Shiva Naipaul (1946–1985)

This is Baby Khoja Lutchman's story. She is a Trinidadian Indian who is married off to a bus driver at the age of 15, an arranged marriage. Her husband is a brute who drinks, and beats her, and goes with sex workers, and eventually takes on a mistress.
P.58:
"when she thought of The other woman, she experienced neither bitterness nor jealousy, but found she could contemplate the image drawn in her mind with something approaching indifference. At first, this surprised her, but she was reluctant to probe further and in time grew completely accustomed to that other presence which seemed to have a much greater claim on her husband. Any considerations of Love or affection she would have considered an irrelevance. Her marriage, as she well knew, had had very little to do with either of these things. It was one of the laws of Life, a purely formal arrangement which was entered into at a suitable age, demanding duty, not love. And the performance of duty was not affected by betrayal. What was there to be betrayed? Betrayal could apply only if there had been love and affection and their marriage, so far, had been devoid of either of these.

Their culture's manner of raising children is not consistent, which, later on, causes behavioral problems.
P.75:
'no Khoja function was ever considered complete without a beating. Any infringement of the rules (they could be invented on the spur of the moment) could be made the occasion for one of these entertainments, and children who were rarely beaten at home would suddenly find themselves liable. The choice of the victim was, in the normal run of things, capricious. At such times the sisters became unpredictable forces and, a beating once administered, its influence percolated through the clan. Several more victims were hastily assembled, although none could surpass the grandeur of that first beating, whose Majesty echoed evermore faintly down the chain until, finally, the urge spent itself in a mother slapping her three-month-old baby. 'that's the first time I ever hit him,' she would announce proudly to the surrounding sisters and back would come the reply, relentless, unforgiving: 'they got to begin learning who's boss sometime. Spare the rod and you does spoil the child.' after that, everybody relaxed and the aunts relapsed into a milder, more inoffensive state."

The matriarch of the clan, Mrs khoja, is close to death. The sisters gather close to her side, at Mr Khoja's house, their brother's. Indrani is the widowed sister who has been taking care of mrs. KhOJA. The sisters are summoned to the bedside.
P.145:
"the old woman's Adam's Apple Rose and fell in slow, uneven movements. Spasmodically, she clenched and unclenched her fists. 'Mohun, Mohun,' she called after her dead husband, and the sound Rose from her lips and floated thin as a wisp through the window and out of the room. She mumbled incomprehensibly after that, her voice falling softer and softer, until there was only the soundlessly moving lips. Indrani put her ear close to her mother's lips.
'what is it you want to say, ma? Tell indrani. She here beside you listening.'
'she Spirit traveling already,' Urmila murmured. 'it not going to be long now.'
Indrani rubbed the towel feverishly over the old woman's head. Next door a little boy shouted as he went off to school. It seemed like a signal.
'oh God, oh God,' indrani shrieked suddenly. A wail Rose from the circle of sisters and they pressed forward to the edge of the bed.
'oh God, oh God,' indrani moaned, still rubbing the towel on the old woman's forehead. 'Ma. Ma. Come back to We. Come back to We.' she kissed her mother's cheeks, her shoulders heaving convulsively. Urmila grabbed her arms and attempted to pull her away from the corpse.
'Indrani, your crying won't help she now. She in another world already. She had a good, long life. It was time for she to go and join pa.'
the sisters wailed."

Now that all Mrs KhOJA has died, Mister KhOJA, the only boy in the family, is the head. He tries to take mrs. Lutchman sons under his tutelage, and at one time tells them a story about a doctor, who was so poor as a boy, that he had no electricity to study by.
P.247:
" 'and this boy I'm telling you about--well, he's a grown man now, of course - that boy, do you know what he used to do for light? Yes. You just try and guess.' mr. Khoja said this so challengingly and with such vehemence, that Mrs lutchman felt obliged to follow mrs. Khoja and open her mouth wide as well. She leaned forward expectantly.
'I'll tell you, since you can't guess. That boy used to catch fireflies and put them in an old jam - bottle.' mr. KHOJA, nodding his head, waved his fork at each of his listeners in turn. He lowered his voice. 'and he would study like that.' misses Khoja's jaw sagged, but she did not take her eyes off her husband.
'you don't believe me, eh? You think I'm making all that up? But take my word. He would go straight home from school - walking 3 miles and back everyday without shoes, take note - change his clothes, what clothes he had to change, that is, catch a few fireflies in the yard, put them in the jam - bottle, close the bottle, wap!'--mr. Khoja clapped his hands together at this point - 'and take them inside and begin to study. Today, that man is one of the most successful men in this community. A doctor with a big house and a rich wife to boot. And on top of all that, he is one of the nicest men I know. generous to a fault and honest as the day is long. You couldn't want a better doctor either.'
misses lutchman breathed freely again, but her look of wonderment did not lessen.
'but didn't the fireflies die being locked up in a bottle like that? They couldn't breathe inside of there I should think.' misses KhOJA was impressed but not entirely convinced.
Mr. KhOJA snorted and speared another slice of tomato with his fork. 'you don't kill fireflies as easy as that, Sumintra. Take my word. They are some of the strongest insects on this island. And anyway, even if they did die all he had to do was go out in the yard and catch some more, not so?' "

