“Latitudes of Longing” is a love letter—to the natural world and to the characters that inhabit it. Each of its four parts follows a different man in a different part of southern Asia: a scientist studying life in the Andaman Islands, a revolutionary student in India, a smuggler in his 60s in Nepal, and an 80-year-old man in a Tibetan village. Each character is connected in some way to the previous part of the story, though each part also stands alone. Woven within each section are vignettes about creatures, weather patterns, and mythologies.

“Latitudes” is a lyrical and philosophical tale. Its strengths are in its atmosphere; it feels like an abstract painting. Its strongest moments capture truths about life and death, love and longing. Its sections span time and age, from the 1940s to today, young to old.

The women in this story all read as objects, maybe sometimes subjects, to their male counterparts. This is disappointing, but equally disappointing is that the male characters are not as developed as I would have liked them to be either. Even writing this now, I struggle to remember the distinctions between the vast company I met over the course of this book. I think the strongest character development is that of the natural world, and those who love reading naturalist or nature-focused writing will enjoy this much more than I have. Swarup spent a lot of time researching and talking to people from the areas featured, and you can tell. It certainly made me want to travel!

But this book was a slog. I wish I could be kinder. I wanted to enjoy this. Ultimately, I finished it, but I lost steam about halfway through the second part of the book. I spent the next week pushing myself to read a little bit every day until I was done. It didn’t capture me, though I wish it had and maybe you will have better luck.

Overall: Compelling for its vivid environments and sometimes poignant philosophy, but falls short from its diffuse and forgettable characters. ★★.

This book was so sweeping and poetic. I really loved the writing. The setting was also absolutely stunning and I felt transported. I loved how history and politics were woven into the story with a bit of magical realism tied in as well. I thought this was a really unique story, and it worked well for me as a reader! Thumbs up!

Overall this book wasn’t one I found engaging but I do think some others might like it. I’ll say it’s around three stars.

You know how there are books that you hear rave reviews about and are dying to read it? But when you get to read it, invariably, there is some disappointment. “Latitudes of Longing” seems to be one of those books.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the first half of this book a lot when it revolved around Girija Prasad and Chanda Devi. The story also progressed well as Devi grew up and Girija Prasad contemplates his life. The story yet continues nicely with Mary, Plato, and Thapa. However, post that part, I felt the story was all over the place. While I appreciate what the author was trying to portray, I thought she was trying to cover a lot. As they say, sometimes less is more. There are very few instances where I lose track of what is happening in the story, especially towards the end, but that is what I thought of the book.

Nevertheless, I do feel that this is an impressive debut. The author has a beautiful style of writing, where the characters contemplate their existence and actions as the story progresses. She has a beautiful writing style, which borders on lyrical with her exquisite methods of using symbolism and metaphors. The characters are also charming, and I loved some of them, like Mary and Girija Prasad. There were also difficult moments to read, like the miscarriage and how it affected the couple’s lives. Had the story stayed consistent with a good plot, I think this would have been a fantastic book to read.

Overall, I would recommend “Latitudes of Longing” if you are solely looking for a beautifully written story that makes you ponder, irrespective of the plot. However, this book turned out to be an average read for me.

The writing of this book was absolutely beautiful and I want to be sure to emphasize and show appreciation for Swarup's talent. Unfortunately, the book was slow and, at times, repetitive, and I found myself slogging to get through. Perhaps the scope was just too big because the execution left me severaly wanting more. I will read Swarup's next book in hopes that her craft has been refined a little bit.

I started out enjoying this book but the longer I read the more fractured it seemed. The writing is absolutely beautiful, but for me it felt like too much of a good thing and the readability suffered for me.

It has taken me a long time to write a review for LATITUDES, but in the end, I don't think I'll ever find the correct words to sum up how Shubhangi Swarup made me feel.

'Lyrical' is the understatement of the century. Every word sings, so the sensation of reading is more akin to listening to a song. This world is a strange one, with turtles and ghosts and yetis, oceans and women and wars, yet it all feels undeniably true. It is magic and it is life, and beyond that, I really can't explain. But if you're a lover of literary fiction in any form, you *must* give this one a go.

I look forward to whatever adventure Swarup decides to take us on next. 5/5.

