“Carvalho challenges our thinking about what it means to live in the interstices of British society, to belong to it and to be separate from it simultaneously; and what it means to be a sexually engaged woman, craving fulfillment”
Reviewed by Janet H. Swinney
Selma Carvalho's debut novel is an unusual book. We talk about the need to widen diversity in the publishing industry to appeal to a wider audience, and this book does just that. It deals with the experiences of first and second generation Goans who have moved to the UK from India to make what they hope will be a better life for themselves. Things turn out to be rather less promising than they might have wished.
Anne-Marie is the chief protagonist. While she's still a child, her parents' marital relationship falls apart at the seams; she loses her father to another family, and becomes aware that it's her embittered mother who is left carrying the can. This sets the tone for how her own life will progress. She leaves school, moves off to university and has a series of relationships with desirable, but ultimately feckless men, one of whom leaves her pregnant.
Central to the book is the unspoken question of why, after second-wave feminism and increasingly liberal values, it is still such a struggle for women to find men with whom it is possible to have a damn good sexual relationship and who will, at the same time, be dependable partners. Women, it seems, are still left shouldering the burden of home-making no matter how slim the resources at their disposal, while men flap unencumbered from one nest of their choosing to another.
Another dominant theme here is the question of ‘belonging', multiple identities and marginalisation. Carvalho delineates the subtleties and complexities of this very cleverly. At school, Anne-Marie doesn't ‘belong' and forms a relationship with another outsider that will last into adulthood. She doesn't identify entirely either with the ‘host' community, or with the Goan/Indian community. As she points out, ‘Brown is a colour defined by not being white or black and it takes on definitions according to circumstance. We wear the colour of the oppressor and the oppressed...' This gives her an ambiguous status, and to some extent, conflicted identity which others can't really bother themselves to comprehend. She points out ‘Outside of India, Indians don't have the luxury of hating each other' even if they don't have anything in common at all. Just as the lack-lustre Horton, Anne-Marie's home town, is on the periphery of London and all it has to offer, Anne-Marie, despite having two cultures to draw upon, remains on the periphery of being simply ‘British'.
This phenomenon has a different complexion among the first generation arrivals. With them, the determination is to retain a strong ‘Goan' identity, and the writer provides a glorious account of the Goan winter tea-dance where ‘dancers sprouted on the parquet floor' all the rituals of the past are revisited.
The novel is a first person account, and as such, allows for a fair amount of observation and reflection, contrary to the maxim ‘show don't tell'. Indeed, why should everything be show and tell, especially as Anne-Marie's insights about the nature of family, sexuality, life and death are often provocative and worth thinking about.
Carvalho's writing can be lyrical: the seasons, described in fine detail, come and go; the social and economic history of Britain gradually unfurls, declining and falling, and providing the backdrop to the course of Anne-Marie's life. Her description of sexual encounters is refreshingly frank and she treats female sexuality with an authenticity we rarely come across in English fiction.
Carvalho challenges our thinking about what it means to live in the interstices of British society, to belong to it and to be separate from it simultaneously; and what it means to be a sexually engaged woman, craving fulfillment, but to be diminished by belonging to half of society that has no real say in how things are run. If you are interested in these challenges, then you should read this accomplished book.
Janet H. Swinney is a widely published writer and author of the short story collection titled Map of Bihar & Other Stories (Earlyworks, 2019). Her collection titled ‘The House with Two Letterboxes’ is forthcoming from Fly on the Wall press later this year.
Sisterhood of Swans is available at leading bookstores in India, and on Amazon.
Banner image is by Photonic and downloaded from unsplash.com