WE SHOULD NOT ALL BE FEMINISTS

In Sharma’s novel, two women encounter very different feminist challenges in modern-day India.

American Emelia Sedley recalls a conversation she once had with her mother about a family friend, a woman who “no one can take lightly.” “No bloody man can make a fool of her,” Emelia’s mother had said. “And she won’t care for a man who doesn’t care for her.” Emelia glumly reflects on this as she attempts, at long last, to stand for something and embrace a cause. “Not having found much fulfillment in her own life,” readers learn, “she would try to help other women.” This new sense of mission is encouraged by larger-than-life crusading feminist Clarissa Hatfield, who invites Emelia to come with her on a speaking tour of India. At odds with her own life and still in shock after the disappearance of her romantic interest in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (he worked in the World Trade Center), Emelia decides to accompany Clarissa to India, where they encounter a country in the midst of social change. The modern Indian woman, they’re told by a swami they meet, is more Western than ever, increasing attracted to “the desire for freedom and its accompanying empowerment.” The two women meet a man named Rajni Kant and his wife Vibha, and the dark side of Clarissa’s crusading passion starts to show itself. Sharma writes in extremely readable, passionate prose, and though Emelia and particularly Rajni are immediately sympathetic figures, the novel is dominated by the darker Clarissa (“Having suffered Clarissa all this time,” Emelia reflects later in the novel, “[she] was beginning to feel protective towards men”). Feminists may bridle at some of the novel’s developments, but the well-executed drama will keep them reading.

A gripping novel in which two very different feminists encounter turning points in India.