A House Is a Body

I took a while to start liking these stories, not entirely sure why. I can\’t remember the last time I read a book of short stories, so maybe it was my fault. Maybe I had to get used to short stories again, the way we\’re just sort of dropped into the middle of a life and situation, a few quick brush strokes paints the scene, and were off and running. And then, soon, just as suddenly, we\’re away, kicked out, the story\’s over, and what\’s unresolved will forever be that way. For us, anyway. What a strange feeling. I had forgotten.

Swampy uses vivid imagery to allow the reader to fully explore and thus more thoroughly comprehend the thinking and actions of her characters in all of their variety and complexity. These stories touched me and reminded me of my own experiences and of women I have known well.

I love short stories. As a genre they are notoriously hard to get right: you have to fit whole settings, plots, characters into just a few pages, bring the reader in rapidly while also leaving them with something to chew on once the story is over. Shruti Swamy does such a wonderful job in her collection of short stories, A House is a Body, that I couldn’t put it down. I literally read the entire collection in one sitting and wanted more. Shruti Swamy’s prose is lyrical, lush, beautiful; she creates a world where the reader’s time is suspended, where the reader enters a world that is both familiar and different, magical and painfully real. The breakdown of a relationship; an alcoholic artist; a woman caught in a dream of another woman; a family mourning the loss of a partner, a sister, a friend; domestic violence; mental illness; a kingdom falling apart because of the violence of men against women, are all among many themes portrayed in the twelve stories, and each and every one of them struck me in deeply personal ways I find hard to describe on paper. The stories are set in both India and the US, sometimes in both countries, and read in a way like dreams. The reader looks into intimate and personal settings that we know we should not be part of, but we can’t seem to stop reading either. The stories are all unique and different, but they flow so well into each other: I wanted more, but also felt satiated, satisfied even. I want to read more of Shruti Swamy’s work: she is so talented, and I adore her writing style. Highly, highly recommended read!

Shruti Swamy holds readers taut and watchful like the dog and cobra staring at one another in the final story in her debut collection, The House Is a Body. Some stories capture single moments, like this one. The title story happens in the five minutes a mom has to evacuate with a feverish daughter because of a forest fire. Other stories emphasize vigilant waiting. Artists in two stories drink while they work. Their lives drift past in moments they compose as they can catch them. The stories themselves also seem to observe their characters. In one story, Krishna makes several unexpected but timely appearances in a painter’s life. Two mythical queens in Siege perform a secret rescue maneuver away from guards’ eyes. The effect is a sigh of relief. Even if everything is not right with the world, an omniscient narrator beholds it as beautiful. The stories speak hope. In the first story, a bride reveals her feeling of emptiness to her husband. Then she becomes pregnant. In this and other stories, despair and joy make room for each other. In Mourners, four family members remember a loved one who passes, leaving a baby. A young lesbian in Wedding Season watches wedding ceremonies, realizing the weight of her life choices. In the midst of the ordinary, an epiphany becomes more luminous. Characters reverse roles or take on each other’s identities in a sobering display of empathy. In My Brother at the Station, a girl sees who she thinks is her long lost brother. She wishes to put herself in his shoes, to ask him, “what is it you see, that I cannot?” (42). In other stories, mothers notice ways they become their own mothers. Wives wonder what life is like, unattached, or in the hands of another man. The collection explores interconnectedness in a celebration of senses. Turmeric and clove baths, the milky smell of babies, frangipani flower musk, the smell of sex, the sounds of laughter, Krishna’s blue skin – these lift objects off the page and into noses, mouths, eyes and ears. The House Is a Body is a full frontal exposure of detail. The result is a reality in which to revel, no matter the cost.

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