China Room: The heartstopping and beautiful novel, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021

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Dramatically hushed is about right. It seems I might have been expecting a lush, evocative Indian historical drama with deeply drawn characters set amongst political turmoil. A little bit Rohinton Mistry perhaps. This is... not that. Perhaps the fault lies with my expectations. Abbott, James Archer (2007). The Presidential Dish: Mrs. Woodrow Wilson and the White House China Room. Woodrow Wilson House; National Trust for Historic Preservation. pp.2–7. OCLC 500849758. Monkman, Betty C (2000). The White House: Its Historic Furnishing & First Families. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association. ISBN 0-7892-0624-2.

The whole concept of the girls not knowing their husbands leading to trouble (which kind of trouble you can very well imagine upfront) feels very YA to me, maybe fitting for a 15 year old main character, but still I can hardly believe when living in such a tight circle of 7 persons that one would make the mistake Mehar makes. Seale, William (1986). The President's House. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association. ISBN 0-912308-28-1.

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The second first-party strand is set 70 years later – as Mehar’s great grandson, shortly before taking up an unconditional offer to study Maths. at Imperial, travels to visit his Aunt and Uncle in India, ostensibly for a family visit but really in an attempt to go cold turkey from heroin addiction. His initial technique seems to be largely to use whisky as a substitute, and in the face of his Aunt’s hostility and his Uncle’s embarrassment he is shipped off to a deserted family farm and ends up staying in the same China Room.

Garrett, Wendell D (1995). Our Changing White House. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-222-5. The narrative of the second strand is underpowered, and illuminates the first one only tangentially. Mehar's unnamed great-grandson has been shipped off to his uncle's house in India from the UK one summer to undergo heroin withdrawal before starting university in the fall. After disappointing his controlling and judgmental aunt (a latter-day Mai?), he moves into the old family farmhouse where Mehar lived. Cleaning up the property as a project to occupy his days, he discovers the room where she lived, and hears rumors about her legendary life, full of brutality, scandal, and betrayal. SIMON: Yeah. And when we use a verb like given, any resemblance to property is intended, I guess, isn't it? One hundred. Two hundred. Three hundred, he counts, barely working his lips and standing unmoving in the yard, in the moon. The sun in the moon. He looks about him, from the quiet of the barn to the charpoys stowed upright under the veranda, their long round legs like rifles, all the way across to the china room, shuttered in silence. He’d skipped over the double-doors at the rear of the porch. Now, he walks towards them, applies his hand to the flaking paint and steals inside, to where Mehar has been instructed to wait for her husband.Welcome to the Siren Book Club! Whether you’re looking for your next steamy romance, an excuse to cry ugly tears or want to be whisked away to a new magical realm, we have something for you. All the characters you’ll meet along the way are strong women who know what they want. Whether it’s reclaiming […] China Room has two stories that are loosely connected. One follows a girl in 1929 who is in an arranged marriage and some events happen that cause her life to go down a path she wasn’t expecting. The other story is about a man who is struggling with ending his drug addiction. Mehar is not so obedient a fifteen-year-old that she won’t try to uncover which of the three brothers is her husband.” Abbott, James Archer; Rice, Elaine M (1998). Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration. New York City: Van Nostrand Reinhold. ISBN 0-442-02532-7.

This is the third novel by the author, who like me has a mathematics degree and like me started his career, post-graduation, working for a life insurance company (our paths rather diverged after that). This novel has quite a few flaws, but I really enjoyed reading it, thus four instead of three stars. The title-giving China Room has nothing to do with the country in Asia, but refers to a small chamber shared by three young brides (and where some porcelain from their mother-in-law's dowry is stored). It's the year 1929 in rural Punjab, and 15-year-old Mehar wonders which of the three brothers of the house is her husband, as all three girls have been married the same day and are kept unaware of who is whose husband - sexual meetings always occur in a windowless room, in almost complete darkness. When Mehar presumes that she has found out which one is her spouse, tragedy ensues...Spiralling around Mehar's story is that of a young man who in 1999 flees from England to the deserted sun-scorched farm. Can a summer spent learning of love and of his family's past give him the strength for the journey home? Sahota neatly intertwines the threads connecting the past and present, never forcing obvious connections, letting the reader make its mind how the common forces of love and friendship shape the protagonists. He manages to confront heavy themes of arranged marriage and largely gendered injustices through a tragic love story. His prose is delicate, beautiful and his plotting is spectacular, managing to foreshadow the inevitable without lessening the reader's desire to find out what will happen.

Both storylines converge in themes of escape and incarceration, whether literal or social and psychological. The narrator, living alone on the abandoned farm, having been shunned by his aunt and uncle, plays out an almost parodic tale of regeneration and reconnection that echoes Mehar’s less successful attempts at self-determination; their familial link hovers over the entire story, reminding us of the ghost-trauma carried from generation to generation.The historic timeline is set in Punjab in 1929. Mehar (whom we later find out is the young man’s great grandmother) is one of three young women, in their teens, married to three brothers. They are housed in the China Room (named for the dishes), apart from the family’s central residence. Each woman does not know which brother is her husband. They are controlled by a domineering mother-in-law, and are expected to be fully veiled, silent, and dutiful. Mehar is a bit of a rebel. She assumes one brother is her husband and eventually finds herself in trouble. This storyline is based on the author’s own family history. Klapthor, Margaret Brown (1999). White House China: 1789 to the Present. New York City: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 0-8109-3993-2. Monkman, Betty C; Sidey, Hugh S (2001). The White House: An Historic Guide. Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association. ISBN 0-912308-79-6. I re-read this book after its longlisting for the 2021 Booker Prize and had similar views to my first read.