This book was utterly enchanting! This is the story of a boy who is left behind by his mother and emotionally abondoned by his father. He spends a lifetime searching for his mother, and as an adult, learn some harsh truths about her.
It may sound sad and depressing, but the prose is beautiful, and uplifting; the story is well researched, and the backdrop of World War II with Japan’s invasjon of Bali, all give the story a wonderful depth.
Highly recommended.

This was a touching and beautifully written story. At times heart-breaking, it is the story of a search for identity and how our lives are shaped by the actions and choices of others.

Thank you for my review copy.

I had not read Roy’s work before, but when I saw this galley—with an arresting cover and the promise of a Man Booker nominated author—I jumped on it. Thanks go to Net Galley and Atria Books for the review copy. It’s for sale now.

I’m months late with my review, and the cause of my tardiness is my ambivalence about this book and my confusion as to why it fizzled for me. It starts out well, and at the outset I love Gayatri, the nonconformist mother of Myshkin, our other main character. Every stereotype ever built about Indian women is utterly crushed as she screams with joy while riding downhill on her bicycle. Her sari is torn, her hair is a mess…and her husband adores her.

The story is set just prior to World War II as well as the Indian quest for independence. But as India struggles to break free of the British Empire, Gay struggles to break free of her marriage.

Myshkin is extremely close to his mother, and when we meet him he is elderly, retired from working as the town’s landscape director and gardener, and living alone in greatly reduced circumstances compared to the ones in which he grew up. His whole life has been nothing but sorrow and loss since his mother abandoned him. We see in her letters to friends and in his own inner monologue that she had intended to take him with her, but the timing was right down to the wire. She told him not to be late coming home from school because something important was happening; but then his teacher was unhappy with the class and kept them all after school, and faced with the choice to fish or cut bait, Gay left without her little boy.

Usually when I don’t like a book, I also know exactly why I don’t like it. This time I had to mull it over. On the one hand, I heartily dislike the mother here; I’m a diehard feminist, but child abandonment is child abandonment. However, a flawed or even villainous protagonist shouldn’t be a deal breaker. Think of Hannibal Lector! Think of The Talented Mr. Ripley! And of course we also know that for Gay to leave her marriage was a dicey proposition during this time period when an Indian woman was legally little more than chattel. Nevertheless, I resent this character, who is portrayed as flawed and yet heroic. Why doesn’t she keep Myshkin home from school, have him feign illness or hide somewhere, rather than set up this failure? Her love for him is supposedly tremendous, and yet she chooses to leave without him; when she becomes a famous painter and openings exist to find and reclaim her son, she has endless excuses.

In addition to my frustration with the character, I also see pacing problems. Rather than experiencing the powerful range of feelings that the book’s teaser promises, after I was twenty-five percent of the way in, I was mostly just weary, depressed, and watching the page numbers crawl by.

Is it over yet?

Another reviewer suggested that although there is a long, slow part during the book’s first half, once we get to a certain point—which he identified, but I have forgotten where it was—the whole thing would gel and make it worthwhile. And so I soldiered on, reached his benchmark and then past it for a few pages more, just in case. But no.

Having forced myself along this far, I resolved to skip to the last 25% so that I would be able to write a fair review. Sometimes the way a book ends can completely change how I feel about it. But I found that so much change had occurred in the portion I had skipped that I couldn’t regain the thread, so with a heavy sigh I flipped back to where I’d been and saw it through. But the ending is worse than the middle, with Gay’s entire narrative attached to it in the form of detailed letters to a third party, the friend that helped her sneak out of India.

I once met someone that had added onto his home in a do-it-yourself way that had nothing to do with building codes, and the floors sloped precariously, the style of the addition resembling a hillbilly patchwork job more than a suburban home. And that’s what the end of this book is like. It’s as if a deadline was nearing and the writer tacked something on quickly to get it done in time.

How did something that started so well turn into such a mess? It’s perplexing. All I know is that when I was done with it, I felt as though spring had arrived, and there was an added bounce to my step, not because the book made me feel that way, but because the book was over, and I would never have to read it again.

