Where Shall We Do This Summer explored the complexity of motherhood and the lack of power a mother has once a baby is born. Sita already has 4 children and is nearing the birth of another, as she watches the ways her children interact with the world, how they respond to her anguish, and what they want to do she grows more and more distressed at who this next baby will grow to be once infected with the air of a polluted world. And so she returns to the island of her childhood, where her dad spun magic. The people of the island have awaited the return of the family but when she arrives she is met with stark indifference and the venier of her childhood falls as she enters the big, once white house, now standing in disarray, monsoon rain leaking through a holey roof.
The prose was beautiful but jarring which I think is due to the author writing in English as an Indian woman, it has a different lilt, a different sort of poetry that flowed syrupy with the descriptions of nature so stunning I could not help but paint one.