I’ve been a fan of Thrity Umrigar since I read The Space Between Us several years ago, Searing…traumatic…haunting…beautiful…powerful… I read Honor in three days, while also teaching and meeting family responsibilities. It was hard to read and even harder to put down. The story follows Meena, a young Hindu woman, who marries Abdul, a Muslim man. Meena’s brothers burn Abdul to death and maim Meena badly in the process—an honor killing as retribution for their sister marrying a Muslim. Meena, pregnant and alone, survives; a lawyer persuades her to file a case against her brothers. Everything is stacked against Meena: patriarchal villagers; disgruntled, angry, emasculated brothers; a ruling village elder who bribes the villagers and the judge. Will Meena find justice? What do you think? The other storyline follows an Indian-American journalist tasked with covering Meena’s story when she arrives in Mumbai, the city of her birth, which she left at age 14 after traumatic, life-altering circumstances. Smita doesn’t just cover the story; she becomes part of it. Smita is accompanied in her visits to Meena’s village by a local Indian man, Mohan, with whom she forms an attachment.Umrigar tells the story at a fast pace, and while I wanted to skip over some of the heart-wrenching, cruel scenes, I couldn’t. As a writer, I foresaw the difficulty of finishing the story in a way that was true to the characters and the setting, yet realistic. Umrigar manages this impossible task with her characteristic brilliance. It is also the story of a love/hate relationship with a country—sound familiar? Smita grew up in India and had a happy childhood, until it was marred by hatred, vitriol, and betrayal she experienced as a teen, forcing her whole family to depart India. Umrigar positions India as a land of contrasts: great beauty and wrenching ugliness; warmth and hospitality, and unbending hatred; compassion and cruelty; extreme poverty and astounding wealth.Memorable quotes:On driving a car in Mumbai: “It was like listening to a demented, cacophonous orchestra; she had the strange sensation that the cars were communicating to one another, like in some science-fictional post-apocalyptic movie.”“Monster. Demon. Satan. In Smita’s line of work people often bandied around such terms to explain away horrendous behavior. Every time there was a mass shooting in America, for instance, there was a rush to label the shooter a crazed monster, rather than place him within the context of a culture that fetishized guns.”This quote especially interested me as we recently discussed the ‘monstrous’ in British Lit, as we discussed Beowulf and Grendel. We discussed the concept of the abject, othering people to distance them from ourselves, those we deem outside the realm of the acceptable, trying to prove we are nothing like them.Describing Meena’s scarred face: “That’s it exactly, Smita thought. Meena’s face was a map created by a brutal, misogynistic cartographer.”“Because traditions are like eggs—once you break one, it is impossible to put it back inside its shell.”I highly recommend Honor.
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