All this said, the initial character sketch of Gayatri is wonderful. I could see using a cutting from it in a creative writing class. But get it free or cheap unless your pockets are deep; I cannot recommend the book as a whole.

You all know I've been struggling to make myself pick up a book and actually read the words. This poor book was the victim of that malaise. Which is a shame because this is just the kind of book I normally eat up voraciously. Story set in India? Check. Family story? Check. History? Check. Beautiful writing? Check. If I wasn't reading this from Netgalley, I might well have set it aside and saved it for a time when I was ready to curl up in a corner of the couch and settle into Myshkin's story.

It really is a lovely, moving story. With a father who is more wrapped in the politics of India than in his son and a mother who abandons them for another life, it's no wonder that Myshkin has grown into a sad, isolated man whose only real connections to the world are the plants he be charged with caring for all of the city and his stepsister. As the book opens, Myshkin has been sent a package from a friend of his mother's. Initially unable to open the package, Myshkin reflects back on his memories of his mother and her life. When he finally is able to open it, her life after she left comes pouring out. Even as my heart broke for her son, I couldn't help but wish for Gayatri to find what she was looking for after having been trapped for years in a life that wasn't meant for a curious, bright young woman.

As much as I loved the poetry of Roy's poetic writing and her story, I was just as impressed with her writings on politics and the arts.
"...she would see that the power and tyranny and cruelties of those civilizations did not survive, the rulers fell and their courtiers lay in parallel lines of narrow marble caskets next to their king, their cats and wives too, but the beauty that had been created remained. The filigree in the windows, the calligraphy on stone, the perfection of the dome she was struggling to draw. The creators of those things, the masons, sculptors, painters, who had no role to play in the great games of power, whose minds were thought inferior, whose opinions were of no consequence, whose wealth counted for nothing: their work remained after all else had vanished. When the world was in turmoil and devastation appeared inevitable, art was not an indulgence but a refuge, its fragments remained after a cycle had run its course from creation through to destruction and begun again. Power crumbles, people die, but beauty defeats time."
If this book sounds like it's as right for you as it is for me, do yourself a favor and make sure you read it when you are ready to fall into Roy's world.

I had heard a lot of buzz about this book and it did not disappoint. The prose is lyrical, lovely, and detailed. The character development is full and rich, as is the plot. This is a book I would read again in order to get all of the nuances the author clearly intends. I appreciated how Roy was able to take on the myriad of voices she includes, as well as the varying time frames. With themes including sex roles and gender equality, child abandonment, independence, war, and love, this story is vast and yet somehow delicate and intimate. An excellent read for anyone who enjoys literary fiction, women writers, international writers, and books that transcend time and place for universal appeal.

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Atria Books on November 20, 2018

Abhay Chan, known to most as Myshkin Rozario, finds trees and dogs to be better companions than humans. He is an old man who faces ridicule, yet the reader comes to understand him as eccentric in the best way, shaped by good intentions and disappointment with the human condition. Like everyone, has been shaped by his past. Unlike most, the details of his past have been concealed from him. Only later in life does he appreciate his need to fill in the missing pages.

Myshkin tells the story of his youth, but it is really the story of his mother, Gayatri, who (unlike most Indian women of her time) was raised not to catch a husband but to nurture her gifts for art and music. Gayatri’s father traveled abroad with her until, after his death, her brothers began the task of finding her a husband who was willing to tolerate a sharp-tongued woman who had wasted her youth by crossing oceans. Finding Gayatri a husband meant exhibiting her as livestock while suitors and their families drank tea in the drawing room and inspected her hair. The family’s choice boiled down to the only man who would have her, a Northern Indian twice her age whose scandalous contempt for caste and religion did not overcome the family’s desire to rid themselves of Gayatri.

It is in chapters like those narrating Gayatri’s arranged marriage that Anuradha Roy captures the India so familiar to readers of UK fiction and that so often wins (or is shortlisted for) Booker prizes. It is an India that awards only such freedom to women as self-congratulatory men choose to give them, that refuses to abandon a caste system even as it rebels from British colonizers with grand speeches about the importance of equality and self-determination.

