An enjoyable, accessible, and relatively brief work of literary fiction set in the Punjab that concerns itself with marriage, sexual passion and possessiveness, sibling rivalry, and the historically constricted lives of women. As engaging as it is, the novel feels rather thin and soap-opera-ish, requiring considerable suspension of disbelief.

One of the novel’s two stories, set in the late ’90s, has a young British man of South-Asian descent visiting his uncle and aunt in the Punjab, apparently to sweat out his heroin addiction. Well aware of his aunt’s displeasure at having him in her home, he asks his uncle if he might stay on the abandoned ancestral farm, which he ends up partially renovating with the help of friends he makes in the village.

The other story, set in 1930, concerns the young man’s great-grandmother, Mehar, who as a teenage bride, lives on the farm with two other young women, their domineering mother-in-law, and her three sons. The girls don’t know which of the three brothers each is married to, as the husbands visit them on separate nights in total darkness in a room set aside to accommodate the “procreative aspect” of their marriages. Heirs and future labourers will be needed to keep the farm going. It is the women’s responsibility to produce those heirs; enjoyment of the duty apparently isn’t supposed to be part of the deal. On nights when none of the girls is otherwise engaged, the three sleep together in a storeroom, the china room of the novel’s title. During the day, the wives slave away and interact little with the men. The reader is required to accept that Mehar mistakes the youngest brother for her husband. <spoiler>She subsequently meets him regularly during the day for sex, and the two make a plan to escape the farm. By this time, of course, she knows who’s who.</spoiler> I accepted this Shakespearean device of mistaken identity, but did I believe a woman, even a young one, could be so oblivious about the body of her husband? Frankly, no.

Re: the 1990s narrative—I also didn’t buy that parents would send a teenage heroin addict in the immediate throes of opioid withdrawal to another continent to stay with relatives he’d not seen in years, one of whom is extremely angered by the young man’s presence.

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher. I enjoyed the book, but I don’t think it merits an award.

This book was very well-written and pulled me in from the beginning. The mystery of the three young brides in 1929 India, living and working on their husbands' family farm under their mother-in-law's strict rule, and none of them knowing which of the three brothers was her husband, was very compelling. The alternate story of a young man, recovering from a heroin addiction, who comes to live on the long-deserted family farm in 1999, was equally interesting. This is rare for me in a book with two or more storylines which take place in different times - I usually strongly prefer one over the other.

The main character, the young bride Mehar, and Mai, her mother-in-law, were well-developed, as was the young man, and I found myself pulling for them as they faced various challenges.

I haven't read this author's other books, but I will definitely check them out now.

This book is a strong 4 stars from me.

China Room really shouldn’t have worked for me — it’s kind of a sentimental historical drama, dripping with desire and forbidden love — but it touched me. I cared about the characters, was fascinated by the customs, and appreciated the long view that author Sunjeev Sahota provides by splitting the storyline between two members of a Punjabi Sikh family, three generations and seventy years apart. This is unlike Sahota’s last Man Booker nominated novel (The Year of the Runaways, which I loved), and although it feels less deep, it worked for me. Apparently roughly based on Sahota’s own family history, China Room has the feeling of truth to it; the plot didn’t go the way I expected, but such is life. This novel doesn’t employ sophisticated literary tricks, and I could even call it lightweight, but it weighed on me all the same. Call me pleasantly surprised. Rounding up to four stars.

A quiet story about a group of women in 1920's India who all "sisters" trying to figure out which of the three brothers is their husband. The story also pushes forward to the modern era and shows us the struggles of one of the descendants of these women and how he, like his great-grandmother feels trapped by his identity and culture. A short and powerful read.

An exquisite novel featuring beautiful prose, brilliant sensory images, and finely-wrought portrayals of love and hurt, choice and fate.

Intertwining two family stories, everything about the two main characters seems to contrast. Mehar has been married off to one of three brothers in 1929 and lives to serve in all ways. Her great grandson, raised in England, has been sent back in the summer of 1999 to kick a heroin addiction. Their gender roles and lives could not be more distinct. Yet the two are united by their deep, emotional, coming of age in the same small room each inhabits on the family farm in Punjab.

Sahota skillfully develops each plotline in tandem, his pace unhurried but never lagging, allowing readers to savor and connect with each word, story and character.

This book is truly worthy of its placement on the 2021 Booker Prize longlist.

I really enjoyed this book, the two plot lines were entwined through the themes of freedom and imprisonment, both through choice and force. The historical characters became almost ghostlike in that there was no hard facts discovered, only heresy and feeling, the main character in the current timeline remains unnamed adding to this feeling. A meditation on power and powerlessness throughout the 20th century in the Indian diaspora.