11 Mar / White Dancing Elephants by Chaya Bhuvaneswar [in Booklist]
Loss – by disappearance, destruction, or death – looms throughout Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s award-winning debut collection. Priya Ayyar’s shared Indian heritage with both Bhuvaneswar and many of her characters adds a comfortable fluency, as Ayyar gives distinct characterizations to parents and children, siblings and lovers, friends and enemies, on both sides of the world.
Although affecting throughout, Ayyar is keenly enhancing when voicing the stories of women in conflict. She’s haunting in “White Dancing Elephants,” as a woman experiencing a miscarriage imagines the life her child will never have. She’s biting in “Talinda,” about a woman pregnant by her terminally ill best friend’s husband. She’s both desperate and unyielding in “Orange Popsicles,” in which a student is gang-raped. She’s regretful in “Adristakama,” when cultural pressures dissolve a lesbian relationship. Though production glitches like inserted sentences are occasionally notable, Ayyar’s resonating performance further amplifies Bhuvaneswar’s urgent words with astute empathy.
Review: “Media,” Booklist, March 1, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2018