"China Room" by Sunjeev Sahota

An audio book.

1929. India. Mehar, 15, illiterate, has been married for 5 days to one of 3 brothers - she's unsure which (10 years before, the marriage was arranged). She's left her family to live in a farmyard. She and 2 other new wives (usually veiled) share a bedroom - the China room. The brothers have to ask their widowed mother Mai for use of the back room if they want sex. But because it's dark when she's visited at night she doesn't know which of the 3 is her husband. English rule is coming to an end.

S, 18, has been sent from England to his uncle in India to get off drugs. His aunt doesn't want him in the house so he moves out to a disused farmhouse without power (the one mentioned earlier). He befriends a woman doctor who drinks and smokes. She's there to do a project. Her father was an alcoholic. After a month the farm's been painted and he's better. He goes to confess his love to the older woman doctor but on the way discovers that she's been sleeping with a mutual friend.

In another timeline S is a father in England. His father has heart problems and is a victim of racial abuse.

Mehar soon enjoys sex - "Those trains you hear about - he was like one of those". She become pregnant by her husband's younger brother. Mai seems to prefer this to Mehar not being pregnant. The couple plan to sneak off to Lahore. He buys a horse and one night off they go. But the rest of the family know. He's kidnapped by revolutionaries needing recruits (a conclusion already hinted at). She's taken back to the farm and kept in a hut (the hut is part of the town's lore, as is the story that her lover abandoned her. She's S's great grandmother). In a few paragraphs we learn what happened after 1929 to the family. We also learn that when S returns home he relapses twice but ends up ok.

Other reviews

• Alex Clark
• Anthony Cummins (When Radhika encourages the narrator to find a purpose in renovating the farmhouse, the site of Mehar’s captivity, its value is plainly symbolic: a kind of moral DIY to purge the sins of the past. ... By framing its excavation of an abused girl’s bygone agony as a form of personal therapy for a troubled young man, China Room risked becoming a cheaply redemptive act of misery tourism. But it’s a trap this excellent novel avoids. ... it’s notable that he has effectively merged two dominant forms of contemporary fiction: a candidly conversational first-person narrative and a period re-creation that spotlights the experiences of marginalised women.)
• James Whitmore