, apprehensions’— " (177)

Really it was a night of Persian glamour and beauty. They should be sitting together in the moonlight, looking together at the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being. (184)

[Janelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written story about family, resentments between brothers and sisters that have festered over many years. The main character Bim has found herself still in the family home in Old Delhi as the carer for her younger brother Baba. Much of her life she has found herself in caring roles. In the second part which is set in 1947 she nurses older brother Raja when he had TB and also their Aunt Mira who pretty much brought them up (their parents are distant although living in the house!) now after a hard life succumbing to alcoholism. Bim and Raja after being close are estranged and the ending of the novel is a little unsatisfying as there is no resolution in their relationship. An enjoyable read.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a beautiful, tender drama about familial love and loyaly, coping and forgiveness. It tells the story of contemporary India and the impact of political turmoil & civil war on a family, the plummet into mental illness and how a family copes to protect and take care of its own. Desai is a wonderful story teller- I could feel the moist heat of India as I peered through the dim, heavy interiors of the family compound, hear the tropical birds nesting in the overgrown, decaying garden as I sat on the 2nd story verandah... the book is very evocative of place and time.

[Doc. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 1980 Man Booker Prize

“Isn’t it strange how life won’t flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood? There are these long still stretches – nothing happens – each day is exactly like the other – plodding, uneventful – and then suddenly there is a crash – mighty deeds take place – momentous events – even if one doesn’t know it at the time – and then life subsides again into the backwaters till the next push, the next flood?”

It is the summer of 1947, and a sickness has taken the country hostage. A fever burns through the land, erupting in rioting pockets across what was once the crown jewel of the British Empire. Flames spread, destroying structures that stood tall since the days of the Delhi Sultanate. And as they fade, they leave behind an ashen strip, seared into the ground, rending the whole into two forever warring nations: India and Pakistan. Although confined to a Purani Dilli neglected by its White overlords, in the Das home, too, it proves a fateful summer. Everything is about to change for the recently orphaned siblings, themselves victims of parental neglect. Gripped by tuberculosis, a feverish Raja, the oldest of the lot, tosses and turns while his sister, Bimla, presses a wet cloth dutifully against his brow, like the spiritual embodiment of Bharat mata. She tries in vain to fan his overheated body, but not for months does he calm down.

And so it falls upon Bim to care for the vestiges of the household; she is expected to take up the mantle of the maternal figure. She must marry off a younger sister (Tara), religiously guard an alcoholic aunt (Mira), and look after a mentally challenged younger brother (Baba). Months pass before Raja regains a modicum of his strength. In the meantime, the Muslim neighbours disappear, like thousands of other displaced families, so that when the Mahatma is assassinated in the beginning of 1948, the Das siblings have only one prayer on their lips: please let the killer be a Hindu; please let there be no more bloodshed. National events continue to parallel familial ones. Death also claims the celibate and self-sacrificial Mira masi in the same year. And when the disease abates, Raja leaves to join their erstwhile neighbours, the Hyder Alis, in the Nizam’s Hyderabad, thus partitioning a duo that once seemed indivisible.

By far the most intellectually capable, determined and clear-sighted member of the house, Bim eschews femininity in the hopes of establishing a place for herself in a man’s world. Tradition dictates that the eldest male must be the head of the family, but circumstances now compel Bim to spend the rest of her years minding the autistic Baba alone, as Raja seeks a better life. Gradually, the crumbling old house begins to wear the telltale signs of stagnation, and time seems to stand still. Tara pities her sister for being trapped within its four walls, who in turn resents Tara for having moved to America. But when Tara returns to her childhood home with her husband, Bakul, we see that she has left one prison for another. America does not bring her liberation, as marriage merely replaces her old shackles with new ones. She keeps herself busy, reluctant to note the dissolution of her identity in the process of becoming an ideal wife: the abla naari, whose opinions must mirror her husband’s, whose thoughts must be moulded to please him. For the women, it turns out, independence from the British yoke brings emancipation in name only.

