her caste identity, but given her fair complexion, the farming villagers immediately suspect she is not one of them. Despite the taboo against intercaste marriage, Kumaresan believes that they can settle happily there and that his community will eventually embrace the lovely Saroja just as he has. Saroja is a city girl, and her transition to farming life would have been difficult even without the explicit derision and antagonism that the couple experiences from everyone in the village, including Kumaresan’s mother, extended family, and the village leaders. Their naïveté plays against the community’s hatred and cynicism and creates a sense of foreboding that propels the narrative to its inevitable conclusion. An acclaimed writer in his native India, Murugan skillfully contrasts the young couple’s innocence with the increasingly caustic attacks on their marital union. His spare prose mesmerizes, and Vasudevan’s translation of the original Tamil conveys both meaning and needed context for Western English readers. India’s casteism is on full display, but what makes this novel so powerful is how Murugan shows that intolerance, cruelty, and bigotry are universal traits of humankind, even while tailored to the peculiarity of each
society. Universal too, are the love, kindness, and familial bonds that exist between individuals who have the sensitivity to look beyond societal custom and coercion. A haunting story of forbidden love set in Southern India that illustrates the cruel consequences of societal intolerance.
THE PERFECT GOLDEN CIRCLE
Myers, Benjamin Melville House (272 pp.) $27.99 | April 5, 2022 978-1-61219-958-0 A quiet, peculiar, and utterly charming novel about...crop circles. Myers’ new book—brief though it is—contains a buzzing, busy multitude. It’s part Künstlerroman, part rural idyll, part environmental alarm, part picaresque about two outcasts,
y o u n g a d u lt
|
kirkus.com
|
fiction
|
15 february 2022
|
23
