These loosely connected short stories paint a powerful, visceral picture of class divisions in India. Some of the stories are harder to read than others (one in particular about a dancing bear), but they're all full of characters and emotions that sink into your bones. It's beautifully written, and I know it will stick with me for a long time.

This is a collection of short stories (really two very short stories, and three quite long), all told from the perspective of people within different social classes in India. The first story is about an Indian man who has moved to the United States and has brought back his American-born son to visit the Taj Mahal, to see his native country. The second is told from the perspective of a man who came from wealth, who has now living a very successful life in London and has come home to visit his parents for a long holiday. The third story tells of a very poor villager who captures a young bear and trains him to dance for money. The fourth tells the story of Milly, a girl who came from a village suffering poverty and living in constant fear of the guerrilla groups who wreak havoc all around them. In truth, the fifth story was so short that I can't even recall what it was about.

It would be inaccurate to say that I enjoyed this book. It really isn't the kind of book one enjoys, so to speak. Neither did I love it or hate it. It's one of those books that is painful, compelling and eye-opening and therefore needs reading. I'll tell you now, many people, including myself, wanted to put it down after the first story. It's confusing. Don't give up because of the first story. And pay attention, because there are bread crumbs of the upcoming stories sprinkled throughout. In the tiniest of ways, the characters in each are connected in one way or another, but it is so slight that you might miss it if you weren't paying attention.

The second story was interesting enough to move forward to the next. A wealthy young Indian man, now living in London and thinking himself rather forward-thinking, comes home to visit his parents. Despite his mother's insistence that the servants should be treated according to their position - in other words, given instructions or corrections, but don't dare try to get to know them - the young man empathizes and wants to connect with them, to better understand their lives in the slums, perhaps help them in some way if he can. As he inserts himself into the cook's life, reality sets in and he begins to understand the disparity between their lives.

The third story was difficult to read. In truth, I despised the main character. He abused everything and everyone around him. He was a wretch, and I could not bring myself to have any empathy for him. Be forewarned that in this chapter there is a smattering of domestic abuse (not terribly graphic), and a fair amount of animal abuse against his dancing bear, which I found difficult to stomach. While I hated him, I see the value in the story itself.

The fourth story was by far my favorite. Two young girls, best friends from the same village, follow very different paths, mostly due to circumstances out of their control. Parts of this story were especially painful to read, not only because of the poverty they endured, and the mistreatment (from my American perspective, mind you) by their parents, but also because of the violent social practices within their society, and the way that violence, especially against women, is accepted as a normal part of life.

With the exception of the first and last story (both, fortunately, very short), this is material worth reading. It is not for entertainment, but perhaps for a little enlightenment, to shine the light on the reality of countries like India, whose economies and social structures are quite different from that of the Western world.

This was a collection of five loosely connected stories of extreme poverty and the desire to overcome. Overall my impression was each story worked individually very well, but the attempt, even as good as it was, of connecting these stories was too much. I would definitely recommend this to anyone interested in a non-american pov but would fall short of recommending this widely, as not everyone can enjoy great writing simply because it is.
Thank you to the publishers for providing me with this arc through netgalley.

There is a rule that I hold to in all of my reading that if I reach anywhere between 30 and 50% complete with a book and I am not "feeling it," I have permission to put it down and move onto another read. A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee was a DRC provided by W.W. Norton and Company via Netgally, and while I gave it a good faith effort, I had to set it aside.

Each section of the book is a story set in India, and it's meant to slowly expand upon different cultures and experiences that exist in the large, diverse nation. The first section is about a man who takes his young son sightseeing, only to eventually witness him die at the hotel where they are staying? To the casual reader, the first section would be enough to go back to Barnes and Noble for a refund. I, however, pressed on to give the next section a chance. 

The second exploration is much more relatable. A son has moved away to go to school and to work in London, but returns home to his well-to-do parents' home once a year for a month. They think he doesn't come home enough, he thinks that their treatment of the servants is inhumane and unkind, and so the generations clash as only modern and older generations can. The themes in this second section really spoke to me, and the additions of uniquely Indian issues helped me relate my experience to one with which I am not familiar, and so I learned some things! Hooray for learning!