Bim tried to carve a niche for herself, but ultimately assumed all the responsibility without receiving the freedom that men enjoy. Yet it is she who now rules their old house. It is she who still shoulders the vulnerable. She is the centre and the axis, a dependable as opposed to dependent pillar. Unmarried and unbowed, relegated to the house as much by family as by nation, she continues to navigate a society hostile to her gender, fulfilling her ambition of forging a new path for herself and other women through teaching... But anger simmers underneath; she cannot absolve Raja for abandoning her, for forgetting their common values, for losing faith in their joint aspirations. They stay locked in conflict for decades, as misunderstanding keeps them apart. Only when Bim listens to the sur and taal of Hindustani music, hearing how it encircles differing strains and new ideas, does she recall the capacity that this subcontinent once had for harmony, and starts to believe that it still has the ability to change and accord women a place in its future. Then she comes to a silent acknowledgement of shared heritage, deciding that the way forward for her country and for her is through forgiveness; it alone can keep the threat of annihilation at bay.

“With her inner eye she saw how her own house and its particular history linked and contained her as well as her whole family with all their separate histories and experiences – not binding them within some dead and airless cell but giving them the soil in which to send down their roots, and food to make them grow and spread, reach out to new experiences and new lives, but always drawing from the same soil, the same secret darkness. That soil contained all time, past and future, in it. It was dark with time, rich with time. It was where her deepest self lived, and the deepest selves of her sister and brothers and all those who shared that time with her.”

... I have done this book a disservice by reducing it to its setting and describing it as mere allegory, for Desai employs lush prose to invoke vivid images that linger. If I were to close my eyes now, I could recreate the Das house easily, its walls marmoreal in the moonlight, the roses in its garden withered and dusty. The book is symbolically rich, and this wealth of themes and motifs is rivalled only by its multi-layered characterisations. With a non-chronological structure, in fewer than two hundred pages, the book undresses its characters methodically, moving slowly but deliberately, until it unveils their deepest cores. And yet, and yet, for me, its beauty lies in it being the most Indian book that I’ve ever read. I don’t read as many native authors as I should, but this resonated louder than better known works like The God of Small Things. You don’t have to know much about India to appreciate it, but it is the kind of story that will reverberate in the hearts of Indians.

For only we can recognise the wound that Desai has traced here, because we still bleed from it. Only we will be burnt by the heat of that pivotal summer, because it birthed the climate of alternating detachment and hate that we endure today. And only we can forgive the book’s abrupt conclusion, because it delivers the hope that we so desperately crave. A fool’s hope, perhaps, that our two quarrelling nations might remember that we were once a family that rebelled as one—paying no mind to differences of religion—against those who thought us savages in need of civilising. That if there is distrust between us, it was sowed by colonial powers who abused and pillaged us for centuries. That if there is enmity, it is the residue of a feud between imperialists who used us to their own ends. That if there is blame, it is equally apportioned amongst us. And that if we have affronted each other, it is solely because the blows are felt more acutely when inflicted by people who were not long ago our own. Desai offers such a hope for amity, a dream of peace, a belief that some miracle of understanding can swiftly cut short this endless night polluted by the stench of death... so we may walk together at last towards the Clear Light of Day.

“Although it was shadowy and dark, Bim could see as well as by the clear light of day that she felt only love and yearning for them all, and if there were hurts, these gashes in her side that bled, then it was only because her love was imperfect and did not encompass them thoroughly enough, and because it had flaws and inadequacies and did not extend to all equally.”

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel about four siblings in pre- and post-partition India grew on me. The opening pages were so slow, so atmospheric, the setting of Old Delhi was hot and dusty....these are all qualities I often find intolerable. Desai is a quality writer. Objectively, this is a high quality novel. Family relationships are beautifully limned, atmospheres are so well described you feel like you are in the house or on the lawn with the Das siblings. Rarely have the gestures and expressions of cats and dogs been so accurately noted. Still, I don't know that I would go out of my way to read more of Anita Desai. The siblings were all so angsty. Everyone was fretting nearly all the time.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my directed readings course I'm taking here in India, but unlike the other books, this one was written by a women, and also unlike the other books, this one was much less focused on India and much more focused on family and everyday life.

In a way I found it kind of refreshing. Yes, it was about the Partition of India, but it was also about the partition of a family. It had a very Forest Gump feel to it. History happened, like the assassination of Gandhi, but it was mentioned as an event in these characters lives and not as some random event that shook history.

