Book Blast and Review: The Archer by Shruti Swamy

Title: The Archer

Author: Shruti Swamy

Genre: Womens/ Coming of Age fiction

Rating: 💜💜💜

About the Book:

In this transfixing novel, a young woman comes of age in 1960s- and 1970s-era Bombay, a vanished world that is complex and indelibly rendered. Vidya’s childhood is marked by the shattering absence and then the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother at the family home. Restless, observant, and longing for connection with her brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya navigates the stifling expectations of her life with a vivid imagination until one day she peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling, centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Her pursuit of artistic transcendence through kathak soon becomes the organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain future looms, she must ultimately confront the tensions between romantic love, her art, and the legacy of her own imperfect mother.

Lyrical and deeply sensual, with writing as mesmerizing as kathak itself, Shruti Swamy’s The Archer is a bold portrait of a singular woman coming of age as an artist—navigating desire, duty, and the limits of the body. It is also an electrifying and utterly immersive story about the transformative power of art, and the possibilities that love can open when we’re ready.

My Review:

A coming of age story set in Bombay, where a young woman decides during her younger years that she wants to dance and not be a mother or wife in the 1960's and 70's.  Not only was that un heard of during that time in that area, as most of us know, life doesn't always go the way we imagine it when we're younger.  We don't really know what exact age she is at the beginning of the book, but she was probably a preteen, early teen, at about 1/3 of the way through the book, she is 17.  

The Cover is absolutely intriguing and beautiful, and that's what drew me to the book.  Some parts of the story was interesting, and some of it fell flat for me.  It was a struggle for me at the beginning of the book.  I did especially enjoy some of the cultural references in the story..  I did enjoy the main character and what she had to deal with.

“A saga as rich and gorgeous as Kathak itself.”

—Library Journal

“As in her lauded debut collection, A House Is a Body, Swamy examines women’s ownership of their very selves. . . [and] challenges expectations and exposes the limitations of being female.”

—Booklist

“[An] affecting debut novel. . . Swamy confidently evokes the time and place with spare, precise prose. This writer continues to demonstrate an impressive command of her craft.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Alive with desire, Shruti Swamy's prismatic language glimmers with the force that drives her characters to dance, beating against the restrictions of body, society, tradition, sexuality, and the fallible self toward a liberatory devotion to life. A gorgeous, taut, deeply embodied reading experience, The Archer further establishes Swamy as a writer of thrilling talent.”

—Asako Serizawa, author of Inheritors

“The Archer is a stunning novel, as intimate and visceral as an expertly executed dance. Swamy's arresting and immersive prose vibrates with attention, and does what the best writing does: it leaves me more alive in my own body, and renders the world around me richer—more layered—with meaning. Meditating on what it means to be an artist (and a woman), Swamy has created her own wondrous work of art—singular, unforgettable, and important.”

—Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin

“The Archer unfolds like an urgent dream, its heroine’s desire—for artistic transcendence, love, and liberation—its driving pulse. This novel, and the many keenly rendered moments within its pages (a swirl of bright fabric, the temperature of a lover’s skin, the abrupt chilling of a mood) lodged themselves in my consciousness long after. Shruti Swamy is one of the most gifted, excitingly unpredictable writers working today.”

—Mimi Lok, author of Last of Her Name

“Shruti's Swamy's The Archer combines exquisite prose with a kind of rare narrative propulsion. I found myself reading slower and slower, to make the sentences last even longer. By the end I was exhilarated and deeply moved. The Archer is a flat-out gorgeous piece of work.”

—Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown & Others