The Toss of a Lemon
by Padma Viswanathan
Random House Canada (2008), 616pp.
by Padma Viswanathan
Random House Canada (2008), 616pp.
In the introduction to her stunning first novel, Padma Viswanathan describes her grandmother’s faltering attempts to recount their family history. “This time, she started farther back,” she writes of one occasion, “with a story I’d never heard: of her own grandmother, married as a child and widowed before she was out of her teens; of that grandmother’s son, childless and embittered; and her daughter, my grandmother’s mother, victimized by her marriage.” After trips to India, enormous amounts of research, and not a little invention, the result is The Toss of a Lemon.
Set within the Brahmin caste in southeastern India, the book opens in 1892 with a marriage proposal between Hanumarathnam, a young man “blessed with the ability to heal,” and ten-year-old Sivakami, a girl who looks “capable of bearing great burdens.” The proposal is accompanied by elaborate astrological calculations, after which Hanumarathnam tells his prospective in-laws he may die in the tenth year of his marriage.
When Hanumarathnam dies after the birth of his first son, Sivakami is left to the cruel yoke of a Brahmin widow. Stripped of her jewellery and dressed in a white sari, she is forced to have her head shaved and is forbidden to touch anyone between dawn and dark. Thus begins an epic family drama that extends into the 1950s and traces the conflicts between the traditional India and the modern, secular one.
The brilliance of The Toss of a Lemon rests not so much in its intricate plotting as in the compressed, poetic precision with which Viswanathan depicts a lost world. “On the riverbank, in a ceremony as old as men and women, her brother tears Sivakami’s blouse at the back, and she is made to remove it,” the author writes of the young widow’s mourning ceremony. “She unties the saffron thread of the thirumangalyam and drops it into the pot of milk her son holds for her . . . She will never see those gold medals of wifehood again.”
Comments (8 comments)
Anonymous: Your reviewer must be hallucinating, or paid off by Random House. The whole novel is written in a flattening, deadening present tense which is odd considering the novel "spans" generations (and at over 600 self-indulgent pages it will take a reader a generation to wade through its earnest, dreadful passages). Seems like another one of those novels targeted toward that silver-haired menopausal demographic living in Toronto's Annex, who apparently are the only readers of novels left in the country. The most fascinating part of the book are the Acknowledgments, which seem to thank everyone in the world and their mother. Boo. Don't be fooled. This book is a piece of CRAP. March 14, 2008 14:52 EST
BernardMacKinnon: I have to agree with Anonymous although I believe he/she is a bit harsh. The novel does go on and on and tries your patience to the extreme, but does contain certain memorable, well executed scenes. I believe that with this novel there should have been a sharpened red pencil let lose on it. March 17, 2008 11:04 EST
Amy N.: This is a beautiful novel — your reviewer is right on the mark. I'm taking the time to say so only because of the anonymous, sophomoric comment above, which completely fails to describe the book I read. The book I read has a prose style that is restrained but never flat, and the authorial intelligence behind it is serious but far from humourless. And the story it tells is grand in all the best senses of that word — I wouldn't have wanted it any shorter! March 24, 2008 12:33 EST
Anonymous: Impressive debut indeed, and she'll make a kajillion dollars. The God of Small Things, excuse me, The Toss of a Lemon, is a rich family portrait. April 03, 2008 03:02 EST
Susan: This is a lovely, moving novel. The pace and the tone match the restrained world of the Brahmin widow who is the central character. The language is exquisite. Please ignore the ignorant comment which leads off this list. That reader seems to have missed the point of the book and further has a very crude way of writing a review. April 14, 2008 11:24 EST
Gwynne Gertz: A good book allows us into a world that we may otherwise never know. A superb book allows us into such a world and momentarily fills us with awe because we temporarily lose our bearings and our faced with something completely new and other and yet we feel a connectedness. This is a superb book. I dare you to enter this book and learn about a country and a time in a way you never have before. June 05, 2008 09:04 EST
Anonymous: This is a very wonderful novel that gives insight into Indian culture and customs in a way I don't recall for any other author. It is almost like books written in the last century. Definitely a great read, and gives a very interesting picture of India from the time the British raj ceased up to the modern era of Gandhi and Nehru. July 31, 2008 11:26 EST
Anonymous: Where was the editor of this novel? Starting with the unfortunate title (in the UK it would be laughable) and the distancing present tense which makes the entire novel as interesting as a doctor's report, and moving on to the length and the disastrous epilogue. Too bad, because this is a talented writer and this could have been a great novel. As it stands, it's unreadable. I doubt any reviewer actually made it past p. 40. Easier to just say brilliant and be done with it. Could have been brilliant but it's a dud. August 23, 2008 08:50 EST