THE LIVES OF OTHERS - NEEL MUKHERJEE

The Lives of Others is an award winning novel. I do not like it.

The Lives of Others follows the journey of the industrialist Ghosh family of Calcutta during the 1960s, at the peak of the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency and growth in trade union power. Had this been the main focus of the novel I would absolutely eaten this up. Unfortunately Mukherjee decided to tackle the unending well that is the interfamily conflicts found in South Asian families. This isn’t a topic I think writers should shy away from, frankly it’s a very compelling and cathartic subject to occasionally read. Sadly in this case I feel as if Mukherjee focused far too much on shock value as opposed to telling a compelling family drama. Furthermore, the family drama that unfolded in my opnion detracted from the actually interesting aspect of this book, which was the fact our protagonist Supratik joins the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency and documents his time in the forms of letter to his lover, we will get back to this, and details the struggles of revolutionaries in rural India. Personally this aspect of the novel was far superior to the family drama which as mentioned before can be boiled down to an attempt at some rather worrying shock value.

The family drama does cover the usual culprits found in South Asian families; issues between in-laws, overbearing parents, sibling rivalries & especially when it comes to a bourgeois family such as the Ghosh’s, an insatiable desire for wealth. These aspects I thought were fine enough to tell every aspect of the family drama angle Mukherjee wanted to tell, yet he decides to take things too far in my opinion. Mukherjee decides to introduce not one but two incestuous relationships. One of which we mentioned before, Supratik’s love affair with his Aunt (through marriage) Purba. This relationship in itself I didn’t find egregious, Purba is only a few years older than Supratik and was coerced into marrying into the Ghosh family. The connection between the two although mired by the fact Purba is technically Supratik’s aunt doesn’t feel like it was put into the story to shock readers. The other example of an incestuous relationship… well that is another can of worms.

Supratik’s Aunt and Uncle, Chhaya and Bholanath has an incestuous relationship that felt entirely unnecessary. Mukherjee could have written their personal arc of sibling obsession and co-dependence without the need for incest to come into play. The relationship isn’t even written as a commentary on the patriarchal nature of Indian society where perhaps Bholanath could have been written to coerce his sister into this relationship, their union is written as a mutual obsession which crosses a boundary I feel didn’t need to be crossed as it doesn’t play a significant role on the plot.

Ultimately my personal opinion is that the half of the book that follows Supratik is far superior to the half that follows the rest of his family. Had the half that followed the Ghosh’s facilitated mroe intrigue into Supratik’s story perhaps I would look on it more kindly. However that is not the case and The Lives of Others becomes perhaps the first award winning book I have read where I genuinely disagree with it’s stature in the literary canon.

You can pick up The Lives of Others from Waterstones and Bookshop