Publisher's Weekly Review
Freedom, as defined by the characters in Mukherjee's brutally honest and haunting latest novel (after The Lives of Others), is a relative state. Most of them are striving to transcend lives of grinding poverty and degradation in contemporary India, where, though the "untouchable" designation has been abolished, the vicious caste system still victimizes village dwellers and domestic workers. Lakshman has abandoned his family and his dismally poor village to travel with a dancing bear (the bear "dances" when a rope is jerked painfully through his nose), only to realize that he has lost everything and that the bear is his only friend. Renu is a domestic cook in Bombay, working herself to the bone and juggling many jobs in order to pay for her nephew's education. Milly is forced to rely on a man she does not know in order to escape slavelike servitude to her employers: "She had been untethered, set free, when all she wanted was the safety and security of not being alone." Soni, who seeks freedom through activism with the Communist Party, discovers she is a prisoner of doctrinal subjugation. An unnamed father comes home to India from America to show his young son his heritage only to tragically realize that he can't escape the ancient violence that lies simmering under the surface. Seen against a pitiless landscape of primitive villages and hellish urban slums, and the extremes of scorching heat and billowing monsoon rain, this is a compassionate, deeply felt tribute to India's forgotten people who strive to triumph over subjugation. With its mixture of prose styles and narrative voices, Mukherjee's novel is a literary achievement. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
The five "narrative parts" of this work, designated only with Roman numerals, comprise five styles: short story; first-person, faux memoir; folktale of sorts; ten-parts-plus-epilog novella; and no-punctuation vignette. The connections require attention, with results well worth the reader's intriguing participation. An Indian American professor's tragedy-ensuing visit with his six-year-old son to iconic Indian landmarks amid hordes of destitute locals confirms "the plush West had made him skinless like a good, sheltered first-world liberal." A London-based writer visits his parents in Mumbai and develops a relationship with the family's cook that challenges employer/employee boundaries. A bear cub is brutally trained to perform by his desperate owner. Two childhood village friends experience diverging adulthoods. A disjointed voice confronts impending death. Man Booker Prize short-listed Mukherjee (for The Lives of Others) gathers a cast of untethered characters to present urgent, even beseeching, testimony on how the titular "state of freedom" is too often more impossible dream than achievable reality. A Q&A with Hanya Yanagihara reveals Mukherjee's intent that Freedom be "an homage, a conversation" with V.S. -Naipaul's In a Free State; familiarity with that work is unnecessary to be awed. VERDICT Libraries with internationally savvy audiences should prepare for substantial demand. [See Prepub Alert, 7/31/17.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
