When I Hit You - Meena Kandasamy - ★★.½

AUTHOR: Meena Kandasamy

GENRE: Autofiction.

RATING: 2.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: Has its merits but I couldn’t connect with the writing style. Feels more like a feminist essay-cum-manifesto than a fictional story about domestic violence.

Story Synopsis:

Written in first person, our narrator, who remains unnamed throughout the book, tells us of her marital experience. Five years ago, she fell in love with a leftist university professor, who was much older than her, and married him for reasons other than love. Unfortunately, for her husband, marriage is akin to ownership, and he soon dominates her, dictating every move she makes. After resisting for four months, she finally makes her escape. (This isn’t a spoiler but mentioned in Chapter One.)

Now speaking to us five years down the line, she dissects her marriage and her life choices.

This book had created quite a buzz in Indian FB groups a few years ago as an eye-opening revelation of domestic abuse. (Feminism-driven books are quite rare here.) The novel also made it to the longlist of the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2018 and was nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction in the same year. Is it any surprise then that I have been eager to get my hands on this book since that last few years? But now that I’ve read it, I can’t help feeling disappointed. Which shouldn’t be a surprise because I feel this way about most literary Prize winners or nominees. Anyhoo…

Through the hype and the reviews, and because of the powerful title and cover, I was under the impression that this was either a memoir, or an expository nonfiction about domestic abuse. (I wasn’t aware of its fiction award nominations then.) After I discovered that it was a fictional novel, I prepared myself for the hardhitting story of a disastrous marriage. However, though the book had some intense content, it felt impactful only to a certain extent. And this is to be blamed primarily on the title and the writing approach.

The title doesn’t suit the book at all, though one part of the book contains a reference that helps us understand why it has been chosen. It’s more like a clickbait heading because most of the content doesn’t talk about that aspect of the abusive marriage.

The content is akin to a combination of essay plus manifesto, with the focus being more on the lessons learnt by the narrator and the discussions she had with her husband on irrelevant topics such as communism and writing and Facebook than on her direct experiences as the recipient of abuse. Her husband's philosophy and beliefs find more space on the page than merited by the premise. Not that I like reading about physical abuse, but isn't that what the title promised?

Of course, abuse is not only physical but also psychological. In this regard, the book does perform somewhat better, highlighting the various manipulative ways such as gaslighting, bodyshaming and guilt-tripping that the husband used to mess up her mind. Then again, the narrator keeps reiterating that she was an independent and educated writer (The “writer” angle is drilled in us repeatedly), so how did she go from entering a love marriage with a person she herself chose to wearing shabby clothes and letting her hair be full of lice within just four months – this aspect is never clarified. I’m not questioning her claims nor denying her trauma; I just wanted a clearer transition from point A to point B.

Furthermore, as the narration comes to us in a flashback from five years later, there is no curiosity about what happens. We already know that she has left her husband’s home and returned to her parents within just four months. All we have to wait for is the ‘how’, and that takes hardly a few pages. The rest is just a tirade.

As every single main character of the book stays unnamed, I felt distanced from their feelings and thought process, except for the narrator whose thoughts are more about vehemence than about emotions. I couldn’t feel any connect with the narrator! Imagine reading a book about such physical and mental abuse and still coming away feeling not an ounce of sympathy for the protagonist. Something went drastically wrong between thought and paper for this novel.

On the pro side, there are some outstanding points about domestic abuse and marital rape being raised, all of which are quite infuriating as we realise that there are still men who consider their wives their property to be used or abused the way they want. The book also highlights how it isn’t only the poor or the illiterate who go through physical abuse. There is enough fodder for thought, even if the fodder is shoved into your brain than being offered for perusal.

One more point I liked was that the abusive relationship was not through an arranged marriage but a love marriage. (Yup, we do have love marriages in India. Tons of them!) It has become the norm to diss arranged marriages and blame them for every single marital issue in the country, but the fact is that arranged marriages and love marriages both have their pros and cons. For once, a feminist book from the country has spotlighted that a love marriage can also end in pain.

(I must clarify that there’s a difference between forced arranged marriage [Bad!] and arranged marriage by consent [Works quite well!]. Many outsiders are so hasty to jumping to wrong conclusions about India that I feel like every declaration I make about the country needs to be explained in detail. Sigh.)

The story made decent use of the locations (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Mangalore in Karnataka), though the Keralite portrayal seemed quite stereotypical with only communism as the main topic, as if people in Kerala discuss nothing else. My native place is Mangalore, so it was exciting to finally read a book that mentions Mangalore (Every writer wanting a Karnataka-based location seems fixated on Bangalore otherwise!) and also talks of a few of its popular spots.

So yes, the book does have its strengths. But considering what was promised, the strengths failed to make me forgive the shortcomings.

On the whole, reading this book was a very frustrating experience. I might – this is a highly conditional “might” – have liked this book had I been prepared for its approach towards the story. Because of the bombastic style, the emotions feel more ostentatious than genuine. I think the book would have been far more impactful as a memoir, because in its current format, it straddles both fiction and nonfiction and does justice to neither.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of feminist work that delights in generalised male-bashing. I firmly believe in #NotAllMen; there are enough kind-hearted and loving and caring men out there. So I cannot agree with any “feminist” who believes in the superiority and moral perfection of women. (Coming to think of it, they might like this book better.) Give me Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “We Should All Be Feminists” over this rubbish ideology any day.

The author has revealed in interviews that this book is based on her own experiences. As this is then an autofiction, I am really sorry that she had to go through such a traumatic marriage. But as I always say, a review is an opinion about the book and not about the person writing it. And as a book, this novel didn’t work for me the way I wanted it to.