mrs. Lutchman's son Bhaskar earns a scholarship and goes off to study to be a doctor in India. He regularly writes letters to his mother, but in his last year of study the letters fall off. Mrs. Lutchman becomes frantic when none of her letters are answered. She asks her brother mr. KhOJA to write, and she finds out that Bhaskar has had a nervous breakdown and been hospitalized. The University cannot take him back, and they send him home.
P.381-2:
" 'I don't understand what it is you trying to say, Bhaskar. What was a joke?'
'the whole thing, ma. The whole thing was a joke.'
misses lutchman nodded. She half understood what her son was trying to tell her. They were both silent. After a while, she said, 'well, what do you want to do now then?'
'do? Do. Do.' he savoured the word as if it were some strange, exotic thing. 'what do I want to do? More like what do I want to have done to me. Another joke perhaps.' he laughed. Then becoming serious, he said. 'nothing, ma. I don't want to do anything.'
'perhaps your mamoo could find you another job.'
'no, ma. Mind you, that would be the best joke of all, if he offered me a job in that school. But I don't feel up to being one of his fireflies.'
'fireflies?'
'it's not important, ma. Don't worry.' "… (mere)

Better written than my stars would seem to show About the Khojas’ an extended Indian family who don’t much like each other, living in the West Indies in the 70’s. Specifically about Baby who is married off to a bus driver, and also Mr Khoja, the head of the clan, who has inherited wealth & has a high opinion of himself.
Described as a comedy, and if you find beating children for no good reason funny you might be amused, but I found this sad, dull & rather pointless.
The family vaguely try and fail in commerce, politics, hobbies. The end couldn’t come too quickly for me.… (mere)

This is my third book by Shiva Naipaul, and while his writing remains brilliant, perhaps this doesn't grab the reader as much as his others.
Set in the fictional S American land of Cuyama (presumably Guyana, just across the water from Naipaul's native Trinidad), it's the description of a strange, uncommunicative marriage, against a backdrop of political upheaval. The constitution drawn up by the previous British administrators is now- 21 years after independence- being torn up as the black population begin to demand more power.
But this energy and anger is in stark contrast to the St Pierres- husband Aubrey, educated, well-to-do, devoted to atoning for his slave-owning ancestors by such futile gestures as running a spectacularly unsuccessful bookshop and taking in an impoverished local girl... And his wife, Dina, eaten up with resentment? depression? - "the fragile nature of her presence in his life: a presence that resembled a permanent state of absence."
"The degeneration of a colonial past and the brutality of a decolonized future", reads the blurb, and I can't say more than that. Some lovely writing but not madly gripping.… (mere)

'She had seen her successive dreams, at bottom one dream, wither and dissolve', 9 April 2013
By
sally tarbox

This review is from: Fireflies (Penguin Modern Classics) (Kindle Edition)
Set among the Indian community of Trinidad, this is the story of 'Baby' Khoja, married off by the matriarch of her well-to-do family to the unpleasant Ram Lutchman, a bus driver.
Neither is pleased at the match: 'The girl he was to marry did not inspire him...Her nose was the best part of her...When Ram thought of her, he tried to think only of her nose.' Baby must cope with violence and Ram's mistress, as well as her two unpromising children. But with the assistance of Mr Khoja, the self-important paterfamilias, Ram is levered into a better job and the Lutchmans' life seems to be on the ascendant...
For the first half of the novel I wondered where it was going. Told equally from Ram's and Baby's perspectives, it seemed like a slightly shapeless family chronicle, albeit wonderfully written with brilliantly drawn characters from the extended family who feature largely in their lives.
But halfway through, events suddenly shift, and I became increasingly immersed, wanting to see how the Lutchmans' lives turn out.… (mere)