Incandescence Book Review

by Catalina Bonati

4/5 stars

Incandescence (2022) by Mehreen Ahmed is a story encompassing several interconnected forbidden love stories that happen to members of an old zamindari family in East Pakistan that is later Bangladesh. It focuses mainly on Mila, who is the granddaughter of the Chowdhury matriarch, as well as her mother Nazmun Banu, Prema, Lutfun, and Mrs. Chowdhury herself and their romantic affairs. It also describes the social landscape of East Pakistan through its conversion into Bangladesh. Written in prose that is poetic and thoughtful, this generational fiction story touches on themes of marriage, honor, love through points of view that are both traditional and contemporary.

The story starts when Mila meets up with a childhood love, Rahim, although he is now married to her friend Papri. She reflects on the complicated love affairs which affected her family, from her Uncle Ashik and Prema, Sheri and Lutfun, her own mother Nazmun Banu and her unfaithful father Ekram, and her grandfather Raiza Mirza and Tahera. All of these family members and their different approaches to love and dealing with rejection are inspiration towards Mila’s reencounter with Rahim later in life. The story is not told linearly—Mila is middle aged when the story begins, but most of it takes place before Mila was born, when she was a child, a teenager, and a university student. The intertwined tales of her family are unique and fleshed out, each pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable in love and marriage within traditional roles. It not only focuses on non-conformist romantic relationships, but parental ones too, as is the case with Tahera and Ashik, Prema and her previous children, and Ekram and Mila. The explorations of romantic relationships and marriage not only encompass cheating and affairs (which feels written in a contemporary way) but also polygamy (which is very traditional). The story is set in East Pakistan slightly before the civil war begins, and once the fighting begins the Chowdhury family is forced out of their ancestral home due to concern for their security and flee into another home that they have in another village. The family’s aristocratic zamindari roots is one of the most important aspects to their identity as a family—they regard themselves as entitled to a decent life in a big house with servants, and other others are jealous of their supposed wealth. Mila is representative of this—later on in the story she lives with her husband and her in-laws. Her in-laws seem to dislike her for not having what traditional zamindari girls have, which is a big trousseau, money, and cooking skills. They are unnecessarily cruel to her for this reason, and although Mila should not have to put up with  mean-spirited people, she makes no effort at all to adapt herself to the lifestyle of another family or to even learn how to do basic things like cooking because she has always had servants and it does not occur to her that she will not always be cooked for.

The writing is fluid and lyrical. Present tense and actions feel like they are recollections or dreams and are not quite real or happening currently. Sometimes the past and present tenses are mixed and it is hard to tell what is happening in the present. The theme of love is approached through the shifting social setting surrounding the creation of a country, a setting where tradition is confronted by a new era of modernity, yet in Mehreen’s narrative, these two things are seamlessly integrated. In the same way, superstition, such as leaving glasses of water around the house for 40 days for the spirits to drink, is peacefully integrated with reason, as family members gently dismiss the shibboleths of others in favor of colder and more measured approaches to problems. Even though the story takes place around fifty years ago give or take, the dialogue and characters feel contemporary.

Overall, this book is a well written slow-to-medium-paced literary romance that offers a unique view on marriage and romantic relationships. There are some shortcomings such as the plot never circling back to its beginning and some relationships not being explored enough despite their importance in the plot (such as Mila and Papri), yet the thoughtful and emotionally intelligent nature of the story surpasses the small narrative lapses that there may be. This book is recommended to those who wish to read a thoughtful, slow-paced romance or a socio-cultural narrative on families during the Bangladesh Liberation war.