Everything the Light Touches (Janice Pariat)
Early Review
This review is the initial impression of our editorial team after reading approximately one-tenth of the book.
DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in the Early Review might not necessarily have a correlation with the Final Review of the book.
Janice Pariat's work is a plethora of heartwarming
episodes with endearing characters starting with the narrator Shai, her father, Kima and, of
course, the indomitable Oiñ. Jaded and with 'no inner compass', Shai travels from the capital
fleeing from the air and as revealed through her inner dialogue "because something---I don't
know what---has been lost." This raises her mother's suspicions which she finds almost stifling
upon arriving home but the hills of Shillong act like a panacea for her existential angst as
she starts breathing in the untainted air and soaking up the intermittent but rejuvenating
spells of sunlight during her meanderings through the forest. Her father's remarkable knowledge
of trees almost verges on a metaphysical connection with nature as he unequivocally propagates
that humanity's "gravest crime" is our "plant bias---the tendency to underappreciate or ignore
the flora around us". The novel also provides a glimpse of Shillong in a state of transition
and how one of its famous rooftop cafés has imitated a design that is reminiscent of a city café
instead of adopting the traditional natural aesthetics. Then comes one of the defining moments
of the novel, a bildungsroman adventure for Shia who decides to visit Oiñ by embarking on what
turns out to be an extremely unnerving prospect for someone who has explored almost nothing of
Meghalaya's rural, almost idyllic locales. Pariat is a seasoned writer, yet, her writing is as
rejuvenating as the hills of Shillong, free from affections and rich in a mystical exploration
of people and their natural environs.
Original Title : Everything the Light Touches: A Novel
ISBN : 9356291438, 9789356291430
Edition language : English
Published : 13 October 2022
Summary
As emotionally resonant as Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss, as inspired as Anthony Doerr’s Cloud Cuckoo Land, as inventive as Louisa Hall’s Speak, and as visionary as David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, Everything the Light Touches is Janice Pariat’s magnificent epic of travelers, of discovery, of time, of science, of human connection, and of the impermanent nature of the universe and life itself—a bold and brilliant saga that unfolds through the adventures and experiences of four intriguing characters.
Shai is a young woman in modern India. Lost and drifting, she travels to her country's Northeast and rediscovers, through her encounters with indigenous communities, ways of being that realign and renew her.
Evelyn is a student of science in Edwardian England. Inspired by Goethe's botanical writings, she leaves Cambridge on a quest to wander the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas.
Linnaeus, a botanist and taxonomist who famously declared “God creates; Linnaeus organizes,” sets off on an expedition to an unfamiliar world, the far reaches of Lapland in 1732.
Goethe is a philosopher, writer, and one of the greatest minds of his age. While traveling through Italy in the 1780s, he formulates his ideas for “The Metamorphosis of Plants,” a little-known, revelatory text that challenges humankind’s propensity to reduce plants—and the world—into immutable parts.
Drawn richly from scientific and botanical ideas, Everything the Light Touches is a swirl of ever-expanding themes: the contrasts between modern India and its colonial past, urban and rural life, capitalism and centuries-old traditions of generosity and gratitude, script and “song and stone.” Pulsating at its center is the dichotomy between different ways of seeing, those that fix and categorize and those that free and unify. Pariat questions the imposition of fixity—of our obsession to place permanence on plants, people, stories, knowledge, land—where there is only movement, fluidity, and constant transformation. “To be still,” says a character in the book, “is to be without life.”
Everything the Light Touches brings together, with startling and playful novelty, people and places that seem, at first, removed from each other in time and place. Yet as it artfully reveals, all is resonance; all is connection.