In reading this book I was reminded of just how important sibling relationship are in India (or at least, in traditional Indian values). If you stop and think about it, siblings are the ones who will know you the longest. Your parents will die, your spouse will have missed out on your childhood, and your children come much later. Siblings are the ones who are there for the longest, and yet it is not something we seem to emphasize in our own culture. Could you imagine planning your life around where your brother was going to live, or maintaining a good relationship so that marriage between your children was a possibility? This all seems very foreign to us.

Characterization was definitely the best part of this book. We have a few noteworthy ones, but Bim and Tara are the sisters that seem to be contrasted all throughout. By the end though, Desai wants us to see that while these sisters seem to be completely different, they are "not really" and "have everything in common," because no one knows all that they share (162). Watching all of the characters come around to that, to the "clear light of day," was a great catharsis.

Probably my favorite part of this book was just the complexity of the characters, recognizing that they are just as real and human as we are in our own context. Too often I think we dehumanize people out of pity or ignorance when we don't understand where they come from, and I think this book aims to shatter that.

Really, I'd probably give it a 4.5, but it started slow, and I still don't like that the cover of my edition does not match the text. Yes. I do judge books by their covers.

[Dolceluna ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Romanzo scoperto da me medesima durante uno dei miei frequenti giretti in libreria. Autrice per me sconosciuta, romanzo che mai avevo sentito nominare, ma il mio istinto mi diceva che dovevo leggerlo....e non ha sbagliato.
Delicato, profondo, simbolico confronto tra due sorelle indiane che si ritrovano dopo diversi anni e sono costrette a fare i conti col proprio passato, con le scelte che hanno segnato la loro vita, con i loro rancori, le paure mai confessate, le ferite mai riemarginate. Sullo sfondo la storia dell'India prima e dopo l'Indipendenza, la sua divisone dal Pakistan, la morte di Gandhi.
Storia personale e quadro di una cultura e di una società. Decisamente una buona lettura.

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book a lot. It’s an emotionally rich and nuanced tale of four adult siblings and their formative years in an old home in Delhi, where the tough, passionate older sister, Bimla, still lives, teaching history and caring for their mentally challenged younger brother. The timid younger sister, Tara, now married to a diplomat, returns for a visit, and tries to bridge the gap between Bim and their absent older brother, with whom she’s had a falling-out. It’s not a fast-paced story, but it is a well-written, layered, and meaningful one, taking a close look at its complex, sympathetic characters and the nuances of their interactions and memories. It reminded me of Evening Is the Whole Day, which I also loved, though that book is almost lurid by comparison. I would definitely recommend this to those who enjoy insightful family stories, and who enjoy books driven more by strong characters and writing than by plot.

A couple of notes: the book isn’t as short as the page count would make it seem (there’s a lot of words on a page), and the cover seems off-base, considering how often the siblings’ skin is referred to as “white.” Even granting that probably means something different in India than the U.S., I can’t help thinking there’s some exoticizing going on with that choice of image.

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

If this book is on your reading list, I recommend you promptly remove it. This is a meandering tale of people, families and a country, all falling apart. While this theme alone could have had much potential, in Desai's hands it turns into a meditation on hopelessness and depression. The book might be lyrical or technically well put together but it leaves the reader feeling empty and the words never take on any greater meaning or provide any greater experience than their own shabby existence on the page. The book, like its subject, never really comes to life.

[Siddharth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read in June 2015

"Clear Light of Day is...a novel as wonderfully contemplative as a cup of afternoon tea." - The Blurb.

I concur wholeheartedly.

[diario_de_um_leitor_pjv · Rating 4 out of 5]

COMENTÁRIO
⭐⭐⭐⭐
“A luz brilhante do dia”
Anita Desai
Tradução de Carmo Vasconcelos Romão

Anita Desai aparentemente "revisita" a sua infância e juventude neste livro dando-nos ao mesmo tempo um retrato fulgurante da no processo de pós-independência no final dos anos 40.

Este é um livro centrado na relação, nem sempre fácil, entre quatro irmãos. Em especial duas das irmãs - Bim e Tara – que mostram dois lados das vivências do feminino na sociedade indiana. Bim é a defensora de uma tradição ligada à casa da família e aos processo de ensino como professora. Tara é a mulher de um diplomata que pretende mudanças e transformações no seio familiar. Esta tensão é sentida desde os tempos da adolescência de ambas e culmina numa festa familiar a acontecer já nos anos 70 em que as duas irmãs demonstram essa diferença.

