The narrator is one of the later daughters of a family in India. As such, she has little in the way of a dowry, so although her upbringing allowed her to learn to read, she ends up marrying a peasant rice farmer--a man who rents the land that he farms.
As she ages, she learns better how to support her husband. She makes friends among the villagers. She has a daughter. She has trouble having more children and visits a doctor, who helps her to have several sons. The family struggles through good times and bad, living off the land, living in a hut the father built, dealing with heavy rains and no rains. Once in a while, they get a treat, like some extra spices for their food, their bowl of rice. A tannery moves into the village, and lives begin to change.
Some of the sons get involved with the labor movement. One gets killed. The daughter, in order to support the youngest child, goes into prostitution. None of the sons go into peasant farming. Some go work for the tannery; some go to work for the medical field. They may or may not be bettering themselves, as the pay is always low, basically subsistence.
If this were an American dream story, hard work would pay off. But this is not. This is third world. A life on the farm leads not to the dream of buying the land but to being kicked off the land as it is sold and having nowhere to go but to one's poor children or to the beggar house.
The language of the book is simple. It reads like what one would expect from a woman living in poor circumstances. One reason for this is likely also the woman's naivete and trustingness. Her husband can have an affair, and she figures it fair because she had trouble bearing sons. Her neighbor can demand food, and she gives it, though she can ill afford it. She leaves her belongings behind in the middle of a city in order to get a meal for herself and her husband and finds them gone when she returns.
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