A Splintering by Dur e Aziz Amna

Tara is desperate to leave the dung and the dust of the small rural village in Pakistan where she was born, and the control of her violent and dominating brother.  When Tara, yet another daughter, was born, her mother cried and banged her head on the wall. Her mother forces Tara out of bed to cook breakfast for her brother and is powerless when Lateef, Tara’s brother, takes a precious bangle she was saving for a daughter’s dowry to buy a television. But her mother is the one who supports Tara’s continued attendance at school as advantageous to the family, and presses her to study  and to be something different. The only girl in her family to receive such an education, Tara is restless and ambitious for more than the constant menial tasks of daily life and the path laid out for her as a woman. She despises the subservient women in the household, who are kept in check by patriarchal expectations and, at times, by physical violence.

The prospect of spending her life crouched over a cooking pot and a washing bowl, slapping wet dung against a sunny wall to dry into fuel for the fire, spurs Tara to dream and scheme for a better life. Marrying a mild-mannered accountant is a step away from home and toward a more comfortable life, but she is still constrained by the expectations of a domestic role and the pressure from a mother-in-law.

Eventually, she engineers a move to the city with her unambitious husband and two small children.  Obsessively driven, Tara uses any means at her disposal to attain the wealth and status that she craves for herself and her children.  Tara stops at nothing to advance her family’s material position - good schools for the children, a better car and a finer house in a more prestigious area - but the costs are high.  For all her scheming, she is still confronted with the reality that men hold the power. Against the background of political upheaval in Pakistan at the time, seamlessly woven into the daily lives of Tara’s family through television, news, and protest marches, we see Tara become increasingly embroiled in dishonesty and deception.  She gambles much in her single-minded pursuit of wealth and what she believes to be freedom.

Tara is the beating heart of this novel, and while the reader can feel sympathy for her situation, her choices become more and more questionable.  She struggles for agency, but in the process shows no compassion for her brother’s downtrodden wife, treats her children dismissively and exploits her own sexuality.

The evocation of life in a small rural village, in a backwater of dirt and poverty, reveals clearly the power imbalance and the lack of freedom that women in such a traditional society face. It is clear that the unfairness of this patriarchal system drives her forward as she pursues her goal of financial and material wealth in the city, where again there is a power dynamic that she must negotiate.  But in achieving her dream, she makes choices that are alienating and cement her on a lonely path.

How does the reader judge Tara and her choices? Is freedom from the power dynamic of this patriarchal society really possible? And these questions are what make this novel so absorbing. 

At the end of this novel, I found myself asking whether Tara had indeed found freedom from the constraints of a patriarchal society and whether the price of wealth and material advancement had been to lose so much in other ways.

A challenging, thought-provoking read that left me pondering the choices I might make in such circumstances.

Reviewer: Clare Lyon

Duckworth