Reviewer: - Elfrea Lockley, author Octopus Books and MA Professional Writing graduate

What powerful stories – I have found myself thinking back to the séance scene and the revelation in the garden since first reading your manuscript. Above all, I like the way in which your narrator's misgivings about telling these stories force you to reflect on themes of gender and social mores. Your obvious struggle to come to terms with a world that is not the black and white place it seemed in childhood makes your exploration of ideas subtle and thoughtful.

Ideas/Themes

Some rich themes emerge from the introduction: memory, the ‘dainty’ ways of the middle classes and how ‘you city types don’t know the real world’, the generation and gender gaps and, the essence of the book, ‘I was the system.’ You explore these ideas well in the stories that follow, though I would have liked to have read more about your nomadic life in India (to give a sense of the vastness and difference of regions), the government bungalow (which could be foregrounded, almost as another character), and in particular the theme of storytelling. Reflecting on the latter may help you to tackle your anxiety about fictionalizing fact.

I like the juxtaposition of the quote from the Bhagavad Gita on duty, destiny and serving. More quotes might be useful, and from other eras in Indian history. Might it be worth researching material from the Raj era on how masters were expected to deal with servants? What about portrayals of servants in Indian regional novels from the 19^th century – or writings about social change during Independence and India’s current economic boom.

Your control of the themes seems less secure when you feel that you don’t have answers to the social problems you engage with. Be reassured that it’s enough to reflect on your struggle rather than feeling you have to have answers. The reader needs to confront your frustrations and uncertainties, too, to understand your story, so don’t feel constrained by your lack of knowledge or influence. Instead, use it to your advantage by acknowledging it.

Plotting

  In Babloo’s story you foreground the way in which you make assumptions about an underclass, ‘Babloo is about ten, I decide.’ In the next story you reveal the disastrous consequences of acting on your assumptions: a family loses its breadwinner and a boy loses his place in his social order. The thoughtful ordering means you don’t have to tell us what to think; this is masterful.
I like the domestic detail (as you point out, Mark Tully says this defines the Indian novel): you present the interior world of face masks, fussy ornaments and comforting TV programmes as a sanctuary from the harsh rules that govern the world outside the home and garden.

Characters

The servants you spent time with as a child seem more three-dimensional than those you have engaged with more recently. I would like to hear more about the interior lives of the latter. For example, what does your nephew talk about with Babloo? Maybe explore their friendship if they have one. Given your fluency with dialogue, this could be fruitful.
I would like to hear more, too, about your mother and her role as mistress of servants, which surely is one of the defining roles here. She wields the power to hire and fire confidently where you struggle with it. This must be worth some engagement. She also warns you about romanticising servants, which is one of your own concerns.
 

Dialogue

Your use of idiom gives a strong sense of place and character, not only in reported speech, ‘She was always the topper’, but in your narrating voice, ‘He gifted me silver earrings’. I like, too, the hysteria that draws on the Hindi film tradition. The thrilling dacoits, the dragging from bungalows and falling to the ground ‘shivering and tearful’! And Shanno talks like the archetypal meddling character actor.  

Writing style

I love the way you write: the spare sentences, the framing scenes, the pulling in and out of dialogue. The structure of the chapter Devi is especially good: count the paragraphs and see how their content is mirrored. You’ve observed some lovely detail: the mother who doesn’t cry when seeing her estranged son, but ’keeps touching his hair again and again’. In the same story (Devi), the newly urbanized boy who goes home to his village ‘smelling of talcum powder and jasmine oil’ (he’s certainly heading for a fall); the synchronising of female limbs in Seema’s story (hinting that the harmonious dance is about to stop) and the bungalow’s garden of Eden (before the inevitable fall).

Since one of the themes set out at the start of the Introduction is stories, I’d like to see more embedded stories told by the servants, as in Bhupal’s story. The tale he tells gives him a depth and back story that the other servants lack. It also stops you putting words into his mouth, and so making fictional, romanticised assumptions. Shanno seems a good candidate for this treatment, since she’s already telling stories the reader isn’t privy to.

Occasionally the interfering narrator jumps in to instruct us what to think (“This incident sums up...’), but generally you make us think by showing not instructing.

Finally, apart from some inconsistency about where you use italics and headings, the text is admirably free from typos and grammatical errors. However, do have a look at your use of past tenses. This can become quite convoluted, so think about simplifying.