Lyrical and intensely written, these four interconnected stories are ambitious in scope and delivery. Swarup has a unique way with prose, deftly capturing sentiments such as “Life is more than the sum of its breaths and terrors.” The stories are complex and multilayered, taking us across the Indian subcontinent - but I felt the novel lost its way towards the latter half of the book, not entirely sustaining my interest. A solid debut with room for the author to grow and develop her craft. 3.5*

I love magical realism. I loved the whimsy and subtle humor tied into each sentence here. I just wish the story itself had hit me more strongly, and I can’t even pinpoint what it was about this one that didn’t totally hit the mark for me. Normally multiple POVs work for me, but I think with this one I was left feeling distanced from the characters and that can make or break a book for me personally. It was good, I just didn’t fall in love with this one.

This is such a beautifully written story and I look forward to reading more from the author in the future. It’s a book to savor rather than rush through.

An astonishing debut. This is a beautifully expansive book that details the complicated connections between humans and nature, while also bringing history to life and following characters that are easy to fall in love with. Swarup’s style has the lyricism of an ancient wisdom, of which I was constantly in awe, and the power of an earthquake, which could be overwhelming at times. I can certainly see myself returning to this book in the future, either to read a section or the whole thing again.

Thanks to NetGalley and One World for the ARC.

This book was lyrical and thoughtful all at once, spanning generations and stories that explore what it means to love another. I enjoyed each of the stories, though the first one was my favorite. While the book as a whole was a bit of a slow read, I was enamored by the ambience and each of the characters. I would absolutely recommend this book for anyone looking for a slightly different take on a book about love. It’s not a romance book; it’s an exploration and discussion of love.

I struggled to get into this book. It covered a range of topics that I found hard to connect. There were points I got so bogged down into details where I lost the plot. I loved the richness of the culture, but there was something missing for me.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Some beautiful prose, Summer, whip, thrum and slip. The sun is dead, they tell you.
Seeded in the sounds is an elemental silence. The quietness of mist and the stillness of ice.

Latitudes of Longing features several interconnected stories spanning time and geography. I'm quite impressed with its scope. The first portion set in the Andaman Islands (where the environs itself features strongly) reminds me of Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide. Both featured an off the beaten path location, the gorgeous prose evoked the soul of the place and years of painstaking research went into the writing.

Shubhangi Swarup dips into the fields of topography, geology, botany, animal biology, evolution and orogenesis in crafting this incredible work. Yet the resulting writing is not dry at all but evokes wonder at the diversity and journey of our planet. At times, it reads like a meditative piece on the origin and resting place of land, emerging from tectonic forces pushing up the sea beds eventually being resorbed. Although she didn't feature Galapagos Islands as one of the places, it frequently came to mind as it's where active volcanic islands continue to form conveyer belt style and of course the endemic species of flora and fauna evolved uniquely adapted to conditions on each island.

The love stories are touching too, like the husband wife relationship between Giriji Prasad and Chandra Devi. I chuckled at Chandra Devi's feminist replies to an Indian MIL who wanted a male grandson as well as her musings of Mary in the role of her namesake in the Christian origin belief.

This wide ranging work also brings to mind a BBC nature documentary where far ranging corners of the world are explored. Here we journey from India ( Calcutta, Andaman) to Burma to Nepal, the Karakoram Mountains. The prose is poetic and evocative. Because the author obviously so much care with crafting this work, I found myself reading with full concentration absorbed.

It's hard to believe this is a debut work. Incredible.

Thanks to One World and Netgalley for an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.

Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup is a beautiful and poignant book. It's no wonder it won prizes in India. The book is divided into four sections: Islands, Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert. All four and interconnected, yet distinct. Islands was my favorite of the group - chronicling the story of a new marriage.

It's hard to do this book justice. It's lyrical and imbued with magical realism. It's a love letter to the earth as much as to the characters. It's undoubtedly ambitious, and that ambition threatens the narrative of the book at times, but the book must still be applauded for the risks Swarup took.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts are my own.

Shubhangi Swarup's debut novel Latitudes of Longing is a gorgeously written set of four loosely interlinked novellas, all concerned with the ways in which we humans connect to our planet. Starting with Islands, and moving on to Faultline, Valley, and Snow Desert, each section focuses on a character or couple and explores their relationships with each other and with the terrain. We spend time with couple in the first section, Gijira Prasad and Chanda Devi in the Islands, and then the story moves to the Faultline via their maid, Mary, who travels to Burma to find her son who is a political prisoner. In Burma we then meet the son's best friend, Thapa. Thapa's story is told in. Valley, and then his smuggling career leads us to a distant village in Snow Desert, where we hear a tale of love in old age.
While I enjoyed the relaying of the tales - and LOVED the lush writing about the natural world, the themes and story line didn't carry all the way through, and the ending fell a little flat for me. Latitudes of Longing is, however, one of my favorite reads this year, and I still laugh at the thought of a ghost billy goat. Worth a read for the descriptions of the islands alone.

