All the Lives We Never Lived

An interesting glimpse into Indian history and society of the 1930s and 1940s peppered with the different perspectives of a mother and her son.

Liked the story but at times it got a little long with descriptions.

I love the depth of each character and the multiple perspectives that keep you hooked, second-guessing and anticipating what will happen next...

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.A free galley was provided. All opinions are my own.

"It is the year 1937 that I feel on my skin." from All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha RoyAs 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.All the Lives We Never Lived is Myshkin's story about how he came 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.

The book is over hyped. The prose is refreshing but the plot is paper thin. It begins well and is engrossing and then runs into multiple characters and tangents and becomes a drag and utterly boring. The last part again seems promising but ultimately falls flat with no storyline!

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.

Again she captures peoples inner lives with such empathy and insight. She weaves their stories around each other, intimate like the unseen tangled roots of trees.

So beautifully written, as soon as I read the first page I was there. Could see and smell the different places and have a vivid picture of the characters in my head!

For bookclub.

All the lives we never livedAnuradha Roy, an author that breaks my heart with her surreal sad stories interspersed with petrichor smells of monsoon rain and hills. Her characters are deeply alone living a sad disappointed life. They pleasures of art and beauty are like the dust of butterfly wings crumbling as you try to touch them. They have hopes and dreams but the life disappoints them and like a domino effect all those around them.Oh the poetry of her words and her stories, she keeps me hooked pulling me into the sadness of her characters. I feel sad, angry, helpless and feel like telling them to get over it.. come out of your vicious circle of misery and self pity. Why aren’t the others around them helping them. Is it a curse to feel so deeply and think so much. These beautiful souls struggle in this tough and thorny world, who will protect them?For us who have hardened to the so called truth of the harshness of this world, can only see them wither away. For all the lives we never lived.. for all the lives we could be.. for all the lives we couldn’t live.. and for all the lives we couldn’t save..The story is about a man whose mother left her loveless marriage and her child to set free and follow dreams and adventures. The child is left insecure and unwanted living a life trying to find beauty and meaning amongst the plants and trees. As a reader I was torn between being a woman and a mother - how difficult it would be to abandon your child and then again aren’t women supposed to dream forced into a marriage and family of not their choice. These are dilemmas plaguing millions of women where they choose to stay for their children fulfilling the roles assigned by the society. While some fly away referred to by ugly names for rest of their lives, leaving many other lives and homes in shreds in their wake. Oh the power of being a woman and the burden of being one!And for those who want to read this surreal book please accept that it’s long and may wind you up in the pains and regrets of your own past. To go through the misery is one thing... but to get a certain kind of subtle satisfaction from reliving that is another. Some times the past unhappiness comes back to strike the cords of your heart, you reminisce it, pat your heart and move on.. or the only way to move on is to fall into the abyss of the regrets and live the lives we never lived and come out reborn, living all the lives we never lived.After all the only thing that keeps up going is hope!- by Storywala.blogspot

All the lives we never lived is the story of a boy named, Myshkin Rozario, who has now turned old and is a horticulturist by profession. The story opens with him reminscing his mother, Gayatri Roazario who had ran off with a German, named, Walter Spies. Myshkin reminisces his past life as he attempts to piece together the jigsaw of his mother’s abrupt disappearance when he was a child. The narrative is set in pre independent India when freedom struggle was racheting up. Myshkin's father is a principled, no nonsense kind of man who is also an ardent follower of freedom fighter, Mukti Devi. Myshkin's mother is a rebel and an avante garde whose interests lie in painting, music and travel. Myshkin's father looks down upon her and keeps nudging her to model herself after Mukti Devi. Gayatri detests this humiliation from her husband and wants to break this marital bond and travel the world. The opportunity comes knocking when Walter Spies arrives at her doorstep. Gayatri goes away with him, leaving her 10 year old child clueless and helpless. Myshkin, in the beginning, hates his mother for doing this. But eventually he understands her predicament - her will to be free and flowing, her desire to be not bound by rules. Gayatri's constant communication with him through letters, make him long for a life that his mother's living. He waits for her to come and take him along. However, as time passes, the daily life absorbs his longing for his mother. This is when the World War II breaks out. Myshkin gets worried about his mother as he does not recieve any news from her. After lot of contemplation, Myshkin, at his current age, decides to set out on a travel that his mother had, years ago with a hope to hear about her from the people who must have had met her. Anuradha's story telling is lyrical and lucid. You will be enamoured by the powerful imagery in the book, especially the part where Gayatri describes her stay in Bali. You will actually live it. For me, Gayatri's character is a takeaway.