An Atlas of Impossible Longing: A Novel

Anurada Roy is one of my favorite authors, especially the multi-generational family stories she weaves so skillfully. "An Atlas" begins and ends with a grandiose house built near a river south of Calcutta that is threatening the foundations of the house with every monsoon. The main setting is the village of Songarh, the time is the early 1900's, and the place a small village built on a rocky plateau. Tribal people still live in the surrounding forest, and the patriarch of the Hindi family that settles there, Amulya, discovered the village on a business trip from Calcutta. Songarh spoke to him with its verdant valleys, primal forests, rolling hills and pleasant climate. With background in the pharmaceutical business, he develops the idea to set up a small factory in Songarh manufacturing perfumes and medicinal products from the abundant wild herbs, flowers and leaves that flourish in the area. The forest people know where to find many rare plants like wild hibiscus (the lovely red incarnata), fragrant flowers of the night, and a myriad of wild herbs. Songarh has an ancient past, going back to the time of the Buddha. There is an ancient, giant Banyan tree with its own tangle of aerial roots that he is said to have rested under on one of his journeys. There are collapsing walls of a medieval fort with a domed watchtower. English geologists have discovered and miners have dug deep mines yielding mica and coal leaving behind giant caves. Their settlements encroach on the natives' habitat to some degree, but Songarh still hovers close to the jungle, wild with leopards, tigers and jackals. Amulya hires a Scottish architect and builds a gigantic house (enough to grow a family in) outside of Songarh in scrubland and fields to distance himself from the town. Instead of naming his house, which is the custom among the wealthy, he gives his house a number--3 Dulganj Road--the 3 standing for him and his two sons. From here the story takes off and unfolds in ways that never could have been predicted. There are great loves and friendships, great yearnings and forbidden loves, great wealth and poverty, all knotted like the roots of the Banyan tree. There are Amulya's lush, lovingly tended garden with all kinds of exotic plantings, inviting fossils beds behind his house to explore, and expanded family members who have the opportunity to be educated and widen their horizons. But along with this carefully planned existence there erupts madness, treachery, murder, orphans, greed and envy. Mix all this with fluctuating social classes and religions of early 20th century India, and you have a magnificent, jumbled saga you don't want to end.

An interesting and well written book about small-town life at the end of the British Raj, the Partition, and the beginning of an independent India. I found the jumps between the different 'books' a little disjointed, though the themes and many of the individuals were woven back into the story later. The writing is sometimes lyrical without going over the line to maudlin or flowery. As an archaeologist, I wish authors would take a little time to find out what we do (and what those of the 1940s or 1950s did). The archaeologist in this book seems to spend most of his time pressing flowers and leaves and digging up fossils; the political and social milieu that created an opportunity for archaeology to be inspirational to a new regime and society by rediscovering and researching ancient cultures was only mentioned in passing.

Excellent prose, characters that move our emotions (Mukunda and Bakul), deep human messages, complex but real situations I surrended completely to the narrator Congratulations Ms Anuradha Roy

It's interesting to read novels about India for a sense of their difficult history and restricted and troubled personal relationships. Arundhati Roy created a very interesting, well described and thought-provoking novel in The God of Small Things. Anuradha Roy's novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing also focuses on a family, but over a somewhat longer period of time than Arundhati Roy's novel covers, so it has a bit more of a feel of a family epic. However, both novels are illuminating, especially in the ways they dramatize a sense of social critique and historical changes. The last section of An Atlas... focuses the novel on a single point of view character, one who was born to indigenous, lower-cast parents but adopted and raised (after a period in an orphanage)-- in a higher caste family, but still with a sense of caste distinction. This character becomes the somewhat unlikely hero of the novel, though his life is anything but easy, as he sees no alternative but to work as an assistant to a man who is brutal in his business dealings. Furthermore, he is separated purposefully from the young woman of a higher caste whom he loves, and he later marries a woman with whom he has a child. He comes to love the child while falling out of love with his wife... What does this all add up to? An Atlas... is a book with a fair amount of tragedy, personal and familial in the primary family, which lives in a relatively remote area away from urban life; and with historical perspective (the fading of the British raj through a troubled, mixed-culture family and through some depiction of the problems between Hindus and Moslems that ensue after Britain's departure.) The novel is a good read, a page turner with a sense of strangeness and extreme difficulties in achieving happiness. The ending is quite a bit of a surprise(which I won't reveal) and does seem rather contrived. Arundhati Roy's novel has a more creative style and, as I remember it, does not seem contrived, so I would say that while both novels are good reads, The God of Small Things is certainly a greater artistic achievement.