Desai envolve-nos neste romance no caminho do passado, do sentido que damos às memórias e à construção da história de uma família criando uma continua tensão que nos acompanha ao longo do livro. É uma história de desencontros e ressentimentos dentro de uma família. Uma história de recordações, mas também de remorsos!

Ainda que sejam apresentadas os diferentes membros da família, as personagens femininas deste livro são essenciais para compreender a trama e a intensidade narrativa, dando por isso um olhar intenso sobre o papel da mulher na sociedade indiana, em especial no espaço da casa de família.

Um outro elemento interessante deste livro relaciona-se com o momento político que nos apresenta, nomeadamente a tensão pós-independência entre hindus e muçulmanos que leva à independência do Paquistão e à perseguição da população muçulmana entre 1948 e 1950. O assassinato de Mahatma Gandhi, por um hinduísta fanático, é referido no processo de tensão das recordações do passado por parte do membros desta família.

A escrita de Desai é cuidada e cheia de imagens belas e tocantes que vão prendendo e encantando o leitor. O modo como descreve os espaços, as dinâmicas de interação familiar foram elementos do meu interesse na leitura deste livro.

(li de 19 a 21 de Agosto de 2022)

[Areeb Ahmad (Bankrupt_Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I let my reading experience of In Custody, which in turn was influenced by having read it in college for a course, affect my estimation of Anita Desai too much—and I did not really hate that novel actually either. I am happy to give Desai another try and this book evidences her multiple Booker shortlistings. It is so well-written, the prose so lilting to the ears in its exploration of lethargy and stagnation, of slow transformations, of being stuck out of time in the past. I will read more of her in due course.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not, I admit, a mode that I enjoy much anymore -- very serious, lyrical, the uncovering of past tragedies and hurts, lots of interior family dynamics. Never a playful moment, never a wink or a laugh, or even much joy. On the other hand, this book does this mode as well as or better than any I've seen, so I have to give the author credit: she knows what she is about. The interest of the book grows, also, over time; layers and layers of complexity are revealed and draw you in just as you thought the book was simpler than it is.

[Queralt✨ · Rating 3 out of 5]

*3.5

Clear Light of Day it's a beautifully written story about a family impacted by political turmoils and civil wars, but it's also - and most importantly - about taking care of one another, mental health, forgiveness, love, and loyalty. I feel this book is perfect for those who like writing over plot (I cannot stress this enough, the writing is just gorgeous). Nothing that happens is obvious nor thrilling, rather, it's the type of book that you look back at the first pages and see how far the characters have gone.

[Sara Jesus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tara e Bim são duas irmãs marcadas por traumas de infância e por um país dividido. Cresceram numa casa silenciosa, cheirando a doença e com pais ausentes. Bim encontrou conforto no seu irmão Raj e na poesia. Tara no carinho da tia Mira. Bim sempre fora a irmã confiante e independente. Tara a insegura e necessitada de apoio emocional. Mas foi ela que partiu e pode viajar pelo mundo. Enquanto Bim permaneceu na casa a cuidar de Baba, o irmão autista.

"A luz brilhante do dia" é uma obra singular, transporta-nos por uma Índia divida entre hindus e muçulmanos, demonstra a separação de uma família que é incapaz de ultrapassar os rancores do passado. Um livro que parece incompleto. Deixa tanto em falta. O que aconteceu a Raj? Porque Baba não consegue evoluir? Também teria gostado de a escritor ter desenvolvido mais sobre as relações entre as duas culturas. O conflito entre os hindus e os muçulmanos teria tanto por explorar. No fim tornou-se num livro de belas palavras, mas de personagens amarguradas.

[Tamara Agha-Jaffar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anita Desai’s Clear Light of Day has a quiet strength that slowly creeps up on you. Against the backdrop of the political upheaval and turmoil in pre-partition India is the story of the four children of the Das family. The novel opens with the four siblings as adults. Raja, the eldest son, has moved away, married the Muslim daughter of their former landlord, and lives in Hyderabad. Tara, the youngest daughter, has come home with her husband to spend a few days in her childhood home visiting her sister, Bimla, and their mentally challenged brother, Baba. Bimla, a single, middle-aged college professor, assumed the caretaking responsibilities for Baba and for the aging Aunt Mira while she was alive.

