Book Review – All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy

About the Book

“In my childhood, I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman.”

So begins the story of Myshkin and his mother Gayatri, who is driven to rebel against tradition and follow her artist’s instinct for freedom.

Freedom of a different kind is in the air across India. The fight against British rule is reaching a critical turn. The Nazis have come to power in Germany. At this point of crisis, two strangers arrive in Gayatri’s town, opening up to her the vision of other possible lives.

What took Myshkin’s mother from India to Dutch-held Bali in the 1930s, ripping a knife through his comfortingly familiar universe? Excavating the roots of the world in which he was abandoned, Myshkin comes to understand the connections between the anguish at home and a war-torn universe overtaken by patriotism.

This enthralling novel tells a tragic story of men and women trapped in a dangerous era uncannily similar to the present. Its scale is matched by its power as a parable for our times.

Format: Hardcover (360 pages) Publisher: MacLehose Press
Publication date: 1st June 2018 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction always turns up a wealth of interesting books, some of which I might never have come across otherwise. Longlisted in 2019, it’s taken me a long time to get around to reading All the Lives We Never Lived but it’s another one ticked off the list. (By my reckoning there are still over 20 books longlisted since 2019 that I haven’t read.)

The book’s title tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the story. Myshkin’s mother Gayatri feels trapped in her current role as wife and mother. Her interest in art, poetry and music, awakened during trips abroad as a young girl with her liberal-minded father, has now been stifled. Myshkin’s father views them as affectations, increasingly so as he becomes involved in the Indian independence movement and a spiritual quest.

It’s through Myshkin’s eyes that we see his mother’s frustration played out. To be more accurate it’s his childhood memories we’re reading, set down by him towards the end of his life. There were many things he witnessed as a child that he didn’t understand the full meaning of. All he knew was that his mother was unhappy and that one day she simply disappeared in search of the fulfilment she craved. His only contact from that day forward was the occasional letter from the island of Bali, the place that had made such an impression on her during her travels with her father. And then, when war comes to the Dutch East Indies, suddenly even that stops.

It’s only much later, through letters sent by his mother to her friend Lisa, that we learn about Gayatri’s life in Bali. They describe her initial delight at her new found freedom to pursue her passion for painting and her determination to make enough money to have Myshkin join her. Then her growing disillusionment and, finally, her fear of what will happen if the Japanese occupy Bali.

It has to be said that Gayatri is a rather voluble correspondent, constantly chiding her friend Lisa to write more often and to send her news of Myshkin. Ironic given she’s the one who abandoned him. I found the letters rather gushing and I wasn’t convinced an epistolary format was the best way to tell the story of Gayatri’s time in Bali.

As we learn from Myshkin the man his mother was said to have ‘run off with’ was not an Englishman but a German painter, Walter Spies. (I didn’t realise until I read the author’s note that he was a real life figure.) Despite the fact he seems to put a spell on so many of the characters, including Myshkin, I didn’t feel I actually got to know him that well.

Myshkin pursues a career as horticulturalist specialising in urban tree planting. My favourite quote from the book is his mentor’s response when Myshkin confides he’s thinking about finding a more lucrative occupation. It’s a version of a Chinese proverb: ‘If you wish to be happy for an hour, drink wine; if you wish to be happy for three days, get married. If you wish to be happy for eight days, kill your pig and eat it; but if you wish to be happy forever, become a gardener.’

All the Lives We Never Lived covers a lot of ground, possibly too much. In addition to Gayatri’s story we get, amongst other things, stuff about Indian politics in the 1930s, Indian culture and spirituality, women’s position in society, the impact on India of WW2 and attitudes to homosexuality. Surprising then that, although beautifully written, I found it rather slow.

About the Author

Anuradha Roy is a writer and potter. She was born in Kolkata and grew up mostly in Hyderabad, India, though she lived in many places through her nomadic childhood. She studied Literature at Presidency College, Kolkata and at Cambridge University, UK.

Roy has written five novels. Her first, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, was translated into sixteen languages and was voted Book of the Year in a number of places, including Washington Post, Seattle Times, and Huffington Post. It was Editor’s Choice, New York Times. Sleeping on Jupiter, her third novel, won the DSC Prize for Fiction 2016 and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015. All the Lives We Never Lived won the 2022 Sahitya Akademi Award, one of India’s highest literary honours, and was shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.

Roy lives in Ranikhet, where she is a graphic designer at Permanent Black, a scholarly press she runs with her partner, Rukun Advani, and four dogs. (Bio: Author website/Photo: Facebook profile)

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