Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? | 
pickA sweeping narrative of the lives of three Indian women whose lives in Punjab, Delhi and Vancouver gather within the embrace of family, faith, community and friendship yet shatter beneath the fist of hatred and violence. An imperfect, at times somewhat disjointed novel that throbs with feeling. I was heartbroken open.
@Lindy @Mayread @ramyasbookshelf @Skiles @SusanInTiburon @Dragon
pickSometimes the best thing about a novel is how much it teaches me. Badami includes a lot of important historical events over the tumultuous 60-year span of the narrative, and I feel better able to grasp their effects by having them in context with fictional individuals. Her writing is a bit overwrought for my taste, but it's still a pick.
@shawnmooney @mayread @ramyasbookshelf @skiles @susanintiburon @Dragon
Have you all finished the book? One of the things I liked about it was how many other books came to mind as I was reading it. I'm going to mention them in comments so that I can use title links.
Oops! Continuity error. Pa-ji wears a suit but not a tie to the interview with Jasbeer's principal. (P. 208). After the meeting, once they are out of the school, Pa-ji loosens his tie and rips it off (p. 212).
"'Take the next left,' she told Balu. Leela felt absurdly pleased with herself. Soon she might not need any maps at all. Soon Vancouver might become a place as familiar as Bangalore or Balepur."
I love how this passage captures the internal shift that can happen along with a feeling of mastery.
@shawnmooney @mayread @ramyasbookshelf @skiles @susanintiburon @Dragon
Illegal immigration has come up several times. When an airplane stowaway is mentioned in Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? I thought of a novel by Kate Pullinger, (which has a less tragic fate for the stowaway, as far as I can tell). Have any of you read Landing Gear?
@shawnmooney @mayread @ramyasbookshelf @skiles @susanintiburon @Dragon
I couldn't find a definition for 'bharoli' but assume it's some sort of large container.
"So what is wrong with being like Trishanku?Was he not a lucky fellow to have a foot in two worlds? It can be an advantage to live neither here nor there, like a frog, comfortable in water and on land. The thing is to understand how to make use of this ability."
My garden currently looks like this. A good day to stay curled up inside with #diversereads author Anita Rau Badami.
Starting this tonight. My mom read it for her book club, so long ago I can't remember when, then gifted it to me. It's in hardcover, published 2006, so I may have had for 10 years. Yikes!
@Lindy @Mayread @ramyasbookshelf @Skiles @SusanInTiburon @Dragon In researching this quote, I stumbled upon an article online that may interest you – I haven't read it in its entirety yet. Title: "Recipe Fiction and the Undercooked Nightbird - Reading Anita Rau Badami‘s Can You Hear the Nightbird Call?" http://kriticulture.blogspot.jp/2008/05/recipe-fiction-and-undercooked.html
@Lindy @Mayread @ramyasbookshelf @Skiles @SusanInTiburon @Dragon
If you have Apple Music or some similar music service, this is a wonderful album to listen to while you're reading the novel. Or do you have some other suggestions? Bring them on!
Gora: Indian slang for a white person
It's not a spoiler to direct you to a synopsis of the fate of this ship, the Komagata Maru, but it is one of Canada's deepest shames: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komagata_Maru_incident
I'm back in Canada for a week, now at my parents' house in the city of Saskatoon. Here's a book from my mom's shelf that she loves and has urged me to read for years, even buying me my own copy which remains unread in a box somewhere. I must get to it someday… I once found myself seated beside Badami at a literary event in Vancouver and had a lovely chat.
