Honor, by Thrity Umrigar

In Honor, by Thrity Umrigar, an Indian-American journalist, Smita, returns to India after many, many years away. She thinks she’s going back to help a friend and fellow journalist recover from an injury, but really her friend Shannon wants Smita to finish covering her story while she recovers in the hospital. Although Smita has already successfully covered dark and upsetting gender stories around the world, this unfinished story of an honor killing in a small village will open up parts of her past and cause her to re-examine basically everything.

I loved the sensory details in Smita’s return to India. Smita has a lot of complicated emotions around her return, and the details of taste, sounds, smells, and little familiar customs in the city helped to bring this to life. Also, I was reading Honor on our road-trip vacation, and part of my vacation indulgence was a bunch of Taiwanese canned coffees. If you haven’t gotten a can of coffee from a Taiwanese 7-11, you’re missing out, I love these sweet coffeedrinks, and they taste like my winter teaching in Taipei, too.  Anyway, there’s a moment when Smita, despite extremely mixed feelings about returning to India, get a familiar cup of Nescafe, and I just loved it. There really is a special, emotional familiarity in old tastes.

The story Smita finds herself covering is pretty gory: Meena, a Hindu woman, married a Muslim man, and her village took revenge on the couple by setting them and their home on fire. He is found dead and Meena is horribly burned. It’s quite upsetting and gross to read about. Even though everyone knows that Meena’s own brothers and the village chief were behind the murder and maiming, and the mysterious non-appearance of the local police, the court hasn’t found them guilty. It’s the frustration of the trial in Nightcrawling, with a woman who’s clearly been abused, and then a wall of cops and powerful men saying nothing happened. There’s no expectation, from anyone at all, that the local judge will find the men guilty. Even Meena and her lawyer know that the men who maimed Meena and killed her husband will never see a fine or jail time. But perhaps simply going through an investigation and trial will deter another honor killing, or encourage another victim to try for justice, or at least say that what happened to Meena was not right.

Meena lives with her mother-in-law, who blames her for her son’s death, and with her baby daughter. Her life is bleak, with no possibility of that changing, regardless of the upcoming verdict. This is an upsetting story, but never feels like poverty p0rn. A lot of this is because the story is told a journalistic style, appropriate for a story about journalist. And partly this bleakness works because the overall mood of Honor is more about individual people living their lives. The story is constantly aware of oppressions and privileges, whether that’s class, gender, religion, or passport, and tells of characters trying to make their way in these systems.

Smita goes to Meena’s village with Mohan, a friend of Shannon’s and a more traditional Hindu Indian. They argue a bit, but she’s also interested in his thoughts about modern Indian life. Their conversations drawn out her complicated past, and develop both characters so well.

Over the course of the book, Honor sets up two different love stories. The troubles in Smita and Mohan’s relationship aren’t minimized, but the novel highlights how Smita has the choice of where to live, what work to pursue, and so forth, she has the option to date a man casually, seriously, or break up with him.  Meena has never has had of those options, and her punishment for marrying the person she chose has been incredibly harsh.  Overall, this was a moving story with full characters. Definitely recommend Honor, even if it was upsetting at times.

I received a copy of this book to review, opinions and reactions on my book blog are my own, as always.