A young man from England is sent by his immigrant shopkeeper-parents to spend the summer after he turned 18 to stay with his uncle and his family, who still live in a rural village in Punjab, India. The young man is at a critical crossroads in his life: waiting for his almost certain to be failing marks from his final semester at secondary school and suffering the consequences of withdrawal from a more than two years-long addiction to heroin. His father has hopes that his sojourn in the old country, away from his suppliers, will break him free of his habit. However, when he tries to numb the severity of his symptoms with more and more alcohol and ends up endangering his young cousin, who he was supposed to be watching, his aunt shows him the door.
A second chance raises its head in the form of the family’s long-abandoned ancestral farmstead situated some distance outside the village. The neglected old home is in sad need of repair, and the whole place is infested with mosquitoes. In his search for a place to escape the insects’ wrath, the young man finds one likely room, only to discover it to be sealed shut and its windows barred. Local talk is the place is haunted by the spirit of Mehar, a young woman who had been locked away in the “China Room” until her death. Mehar was the young man’s great-grandmother.
Mehar had been 16 years old in 1929 when she and two other young brides were wedded in a group ceremony to three brothers, the sons of a well-to-do landowner in another village. None of the girls had ever met future bridegrooms, only their soon-to-be mother-in-law, Mai, who had brokered the marriages with each of their parents. Mai was in charge of the family and its holdings, her husband long gone, and she ruled the household with an iron fist. The three girls found themselves relegated to the “China Room” called such because this was where Mai’s wedding china had been stored since she had come to the house as a new bride herself. In the China Room, the girls completed their daily chores and worked at other household activities. They slept there at night segregated from the men of the family, including their husbands unless Mai tapped one or another for a private conjugal visit in the dark with their husband in another room in the farmstead. As the girls worked, they speculated among themselves which one of the brothers was each one’s husband, for they still were uncertain! Life went on, the girls bickered, made up, and continued with their guessing, and all was fine, that is, until Mehar found herself alone in the barn with the one brother that she was just sure belonged to her.
CHINA ROOM is an evocative tale of the past in rural India (and somewhat rural England, for that matter.) The author takes the reader to earlier times where you can almost feel the heat, humidity, and the stifling structure of the girls’ lives on the farmstead. He vividly portrays the suffocating restrictions under which the young women existed. Mehar’s journey from her carefree and fairly unshackled girlhood to a married woman is fascinating, heartbreaking, and from a modern, feminine point-of-view, horrifying. The setting during the growing restlessness of the Indian population still under the rule of Great Britain lends the story a feeling of dread and danger.
The unnamed young man of the story is easy to like and sympathize with as he goes through drug withdrawal and as he tells of the incidents in his childhood that made him aware of the racism his parents faced and endured as they tried to make a better life for themselves and him in a country village in England. But it is a hopeful story for the young man as he begins to shake off the addiction and focus on the farmstead and the stories in his family’s past.
CHINA ROOM is an eye-opening glimpse into the past with engaging characters, a fascinating culture, and a historic setting told using a dual timeline by an accomplished storyteller. I was immersed in the sights and sounds and story from the start and could have read this from start to finish if real-life had allowed it. I recommend this book to readers of women’s fiction, historical fiction, or anyone interested in stories set in India, especially during the time of the British Raj.
1929. Mehar, a young bride in rural Punjab, is trying to discover the identity of her new husband. Married to three brothers in a single ceremony, she and her sisters-in-law spend their days hard at work in the family’s “china room,” sequestered from contact with the men—except when their domineering mother-in-law, Mai, summons them to a darkened chamber at night. Curious and headstrong, Mehar can't help but try to piece together what Mai doesn't want her to know. From beneath her veil, she studies the sounds of the men's voices, the calluses on their fingers as she serves them tea. After she glimpses something that seems to confirm which of the brothers is hers, a series of events is set in motion that will put more than one life at risk.
1999. A young man arrives at his uncle’s house in Punjab for the summer, hoping to shake an addiction that has held him in its grip for more than two years. Growing up in small-town England, the son of an immigrant shopkeeper, his experiences of racist ostracism and violence led him to seek a dangerous form of escape. As he rides out his withdrawal at the family’s now-abandoned farmstead—its china room mysteriously locked and barred—he begins to knit himself back together, gathering strength for the journey home.
At once sweeping and intimate, vivid and gripping, and partly inspired by the author’s own family history, China Room is a deeply moving novel from a contemporary master.
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