China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

February 14, 2022

China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

In a rural village in India in 1929, three girls are married to three brothers in a single marriage ceremony. Because of their Punjabi traditions and their eccentric mother-in-law, the girls live separately from the rest of the family in a small house called the china room because of the decorations. They have marital relations with their husbands only when the mother-in-law decides they can, and then she decides which husband can see his wife that night, and only in the pitch dark. The mother-in-law claims that it is so the oldest brother's wife doesn't lord it over the other two wives. None of the young women know exactly which brother is her husband, although they try to figure it out when they serve meals or tea to the men, by looking at their hands and listening to their voices. Mehar, the youngest and prettiest of the girls, believes she has figured out which brother is her husband and begins meeting him in secret during the day. At the same time, unrest over India's push for independence from Great Britain swirls through the village.

In a parallel story set in 1999, a young man arrives unexpectedly at his uncle's house in India. He is about to start university, and is hoping to kick his heroin addiction by separating himself from his home and friends in England. Rather than living in the family's empty house outside of the village, he stays in the china room and becomes curious about its history.

Based on a family legend about the author's great-grandmother (which is supposedly well-known in the family's home village) and long-listed for the Booker Prize, China Room is strongly character driven. The is not much plot (like a lot of literary fiction), and women are treated as servant-wives or sex objects, which is still true in much of India today (see previous review for Honor by Thrity Umrigar).