Review: Nectar in a Sieve

"Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live."
-- Coleridge

I decided to read Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya for one of the most random reasons. I am working on reading Great Expectations (Dickens is always a long journey for me, and I start and finish many other books before one of his is conquered). My copy of Great Expectations is a Signet Classic. After finishing a chapter, I was flipping through the Signet ads in the back and found a list of the top 20 Signet Classic Books. I discovered that I had read all of them but one, which I had never even heard of.

So I read Nectar in a Sieve with no idea what it was about. And I wish I had left it that way. Partway through, I began to read the back cover and I felt it gave too much of the plot away--it told me some of the struggles the main character, a peasant woman in rural India named Rukmani. And so I kept waiting for them to happen. "Oh this must be where blah happens..." (I will not ruin it for anyone who wants to read it by repeating the overtelling of the plot.) So if you read it, do not read the back cover.

And I do think it is worth reading. It is nothing like the things I usually read and Rukmani and I have little in common besides our humanity and being mothers. She lives in a different time and place with completely different ideas and values. She works hard and accepts her lot in life, though she is always struggling and often starving. It definitely made me more grateful for the abundance of food we have. I am so glad that I don't live in a mud hut that I have to smear with dung to keep it standing. And yet, though anyone who reads this book will obviously be better off than Rukmani, it is never presented in a way that you feel that you should pity her or that you are being judged for your lack of poverty.

It is often heart wrenching, always moving. The language is simple which made it a quick read, but I wouldn't call it an easy read because of its content. The short book follows Rukmani from when she is given away as a child bride until she is an old woman.