I received an Advanced Reader Copy of this book from the publisher, One World, an imprint of Random House, through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Obviously, with the rating, I didn’t care for the book. The plot of the book is hard to follow. The book dives deep into a plethora of topics: nature (trees, plants, animals), people (nomads), religion (Hinduism, Buddhists, Muslims), gods, geography, weather (blizzards, monsoons), earthquakes/tsunami, gems, fossils, astronomy, military, spirits, and life/death. There is so much detail in many of these areas that I tended to skim these sections.

The book provides significant information about the culture, including food, clothing, arranged marriages, of people in primarily in India and the Andaman Islands. The story includes geography and/or history of numerous countries: India, Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh, China, Tibet. Basically, many countries in this region of the world is touched upon.

I stuck with the book to the end hoping it would be tied together at the conclusion. Unfortunately, it didn’t hit home with me.

At one point in Shubhangi Swarup’s novel “Latitudes of Longing,” Thapa asks his friend Plato how stories are written.

“Change,” Plato answers. “Something needs to happen. Without it, a story is dead.”

“Latitudes of Longing,” a sweeping and poetic debut, is about change — like how a supercontinent broke off into many tinier islands and continents, how the moon gave birth to the stars, how a mother abandoned her son, and how a man who studies trees married a woman who talked to them.

The latter story is how this novel begins. Newlyweds Girija Prasad Varma and Chanda Devi are the man and woman of this tale. Girija Prasad is a scientist who landed a post as a researcher on the Andaman Islands, a formerly British, now Indian settlement; Chanda is a clairvoyant, who talks to the platonic ghosts and ghosts of goats on their new island home.

The Varmas’ tale is told in “Islands,” the first part in Swarup’s four-part novel. Their tale is the “Pangaea” (Girija Prasad spends his life studying the phenomenon) of this book — the longest and earliest story from which the other interconnected and shorter stories break apart from.

The first piece to break off of Girija Prasad Varma and Chanda Devi’s island is Mary, a Karen woman from a faultline in Myanmar. She works as the Varmas’ maid, raising their one and only daughter, Devi. However, Mary leaves the Indian islands to return to Sagaing after her son’s friend Thapa visits to tell her that her estranged son, Plato, has been imprisoned for organizing protests. Mary and Plato’s story of reconciliation, love, sacrifice and redemption is told in “Faultline,” the second segment of Swarup’s book.

Years after Thapa arranges for Plato and Mary’s reunion, Thapa returns to his home in the valley of Thamel. This is where he, a man nearing 60, meets Bagmati, a bar dancer young enough to be his granddaughter. In “Valley” — a reverse retelling of “One Thousand and One Arabian Nights” — a girl with nothing to live for threatens a man with her personal execution if he cannot tell her a story, something that brings her out of her life in a valley of despair. That’s why Thapa, a smuggler by trade, seeks his friend Plato for advice. And that’s how the son of the sun and the daughter of a rain goddess came to live in a snow desert.

“Snow Desert” is “Latitudes of Longing’s” final destination, the fourth tale in this collection. Changthang, the snow desert in Tibet, is a where octogenarians Tashi Yeshe and Ghazala Mumtax Abdul Sheikh Begum fall in love. It’s also where Girija Rana meets the ghost of his grandfather, a man who was once married to a woman who could see ghosts.

In these four stories framed by their geographical names and elements, Swarup beautifully explains why the moon waxes and wanes, why one man became a vegetarian, and how all stories are formed, one on top of another.

Disclaimer: I received a free eARC of “Latitudes of Longing” from NetGalley and One World in exchange for this honest review.

The four stories in this book are loosely connected. Swarup’s powerful command of words makes this not only an interesting story of people, but it is a beautiful travelogue of India. The novellas show how people connect, or do not connect to their natural surroundings. I found the first story the most captivating for me, but they are all good. The debut authors are setting the bar exceedingly high for those who follow them.