⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was such a simple yet deeply poignant read. The themes explored here are so timely and should be more talked about elsewhere. The book was written entirely from the point-of-view of the titular house, the one whose address is house number 12 block number 3. It’s something I’ve never read in a book before. The voice of the house was simple and minimalistic, aka no embellishments of literary terms or something like that. I enjoyed the point-of-view. I’m always up for something new and exciting. This story, while it was quiet and mostly uneventful, was set during a eventful time in Pakistan. With the political atmosphere so turbulent and chaotic in the background, the characters in the book face things that aren’t very turbulent in the worlds of fiction but they are if they happened in real life. Although the story is from the point-of-view of a house, the main characters are the family who live in it, especially the mother and the youngest child—the only daughter—of the family.
The book is set in Karachi from 1957 to 1988. At the beginning, the titular house was empty for a decade after its Hindu owners vacated it and departed for India. In 1957, a young Muslim businessman, Haji Rahmat, and his newly married wife, Zainab, arrive at the house. Pretty soon, the long vacant house is filled with their children and the staff. While the newly born country of Pakistan struggles to hold on to a stable government, the household of the house number 12 of block number 3 settles in a comfortable, familiar routine. As new scenarios are introduced to the political climate of Pakistan, new faces arrive in house number 12 too. We meet characters who have significant effects on the main ones. We meet background characters who, though not leave a significant effect, do color the situations for the readers. The House, the sentient sentry who witnesses things nobody else can see behind locked doors, silently observes and informs the reader. Nothing is stated explicitly but the House paints to the readers enough pictures to read between the lines and form a conclusion. While you read, like the House, you’ll feel like an omnipresent, omniscient narrator. If you’re up for this kind of narrative style, pick up this book.
I loved the main characters of the book, particularly Nadia and her mother, Zainab, who often locks horns and clashes with their opposing views. Zainab is old-fashioned and conservative while Nadia is more progressive and leftist leaning. Throughout the book, Zainab mostly fails to understand and support Nadia with her life choices and decisions. But the ending was so heartwarming and heart-wrenching at the same time. I loved how their relationship was so mercurial, multidimensional, and colorful, as most mother-daughter relationships are in real life. They are the only two characters in the book who develop palpable changes in their character arcs. The rest are mostly one dimensional, flat characters. I wish we had more history about the House’s origin and the previous owners, the Malhotras, why they sealed the door of the previous storage room, and their last days in the house. The supernatural angle felt unexplored too. It could’ve been so much more exciting if the author made the supposed jinn’s presence more in the story.

I couldn’t give it five stars because of some things. Firstly, the author spelled the capital of Bangladesh/East Pakistan as Dhaka, not Dacca, which, with the context of the timeline, isn’t historically accurate. Dhaka the spelling came to be in 1982/1983, imposed by President Hussain Mohammad Ershad. However, not including the flashbacks, the story was set during 1981 when the spelling Dacca was used. Given that the book is written in present tense, the story therefore isn’t one long reminiscence of the House decades later, rather the things were happening as they were happening. Furthermore, the author didn’t, in my eyes, properly narrated the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh. At first, I was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was trying to present the House as an apolitical, anti-war entity, as a neutral presence and thus, tried to both-sides the war (even though genocide and rape aren’t a both-sides issue). However, in the author’s note, she mentions the history book by Sarmila Bose, whose accounts of the war have already been dismissed by the historians as faulty and inaccurate. Seeing Ms. Balagamwala seeking research help from such a flawed account of the war while plenty more historically accurate books exist is very disheartening as a Bengali. I wish she’d rather sought research help from the books by journalist Anthony Mascarenhas, whose account was the first one that showed the world the war crimes committed by the Pakistani army on the Bengalis. All these things made me deduct a star from my review and also soured my mind. Nevertheless, I’d recommend this book if you’re up for a realistic historical fiction from the point-of-view of a house and one that explores themes like childhood sexual assaults, traumas, stigmas around mental health in South Asia, and feminism.
Thank you, NetGalley and Hidden Shelf Publishing, for providing me with an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.
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