In her third novel, Intemperance, Sonora Jha (Foreign; The Laughter) crafts a brilliant and triumphant story of a "pathbreaking feminist sociologist," as her 28-year-old son, Karan, puts it, who wants to be married. For a third time.
The unnamed narrator will turn 55 years old in five weeks. She has chosen this date for her swayamvar, a Hindu ceremony in which a woman of upper-class status chooses her husband from a group of eligible suitors. She will design a feat for them to compete at, and--on that same day--will wed the winner. Jha brilliantly sets the structure of the novel in chapters that lay out the narrator's plans for the celebration. There will be cake. There will be shehnai, played live ("for which I may fly in a musician from India"). The wedding dress will be either "a virginal white in the tradition of my chosen world in America or a fertile red from the culture from which I hail."
Karan asks his mother to "reconsider this," but she insists, "I have had this strange sensation that a love that once cried out somewhere in another time or place has now come to sit like an echo in my chest." Jha makes manifest her narrator's premonition in ways that seem both magical and inevitable. Some strong women come forward to help. But not everyone is supportive. The narrator receives missives from a "distant cousin-brother" in New Delhi, who attempts to dissuade her from her plans by revealing in installments a family curse involving one of her ancestors--Alokendra, son of a zamindar, who fell in love with an "Untouchable," a man named Heera. In a kind of antidote to this pall, a silver box of kohl arrives from an unfamiliar woman in Patna. Each time the narrator applies the kohl, she has a vision. Jha deftly intertwines the details of the curse and the kohl-induced visions to yield moments of clarity for the narrator, as she arrives at an acceptance of who she is and what she wants.
At the core of it all is self-interrogation and forgiveness. The heroine's ex-husband Paul and her best friend Cat are living examples of this. "When you have built a brilliant career out of anger, where do you go when the anger is gone?" she asks herself. A memorable cast of supporting characters also plants seeds for the heroine's queries, including Sara, a stranger holding a swan who sits next to her on the bus; Demi the wedding planner; and Vee the documentary filmmaker.
Thanks to Jha's satirical edge, exquisite pacing, and blending of myth and fact, the days leading up to her heroine's swayamvar will provide a series of epiphanies for readers as well as for the bride-to-be. --Jennifer M. Brown, reviewer
Shelf Talker: In Sonora Jha's brilliant novel, a woman considers how she, a "prominent feminist sociologist," could be interested in marrying a man (for the third time) and stages a swayamvar to find the right suitor.