Myshkin recalls a German writer/artist/musician named Walter Spies who appeared in search of Gayatri, having met her years earlier in Bali. Spies is accompanied by Beryl de Zoete, a scholar of dance who once rescued Jewish dancers from Germany and now sees Gayatri as worthy of rescue. Gayatri has felt stifled since Myshkin’s birth, as if the beginning of his life put a stop to the rest of the world, and it is knowledge of that fact that shapes Myshkin’s memories of his childhood.

Indian history is central to the novel in other respects, as well. While mostly hiding in the shadows, Myshkin’s father claims to follow the spiritual leader Mukti Devi in her nonviolent resistance to British rule. Myshkin’s father views Mukti Devi as an exemplar of women’s liberation. Gayatri can only wonder why his enlightened view of women’s role in society does not extend to his own home. Later, Myshkin can only wonder about the fated moment when his mother leaves home without him. From her perspective, Gayatri had no choice: obedience and propriety were the top entries on her personal list of deadly sins.

The novel’s first half sets up Myshkin’s life as a child abandoned by his mother. The story then moves through his father’s efforts to cope with his loss of Gayatri, the impact of World War II on India and on Myshkin’s father, the evil nature of governments that define protest as sedition or homosexuality as a crime, the different attitudes toward women in Indian and Balinese society, and Myshkin’s evolving understanding of his mother. The novel invites a sympathetic response both to Myshkin (who yearns for a lost mother) and Gayatri (who abandons a child to avoid going mad but must live with the maddening consequences of that decision).

A couple of lengthy sections comprised of Gayatri’s letters home create a lull that is the novel’s only misstep. The letters illustrate Gayatri’s growth and they add new insight into Gayatri’s decision to leave her husband, but Gayatri’s anxiety-filled travelogue lacks the immediacy of the narrative that precedes and follows the letters.

One letter accuses someone in Gayatri’s past of “feckless self-indulgence,” a criticism that might seem hypocritical given the choices that Gayatri made. The novel’s value is that it invites the reader to weigh Gayatri’s choice and to consider whether, on balance, it was the right choice to make. I appreciate Roy’s decision to allow the reader to judge Gayatri, or not, rather than insisting that only one judgment is possible.

In any event, judgment is not the point of All The Lives We Never Lived. As the title suggests, all lives involve choices. Each choice sends us on a path that forecloses other paths. With graceful prose and compelling characters, Roy reminds us how the same choices can be both liberating and confining as they lead to unknowable futures and cause unforeseeable consequences.

RECOMMENDED

I liked this book though it didn’t resonate emotionally as much as I expected it to.  It’s a story of man in India who is recalling when his mother abandoned him as a child.  Gayatri was a free-spirited artist who clearly felt constrained by her marriage and societal expectations.  She leaves her family for a German man in 1937, when Myshkin is about nine years old,.

Now in his 60s, Myshkin has spent his life as a horticulturist; he’s passionate about plant life but not much else. He has a strong need to stay in one place, which makes sense given his childhood.

As a child, I would place my back against one of our trees and feel its reassuring solidity, its immobility. It was not going to move, it would never go anywhere, it was rooted to its spot. For as long as they are alive, trees remain where they are. This is one of life's few certainties.

It was interesting to read a story set in World War II from an Indian perspective, although the war seemed like it was just a backdrop for this story.  I feel like this book tried to do a lot of different things.  It’s a book about political life in India in the 30’s and 40’s, the impact of World War II, and limitations on the roles of women, but mostly it’s about the impact of a child’s abandonment by his mother.

As an adult, Myshkin receives a packet of letters from his mother’s close friend, and through these letters we learn more about Gayatri’s experiences.  However, the story doesn’t connect her storyline and Myshkin’s in a way that felt meaningful.  We learn a little bit as readers about how World War II impacted Southeast Asia, but I wanted to know much more.  Similarly, Roy touches only briefly on the impact of World War II in India -- some young men enlist but that’s about it. Her descriptions of the movement for independence in India were interesting -- though the character of Mukti Devi, the head of the Society for Indian Patriots, was fictional and I felt that more historical detail could have been provided.

