2009-05-04

beauty in destitution

Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamada Markandaya

It’s about a nearly destitute woman, poor by Indian standards, whose children die or leave home, and whose husband cheats on her, and who eventually has to leave her home of rural poverty to enter the world of urban poverty.

So it’s not a beach book.

But it’s hauntingly beautiful, which is a strange description for the most authentic book I've ever read from the point of view of a woman in poverty.

Don’t read Nectar in a Seive while listening to The Cowboy Junkies, or you may cry yourself to sleep.

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