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A Review of Saikat Majumdar’s Play House (Permanent Press, 2017).
By Stephen Hong Sohn
So I had waited on the U.S. release to review Saikat Majumdar’s superbly, dark-tinted second novel Play House (Permanent Press, 2017), because it was previously already published in India under the name The Firebird (Hatchette India, 2015). I eventually acquired both copies, possibly expecting that these editions were distinct, but the only significant change is in the title. I can see why Majumdar (also author of one previous novel Silverfish and the magisterial and brilliantly idiosyncratic Prose of the World) chose to retitle it for the U.S. edition, as the original title doesn’t encapsulate the broader expanse of the novel, which involves the theatrical culture of 1980s Calcutta. The novel is primarily told through the perspective of a young (and later adolescent) boy named Ori. We’ll let B&N provide us with some more critical information:
“For ten-year-old Ori, his mother's life as a theatre actress holds as much fascination as it does fear. Approaching adolescence in an unstable home, he is haunted by her nightly stage appearances, and the suspicion and resentment her profession evokes in people around her, at home and among their neighbors. Increasingly consumed by an obsessive hatred of the stage, Ori is irrevocably drawn into a pattern of behavior that can only have catastrophic consequences. Political bullies, actors and actresses, hairdressers, set boys and backstage crew make up the world of Play House, a haunting exploration of a young boy stumbling into adulthood far ahead of his years. This is the first US edition of one of the most widely read and acclaimed recent Indian works of literary fiction.”
Ori’s mother Garima obviously struggles to gain a foothold as a theatre actress amid oppressive cultural and geographical contexts, which can position female artists as glorified prostitutes or sex workers. Ori and Garima’s extended family members are additionally troubled by her profession. One ally the two do find is Shruti, Ori’s cousin and Garima’s niece, a young teenager who is one of Ori’s closest companions throughout the novel. The problem with the familial context is that Ori’s father is in some form of health decline and cannot engage in any childcare. His mother, being the sole breadwinner and arduously wedded to her career as a theater actress, cannot necessarily be relied upon to oversee him, especially because she is committed to her craft (meaning that she occasionally must travel for work, perform during odd hours, etc). Majumdar is navigating tricky waters here: his portrayal doesn’t cast Garima as categorically neglectful or unnecessarily selfish, but she is ultimately subject to a cultural ethos in which her manner of work is seen as subversive and excessive. But Majumdar’s depiction of the theater industry does not see producers or actors as purveyors of some artistic truth: indeed, they, too, are caught up in the potential forces and forms of corruption, all of which continually return us back to the subjugation of women outside of and within artistic realms. These dual gendered circumscriptions are perhaps what makes this novel so tragic: we desperately desire that Ori/ Garima find a way to move beyond these suffocating circumstances, but perhaps this impasse is part of the naturalistic point. Ori’s very tenuous existence is always mirroring and refracting the tenuousness of his mother’s career aspirations. If motherhood and professionalism are seen as non-synchronous paths, the unyielding and ominous resolution that eventually unfolds certainly makes sense. Perhaps, what is most compelling about Majumdar’s multi-texted work is its evocation of the third person narrator, one who closely follows the interiorities of the novel’s characters. Readers are hamstrung (in the best way possible) by the narrative perspective because we’re led to see this strange and beguiling world through the eyes of this young boy (at least primarily) and to see how naively he understands his mother’s profession (at first). Over time, though, Ori’s developmental trajectory begins to reveal a subtly tactical impulse that generates an appropriately dour pall over the final pages. I read this novel in one sitting precisely because of this narrative perspective: we want to see how Ori will end up and find out what he will do once he decides to become an agent of potential change, despite how limited his power may be. On another note—and here’s where I reveal a little bit of my own autobiographical investments in this work—it’s interesting to consider this novel from the perspective of Asian Americanist critique. On the one hand, the narrative itself remains largely contained by its urban borders (in Calcutta), but I have firsthand knowledge that the author has spent many years in the United States. His positionality as a transnational writer makes this work a little bit more difficult to categorize, and I believe it would be limiting to label this work solely as a postcolonial Anglophone text. In any case, let us give thanks to the publication gods that there is a U.S. release of this title, so that you can treat yourself by reading it! =)
Buy the Book Here!
Review Author: Stephen Hong Sohn
Review Editor: Xiomara Forbez
If you have any questions or want us to consider your book for review, please don't hesitate to contact us via email!
Prof. Stephen Hong Sohn at ssohnucr@gmail.com
Xiomara Forbez, PhD Candidate in Critical Dance Studies, at xforb001@ucr.edu