The book is slow-paced and thoughtful, but it meanders quite a bit and takes a lot of time describing Myshkin’s childhood. It becomes more interesting once his mother leaves (we know it’s coming from the first line of the book). There’s one part of the book where Roy incorporates the novel of an author she admires, and I found this distracting because it wasn't relevant to the story.

Author Roy depicts Myshkin’s mother Gayatri both sympathetically and critically, which I appreciated.  She was raised by a father who encouraged independence and learning, and she hates the repression of her life as a wife and mother in 1930’s India.    Her husband Nek is presumably a typical spouse of his time, but he doesn’t support her passion for painting or her independent spirit, and he resents her friendship with William Spies, a German artist (who is in fact a real person).

I was pretty horrified by how selfish both of Myshkin’s parents were, although on balance I was more sympathetic of his mother, who had to suffer in a freedom-less marriage, than of his father, who clearly cared more about social protest than his son.

This is a far-reaching novel that covers a lot of topics, and is ultimately the story of a boy trying to come to understand the mother that left him.  It's thoughtful and layered, the sort of book I usually enjoy; although in the end, I was left ambivalent about this one.

Note: I received an advanced review copy of this novel from NetGalley and publisher Atria Books.  The book published November 20, 2018.

When I saw All the Lives We Never Lived at NetGalley, I was drawn to it for a few reasons. 1. It was set in India and I can't recall ever reading a book set in India. 2. The author is Indian and I've been trying to read more international literature. 3. It mentioned WWII in the description and I haven't read any WWII novels set outside of Europe and the U.S. Basically I wanted to read it because it was different than what I normally read.

I was genuinely curious about WWII and India when I selected this book. A few years ago, I had a conversation with a guy from India and he didn't know what D Day was. He said that there was so much history to be learned about India that they didn't learn so much about world history. I didn't understand how such a major world event could be overlooked by a country. Did they not participate in it? Then I started thinking that they were probably more involved in the Pacific Theater which outside of Japan bombing Pearl Harbor, we don't focus much on.

From the description, I thought the book would involve WWII more. But actually, it is a very small part of the story.

Myshkin is now an old man and he is trying to come to terms with his childhood by recording his memories. The story begins quite a while before his mother left with the "Englishman" who was actually German.

While from a cultural standpoint, it was somewhat interesting, I found the first third of the book slow and somewhat hard to get through. A lot of time was spent introducing the characters and the various family dynamics. At one point I thought this is not what I thought the book was about. Politically the focus was on British rule and India's bid for independence.

Even with the introduction of Walter Speis and Beryl de Zoete, there are only brief mentions of what is going on in Europe and the eventual declaration of war by India.

The story is really about a man reconciling his childhood in which first his mother and then his father abandoned him (though the father returned the emotional abandonment continued as his father became more involved in the Indian rebellion). Through Myshkin's memories and eventual letters his mother wrote to the neighbor next door, it is also a story of individual freedom, particularly for women. I think this latter storyline was the most interesting and made the last two-thirds of the book more enjoyable and read quickly.

I found particularly interesting how vehement Nek (Myshkin's father) is about India's freedom from England, yet restricts more and more the individual freedom of his wife.

I liked the characters, each was unique and well rounded. By the way, Walter Spies and Beryl de Zoete are real people, though it seems Roy has taken liberties with their visit to India. I found it interesting when I read the Acknowledgments at the end that Roy was researching Walter Spies.

"The point at which I knew this book was going to be written came one afternoon on a street in Ubud, Bali, when Rukun Advani and I were drooping in the heat, on the brink of giving up the search for Walter Spies's second home."

From this, you would think that Spies would be a central character in the story. While he is a pivotal character in the plot, he is a secondary character.

I liked Roy's writing style. And while I thought she might have spent too much time setting up the story, she definitely made an emotional connection between her characters and the reader. I'm not surprised she has been nominated for the Man Booker Prize (for Sleeping on Jupiter).

All the Lives We Never Lived is a fine literary novel. If, like me, you are looking to expand your reading horizons this would be a good choice.