Tensions surface between Tara and Bimla. Although Bimla claims she is satisfied with her life, she harbors a torrent of anger and resentment toward her siblings, especially Raja because she feels abandoned by him, and Tara because she married a diplomat and has become a well-traveled socialite. As the tensions smolder between the two siblings, we are thrust back to their childhood.

We discover the children were neglected by parents totally absorbed with themselves and their own activities. In many ways, the children were orphaned long before their parents died. With the arrival of Aunt Mira, the children are finally wrapped in a cocoon of love and acceptance. An aging, balding woman, Aunt Mira’s affection for the children is evoked with gentle, loving detail. The description of her arrival to the Das household is particularly poignant. She earns the devotion of the children by mothering, nurturing, and loving them in ways their mother never did.

The four siblings are depicted as unique individuals, each struggling in his or her own way to find a path out of their stifling environment. Baba doesn’t speak. We are never sure if he understands what’s happening around him since he doesn’t react. He withdraws into a bubble by continuously playing old songs on a windup gramophone. As a young girl, Bimla competes with her brother Raja. She is an exemplary student, athletic, accomplished, popular, ambitious, and a high achiever. Raja is restless, torn between his Hindu identity and his desire for acceptance by his Muslim neighbors, especially the Muslim landlord whose daughter he eventually marries. Tara struggles with school. Bullied by classmates and her older siblings, teased mercilessly, friendless, and desperately lonely, her only comfort comes from snuggling up to Aunt Mira. She eventually finds a way out of her environment by marrying a diplomat.

This is a story about family, about the sibling rivalries, guilt, frustrations, petty jealousies, and cruelties experienced during childhood continuing to haunt well into adulthood. As Tara says to Bimla, “…but it’s never over. Nothings over, ever.” It is also a story about childhood aspirations and dreams and the disappointments we experience as adults when those dreams fail to materialize. And, finally, it is a story about aging.

Skilled in evoking a sense of time and place and in capturing the tensions and frustrations of childhood, Desai is a master storyteller. Her prose is lyrical as she slowly draws you in to the lives of her characters. Themes introduced early in the novel recur as it progresses, shedding light on the divergent paths taken by the siblings. Desai shows the childhood baggage we carry into adulthood will never leave us until we make a conscious effort to let it go. The novel ends on a suggestion of acceptance and forgiveness—a glimpse at the clear light of day. Bimla indicates a willingness to reconcile with her estranged brother by recognizing that no matter how their paths have diverged, they are all inextricably linked by a past rooted in the same soil:

That soil contained all time, past and future, in it. It was dark with time, rich with time. It was where her deepest self lived, and the deepest selves of her sister and brothers and all those who shared that time with her.

A beautiful novel told with sensitivity and compassion. Highly recommended.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dull and one paced. That's rather damning about a book set in Delhi at the time of Partition. India at its most fascinating and contradictory.
Clear Light of Daypores over sibling rivalries and the often unspoken tensions in extended families.
Ultimately I felt that Anita Desai finished the book with a confused message. The central figure, Bimla, recalls TS Eliot:
"Time the destroyer is time the preserver". She does so, listening to a musical recital at a neighbour's centred around Mulk, a figure who, hithertoo, had seemed to represent an uncultured, crude, divisive India. A confusing, artificial, finale.

While Booker shortlisted (1980) Clear Light of Day examines family tensions via a series of sibling reflections, a much better book (IMO) covering similar ground, but with much more vitality is Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others (also Booker shortlisted - in 2014)

[cameron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this book about contemporary Indian life compared one aging sister from America re-visits her Indian family who still sit, numbly in the old, flaking mason and suffer with sighs on the shadowy green lit veranda. I've read a fair bit of wonderful contemporary Indian fiction over the last few years where the characters, plot and descriptions reveal everything to the reader in gorgeous prose and surprising revelations. This, however is not one of them. Nothing really changes from beginning to end except there is more repetition of the existence they all lead now. It's not terrible, just daily cliches.

[Sana Abdulla · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't quite know what to say about this book, it kept me reading despite the boring story and the one dimensional characters, most of whom can be described by a word or two at the most.
I guess I was hoping for a climax but there wasn't any. The descriptions and comparisons were all very dull, I'm sure they were well thought out but the choices the writer made were abysmal yet suited the gloomy ambience of the old house where the story took place, sadly it did nothing for the pleasure of reading it.