The third part of the book is where Mukherjee completely repulsed and lost me. A baby bear is found abandoned in a small, rural, poor town in India and a man decides to keep it, break it, and teach it to dance so that he can make money by entertaining people. The descriptions of the treatment of the bear made me tear up and become very uncomfortable, and the overly academic writing made the story feel disjointed. The bear is beaten, starved, tortured, mangled, and eventually it dances but, since my Kindle informed me I had reached 40%, I had to say "that's enough!" and put it down.

It may be a literary triumph, as many reviewers have already decreed, but for a casual reader looking to travel through literature, this is not the book to pick up. It's more of an academic journey through Indian culture, working with layered characters (one story references a character from another story while expanding on another character from yet another section) in order to show how such different pieces of the Indian puzzle are interwoven to make one nation. It's the kind of book that a very cultured book club might read and pat each other on the back for understanding each of the complex themes and messages within while drinking barefoot chardonnay. It's definitely not a fun or easy read, and while I enjoy a challenging read, this one just wasn't worth the effort. It's cruel in parts, obtuse in many others, and you should probably just go pick a different book to spend your time with.

I received a galley of this book to read and review courtesy of W.W. Norton via NetGalley. This has not influenced my thoughts or opinions about this book.

I went into this book thinking it was a novel, only to realize it's a collection of short stories. It's a fascinating look at the lengths ordinary people will go to eke more out of their lives, but I found the prose challenging and inaccessible at times. The third short story – also the longest – details a long, troubling story involving animal abuse. I could have read an entire book about the fourth short story, about Milly's life and her experiences as a servant.

All in all, it's a good book but perhaps not the most accessible except the most discerning of readers. It strikes me as a book that literary types or those who teach classes on English composition will love.

As I was reading the last pages of this uncomfortable and upsetting novel, my eyes were streaming. My grief was overwhelming.

What story set in India is easy to read? E. M. Forster's Passage to India, depicting British racism and the confused heroine nearly destroying a native Indian man's life because he was more attractive than her fiancé? Or Rumor Godden's novels and stories set in the India of her childhood, and where she returned to live with her children, their cook adding ground glass to their food? I have never forgotten her short story Mercy, Pity, and Love where a man of privilege is thinking about this thesis as his wife is on a buying spree, while on the street an starving woman holds her dying baby.

No, India holds such poverty and cruelness next to its beauty and exotic attractions that it is not easy to encounter it. A family member by marriage went to India and talked about the beggars who sat n the traffic circle, obviously unprepared for what they would see.


"...but then he was hopeful and it's hope that kills you in the end"--from A State of Freedom

A State of Freedom is a novel in five stories that are interconnected by characters, each story revealing that character's life and challenges. The characters include native Indians crushed by poverty and desperately hoping for a better life, and those who have gone abroad and return to their homeland to see it with new eyes, the eyes of an outsider.

Can we go home again? We leave and the world changes us so that when we return we can not become again who we were. We know too much, we have assumed new values, or perhaps we just see with fresh vision what we had ignored before, familiar things we once accepted become horrors.

The first story concerns an native Indian who has brought his child to see the land of his nativity, and then is appalled by what they see, starting with a man falling from a tall building. He us upset knowing his child is being exposed to the harsh realities of poverty.

The second story concerns a man visiting his family who becomes overly friendly with the staff; invited to visit the cook's home village he realizes he "had failed to imagine how other people live."

The third story I could not read through; children find a bear cub and ask a man to teach it to be a dancing bear--which the father and son in the first story encounter. When they found the cub they were concerned for it, but the training is cruel and inhumane; the ending is horrifying.

The fourth story concerns Milly who works for the wealthy family in the second story, Her mother sent her away at age eight to be a domestic worker. When she asks when she will return home again, her mother tells her, you won't come back. The girl is desperate to learn, to find a better life. Every few years she is moved to a new position. She finds herself virtually imprisoned in never-ending work. Until rescued from her tower by a clever man.