Not all stories have happy endings but for two of the main characters Bakul and Mukunda, there was indeed a fairy tale ending. To quote Mukunda's last thought..... "All I felt was that life had finally floated down the river and reached me." What a cast of characters! Amuyla the disciplinarian who had deserted Calcutta for a backwoods village with his wife and two sons Nirmal and Kamal; Amulya's wife Kananbala driven to madness through loneliness and finally suffering from Tourettes Syndrome; a disease which had no name back then and was deemed madness; Larissa Barnum the eccentric Englishwoman who murdered her husband and in her mind continued to live in the glorious days of colonial rule; Mukunda the orphan boy who was placed in an orphanage and finally brought into the home by the younger son Nirmal where he was treated like the family slave; and the cast of these colourful characters goes on and on. The author's detail of everything, even the smallest of things puts one front row and centre. Her grasp of the English language leaves one breathless. I felt as if I could've reached out and plucked a flower or tasted a delicious mango on my tongue. Her description of Amulya, lost in his thoughts on what his wife Kananbala was and what she had become was hard to bear....... "He willed himself to listen to the birds and think of nothing else, yet wave upon wave of yearning churned his insides as he longed for the Kanan he had known to return. How had he let her slip away? To him she was still the teenager he had married, her collarbones jutting out, dimples piercing her cheeks, her spine ridging her back when she bent, her eyes doubtful when she joked about something etc etc etc." At first I wondered about the title.... An Atlas of Impossible Longing? ..... I bought this book blindly since I had never heard of or read anything by the author. A magnificent piece of literature with a time frame between 1920 and 1950 and a multi generational cast of characters who experience heartbreak, pain, joy, sadness, greed and most of all hope. This novel is a MUST and I would highly recommend it for readers of every age.

This novel was, is consuming. I was captured with the easiness of the read. The story shifts, but carries the reader right along with the transition. There is the vivid imagery that takes the minds eye to the city, the road, the house. The author goes so far as to engage all of the senses, visions and smells of exotic flowers, lush gardens, and prepared meals; pangs of joy, contentment, secrecy, isolation, loneliness, fear and unrequited love. The reader will witnesses the agony and frustrations of a heart divided and finally made whole again. This is a great read for a book club, vacation or literature class. It goes on my list of works to read a second time.

This story is beautifully written but filled with aching and longing on nearly every page. The characters are worthy of your care but none without flaws. I recommend this read to those who love a character-driven story with a vivid backdrop.

I was caught off guard by this book .I knew the prose would be incredibly good because I am familiar with the author, and it did not disappoint . The book absolutely brought me to tears in it's take on reality . The book is organized into 3 very distinct parts, so the reading was exceptionally easy and the prose is beautifully formed, as I said. I strongly recommend reading this book .

A fascinating book! It brought to life the conflicts raging underneath the seemingly serene setting of the story. The author wrote with passion and poise! Besides, it's a great specimen of how to reproduce the goings on of the lives led by the common Bengali folks. Great book!

Great writer

In An Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy tells the story of three generations of a family who have moved from Calcutta to live in a huge, rambling mansion in Songarh, a small town in the hills of Bengal. Amulya’s wife, Kananbala, hates the isolation of the town, with its lack of fashionable shops and social life, and longs to return to Calcutta. Their oldest son, Kamal, longs for children, and his youngest, Nirmal, is widowed and longs for his unmarried cousin. Everyone appears to long for something that proves unattainable, and at the centre of the story are two children, thrown together by chance circumstance and then separated by the cultural fears of adults, but who have formed an unbreakable bond that endures through years of separation. Mukunda is an orphan of unknown caste adopted by the family, and his only companion is Bakul, daughter of Nirmal. They pass their time playing in the grounds of their home or in the woods and fields around the town. As Bakul and Mukunda grow towards adulthood, their friendship slowly begins to become something more, and Mukunda is sent away to Calcutta by the family, suddenly fearful of the consequences of this. As the years pass, Mukunda graduates from college and becomes prosperous, even through the years of Partition, without ever returning to see the family who raised him, although he thinks frequently of Bakul. But then chance sends him to Songarh, and he realises he must find out what has happened to her. The pace of this book is deceptively languid, but this enables Roy to paint the characters and settings in exquisite detail, and for the plot to unfold at an easily assimilable rate. I feel you always gain more from re-reading a book, and I am longing to do this, to immerse myself again in the rich landscape and characters Roy has created. Most definitely a five star read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, well rounded characters , excellent atmosphere and descriptive writing that brings an (to us) alien way of living vividly to life. I have read Anuradha Roy before and expected to be enthralled and I wasn't disappointed. It has everything, tragedy ,suspense, love thwarted, denied and unspoken, weak men and strong women. If I do have a quibble it is the abruptness of the ending, I wanted to know more and that is always a good thing, recommended.

good