All The Lives We Never Lived review - no spoilers
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As always, I will be honest with my reviews. Dear readers, I was let down by this one. I went into it thinking there would be more around India's involvement in WWII but it mostly focused on the relationship between the main character and his estranged mother. I'm not one to scoff at family tales, in fact I particularly enjoy them, however this one just didn't hold my interest. The main character was pretty flat, the pace was slow, there were giant sections of correspondence which I was not interested in and it really felt like the book wasn't even sure where it was going. For me it was just a sad, directionless tale, with a few interesting tidbits of culture and mild references to the impact of WWII on India. .
I plodded through it, but I can't say I'd pick it up again. Perhaps you may have better luck? It's slated to be published this month.
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Thank you to #netgalley and #atriabooks for the advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review. .

This novel has beautifully written sentences and images, but the story itself is impossible to get into because it keeps going off on tangents that don’t move the story forward. The story is about Myshkin coming to terms with his artistic mother rebelling against what Indian culture at that time in history deemed acceptable for women--she ran off with a German artist, leaving Myshkin and his father to fend for themselves in a time of war.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this novel, which RELEASES NOVEMBER 20, 2018.

I had high hopes for this book. I love historical fiction, and I love reading about other cultures/countries. The book starts strong with a powerful first page that tells of a mother who abandons her son & husband for another man. There are clear references to the events that lead to India's independence, and there are equally clear references to class & gender discrimination in Colonial India. I was instantly intrigued.

By the time I was half way through, however, I had lost interest. in Myshkin and his self-centered, whiny mother. While I empathized with both, I found them also both boring and wanted the plot to progress more rapidly. I just didn't care any more.

The author's descriptive prose is actually quite impressive and could even be termed "lyrical". There were moments of true beauty in the writing, but much was lost for me in the monotony of the plot. The message of being true to oneself and following one's own destiny is quite clear and a worthwhile one. It's just too bad I found myself skipping large passages just to finish.

All the Lives We Never Lived was not perfect, but there’s something about it that really drew me in. The story is set in India, moving between the 1930’s and the 1980’s. The narrator, Myshkin, is in his 60’s, and looking back on his childhood. His mother left the family when Myshkin was 9 years old. Later in life, having received a package containing letters written by his mother in the first few years after her departure, Myshkin tries to make sense of this time in his life. As the backdrop to Myshkin’s family crisis, WWII was raging and India was marching toward independence from British rule. I loved the writing which was descriptive without being overwrought. I loved the historical setting, which allowed me to learn about a part of Indian history. And I loved Myshkin’s character and perspective — the abandoned awkward child as much as the contemplative adult. There were holes in the story, which at times were a bit frustrating. But, to me, this was a minor flaw — I really enjoyed this one. It felt original and potent.

This was a monthly read with Angela and Diane, and while we didn’t agree on this one, it was enjoyable as always. Thanks also to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

3.5 stars
Once in a while, I’m left struggling to understand how I feel about a book I’ve just read. This was one of those books. The story itself is full of struggles both personal and political. There are a number of things I liked about it, but yet something was missing that I find difficult to pinpoint. The writing in particular struck me from the beginning, beautiful prose and wonderfully reflective of emotion. I find that I enjoy first person narratives ( except in biographical novels) . It always feels so much more intimate and I felt this way about Myshkin’s narrative. He is nine years old when his mother abandons him; nine years old when he heard the argument between his parents and his mother says that part of the world stopped when he was born. Now in his sixties, he has been struggling his whole life to come to terms with being abandoned by her. I found him to be such a sympathetic character, a lonely man, so impacted by what happened to him as a child, a man who has taken refuge in his work as a horticulturist. I was glad for him that he had Dada, his grandfather and my favorite character.