The last story is stream-of-consciousness, the thoughts of an ailing construction worker desperate to complete his job, his mind wandering to the boy in a car he had seen, wishing he could be "the pampered son of a rich man." But he is betrayed, for neither he or the boy escape their mutual fate.

The novel is dark and painful. Why would I choose to endure such unhappiness? Why should one read this book?

One cannot change the way of the world, or the workings of a foreign society, but one can learn to see beyond the narrow limits of our comfortable world. We can understand how others live, we can learn mercy, pity and compassion.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Neel Mukherjee's newest novel, A State of Freedom, already published in the UK and in January in the US, comprises five stories about different characters, some of whom have connections to each other. Movement is the common thread of the novel. People choose to move or are forced to move to change their lives. Two of the characters have left the country and appeared in the book as visitors back with family. The remaining characters move around India, striving to eke out a living, to survive the constant predator of poverty at their backs.

The first story is about an unnamed man returning to India with his young son after living in the US for many years. He takes the boy to see the Taj Mahal and on to monuments at Fatehpur Sikri. This introduction to the novel setting is one of high tension with traffic, hordes of people, and noises. Both the father and son feel unsettled by the experience. The father cuts the visit short to return to the safety of their hotel. This first chapter is immediately intense, and I had to go back and read it over again a few times. I identified with the feeling of having all of my senses overloaded from my excursions to chaotic cities in Asia. I felt that I knew the terrain NM was presenting. I was wrong. He had so much more in store.

The second story is about another unnamed man who lives in London and returns to visit his parents who live near the sea in Bombay. The son will be working on a cookbook of regional cuisines for a UK publisher, and he tries to create a relationship with the woman, Renu, who comes in to cook for his family every day. The son even goes so far as to pursue an invitation to visit Renu's village to learn more about cooking. He, like much of the middle class of the world, have little experience or an accurate perception of what comprises village life. The son's brief interlude in Renu's village begins our journey to the heart of the book, living in poverty.

The next character, Milly, is my favorite. She also works for the family in Bombay as a cleaner. We didn't get to know much about her until later, but her quiet presence appears as the son sees her eating a large mid-day meal, sitting on the kitchen floor every day. The mother explains that when Milly was pregnant, she insisted that Milly eat a nutritious meal, not the raggedy leftovers usually given to a servant, every day. Milly has continued that practice even though her second child is now about two years old. We learn about Milly's relationship to food later on in her chapter.

Chapter three brings us Lakshman and his baby cub bear, Raju. Lakshman gets an idea from a man he knows to train the bear to dance and hopefully, make money from him. He begins the process with little success but decides at some point when things are quite hopeless to pack up with the bear and start his wandering, a life that will be backbreaking with starvation rather than money always on his heels. The sadness and bathos began to settle in with this chapter.

Chapter four has different parts, and though it is interspersed with joyful playing and learning in school by Milly and Soni, it also is about not having enough to eat. A meal every day is only guaranteed if they attend school. When school is on break, food is random. Milly's father is a drunk, and her brother has angered people who attack and maim him. Milly loves learning and plans a future with a full education. Her mother must send her away to earn money. Milly's story is the meat of the life of a young girl responsible for working to feed her entire family back in her rural village. Milly has different experiences in the places she worked with various families, some good and some horrendous. It is a given that nothing good will happen in her life. However, Milly is my hero, and she gave me hope.

Chapter five is better left to the reader to discover, immersed as I was, wondering what was going on. All in all, reading NM's novel was an immersive experience into lives that are real and palpable. We know that millions of people live in grinding poverty in India and other places in this world. The migrant experience of moving to different hemispheres or countries is not the only story. Many of us run to have a better life, to be with someone we love, or to be back with the family we love. Today, moving is a way of life, a different one than when my ancestors immigrated to the US for economic and political reasons. Mukherjee's intense new novel is food for the mind and soul, and it might break your heart as it did mine.