It is surprising how much Anjali Joseph manages to say in The Living without quite saying it. When it ends, the novel feels like a broad brushstroke of life, but flip the pages again and you realise its strength lies in its sensitive evocation of liminal moments. The two, perhaps, are not that different. Shoemakers Claire and Arun are unconventional protagonists: a 35-year-old single mother in Norwich and a man well past his prime living with his wife in a strangely subdued Mumbai.

The locations could have been purely incidental; the book is set deep in the inner lives of these characters. As working-class people with routine lives, they appear to be unexceptional at first, weighed down by the difficulty of living. But their striking capacity for reflection reveals itself slowly, a quality that gives the book its richness.

As a writer, Joseph is brave enough to string together a narrative on the shaky ground of thought. She does well to structure and discipline, and not let them run a savage course. The narrative also breaks at the right moments, with beautiful depictions of honest moments that help characters connect, as when Claire tells her son about his father who left them years ago, or when Arun’s detached wife relates her troubled childhood to him, years after being married. Ironically, the same honesty about other realisations also drives discord between the characters and the others in their lives. For instance, when this crystallises in Arun, “The moments when I understood her best, accepted her as she was, were also the moments when I was absolutely without desire for her. As though in being a person it was impossible for me also to be a man.” It remains unexpressed, unfolding only in the solitary confines of his mind. Ironies like these are understated, obvious only on second and third readings.

Even in these heavy parts the prose is sparse and restrained. It does not collapse under the weight of the theme it carries. Despair, hope, longing, love and euphoria; Joseph chooses the emotions that animate our lives the most but minimises their grandeur by making them momentary; there is still life to be lived, living to be made beyond them. While this philosophy undergirds the book, and works for the most part, the too-restrained prose sometimes affects tone. As a result, the characters appear a tad boring for not being able to be overwhelmed, even in their happier moments.

Time largely figures in a circular way in the novel, as the past often interjects into the characters’ present. When Arun sees his son being a supportive father to his grandson, it triggers memories of his own childhood. Claire holds an active resentment for her mother, initiated by a single incident and exacerbated over the years by her lack of empathy. They barely share a relationship, but the resentment is strong enough to send Claire into spirals of anger in her vacant moments. The present and past are connected by unexpected triggers that can easily turn explosive: one feeling leads to another and, soon, we fall prey to our own unpleasantness. It is impossible to read The Living as if it weren’t an illumination of our own lives. It fully embraces the small struggles that exhaust us, the uncanny tendency of our minds to make us feel miserable. It tells us of our obsessive natures. You don’t quite know what makes you turn the pages, the easy prose or the anticipation of some dramatic moment, which never quite comes. Through Arun’s illness and his hallucinations, you wonder if he is going senile. Or will death put an end to his suffering? Will Claire find happiness with John? Will she continue to have a painful relationship with her mother? The book does not cater to the visceral need for happy endings. In this sense, The Living is like the difficult lover who will not tell us what we want to hear.

It strives to be real, and treads along, offering moments of respite and lightness between the laboriousness of living.

Niharika Mallimadugula is a journalist currently based in Budapest

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