Gayatri, his mother struggles with her passion for her art - painting and dance, struggling in a marriage and a culture and a time where women’s freedoms are held at bay. We become privy to her viewpoint, later in the novel when Myshkin opens a package of letters that were sent to her best friend, Lisa, who leaves instructions to her family that upon her death, these letters be forwarded to Myshkin. I enjoy epistolary narratives because I find those to be intimate and telling. I felt for her in some way, appreciating her love of her work and recognizing that she suffered in her marriage, yet it was very difficult to accept what she does, in light of what it did to her child. I couldn’t get interested in what she was doing in spite of her connections with characters based on real people. The shift in the narrative from Myshkin to his mother’s letters felt sort of abrupt. It’s years later when he reads them and I wished in some way that he had read these earlier in his life. There are political struggles reflected here as well- India and Britain, WWII. The letters do give a perspective on the war and his father’s involvement in the country’s politics provide some insight into what was going in in India in the 1930’s. I didn’t really know of India’s participation in it. We also know about the war through the impact it has on people that Myshkin knows.

So a mixed bag for me . Liked it but didn’t love it. This was a monthly read with Diane and Esil and one that we didn’t like equally. I always enjoy it when we agree, but when we don’t, the discussion is so interesting. You should read their reviews.

This ARC was provided by Atria the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

"It is the year 1937 that I feel on my skin." from All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy

As a toddler, Myshin suffered from convulsions, which led his grandfather to nickname him after the character in Dostoevsky's The Idiot. The nickname stuck, even after the fits stopped--much to the boy's chagrin. "Innocents are what make humankind human," his grandfather explained.

In 1937 Myshkin's mother warned him to come straight home from school. Fatally, he was delayed. He never saw his mother again. She ran off with Walter Spies, a man who left his German homeland, an artist who had mentored her in her girlhood when traveling the world with her liberal-minded father.

Suffering so much loss in his life, Myshkin had turned to the things that make roots and last: trees. He became a horticulturist. He had planted a grove of flowering trees to add shade and beauty. Now the city wants to tear them down. Does anything last in this world?

Myshkin is in his sixties when a package arrives from his mother's best friend. The contents send Myshkin on a journey into his past.

The novel is Myshkin's record, his way of coming to terms with his past.

Set in 1937 through WWII, in India and the Dutch East Indies, the setting is unfamiliar and exotic.

The human story is universal:

The life-long hollowness of a man whose childhood recurrent fear of abandonment became real.

How the conflict between private life and the work of political revolution split a family. Myshkin's father, an academic, was active in the Indian Independence Movement, an idealist who could not understand his wife's joy in painting and dance.

The motives, and costs, behind a young woman's breaking free of the constraints of her husband's expectations.

The fear that incarcerated non-hostile aliens during wartime.

I was moved by Myshkin's story. The intensity picks up when we learn the contents of the package, letters from his mother to her friend. From the personal suffering of a child, the novel turns to her tragic story.

Roy's research into the time period and the historical persons who appear in the novel bring to life a time few Americans know about. I am thrilled to have read it.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

I was so looking forward to this book which had a lot of buzz... Although the writing was good, I just could not get into the whole story and tale. Maybe others will feel differently.

Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the read of Anuradha Roy’s All the Lives We Never Lived.

As much as I still love the cover, and respect the novel, I must be honest: I struggled to finish it.

Myshkin remembering growing up in his small town in India, without his mother. Gayatri, a free-spirit, freedom-seeking artist, leaves her husband and son when she takes off with another man. As persuasive as it was, I found it hard to reconcile with Roy’s angle at giving her reason.

The writing was great, but I still found it hard to bond and relate to the characters. Personally, for me, it leads to disconnect.

As an adult, Myshkin remembers what it was like to grow up in a small town in India without his mother, Gayatri. An artist with a desire for freedom and travel, Gayatri leaves her husband and son in the company of a German man with whom she had fallen in love with, escaping a life she was not meant for.
It's easy to judge Gayatri as selfish, and undoubtedly she is, abundantly so. But Roy brilliantly presents a compelling argument for Gayatri's actions, that far from excusing her at least allows us to understand her.
As an adult, Myshkin begins a journey to find Gayatri and discover what has become of her, along with trying to understand why she left him. By taking the same journey she took all those years ago, Myshkin finds himself connecting the dots of her disappearance and how she perhaps never really left him.
Roy portrays characters that are incredibly relatable in their complexity. Nothing can seem more terrible than a mother abandoning her own child, but Roy's writing makes her motivations if not excusable at least perhaps worthy of compassion.