A Young Academic Searches for Home in “Habitations” https://ift.tt/IROtliG
In a landscape of often dramatic tales about immigrants, Habitations settles into the smaller moments of a life spent straddling two different cultures and, ultimately, two different homes.
Sheila Sundar’s début novel follows Vega, a young woman who leaves India to pursue post-graduate work in the U.S. and then, in the decade or so to follow, navigates a search for home both locationally, and even more so, within herself. Throughout the novel, which is set in the late 1990s through the mid-aughts, Vega moves back and forth between India and the U.S., as well as within the continental U.S., searching for a life that feels fully satisfying while contending with what — and, more importantly, who — she must leave behind to do so.
When Vega leaves India to study at Columbia University, she leaves behind her aging parents who have already lost a daughter, the sister Vega mourns throughout the book. And, later, when Vega gets a teaching opportunity at LSU, she must say goodbye to the small community she has carved out for herself in the New York City suburbs.
The pacing of Habitations moves in sync with Vega’s mind, which is often meandering and seems to spin its wheels in indecision and unprocessed grief rather than by taking decisive forward steps. All parts of Vega’s life — both the big moments and the small — are largely given equal weight on the page as she goes through the motions of living. This offers the sensation of moving in tandem with Vega’s day-to-day rather than existing within a more defined narrative arc.
While, as Kirkus Reviews notes in its coverage of Habitations, this means the book “effectively captures a moment in time” as well as the “cascades of smaller griefs as Vega and the people in her universe develop close ties when they overlap in cities and on campuses, then move on for coursework, jobs, fellowships, and family,” it also results in some “plodding” sections. Some moments in the book that could be summarized are drawn out, while others that deserve more space and attention are quickly moved through, such as the reaction of Vega’s community to the 9/11 attacks when she is living just outside of the city in New Jersey.
Similarly, impressions of secondary characters often seem like they are only skimming the surface, lacking real depth and development. But, again, this is in line with Vega’s point of view. As she admits to herself after one interaction with her childhood best friend, Gayatri: “It had just never occurred to her to probe. For the two decades of their friendship, she had operated under the assumption that Gayatri was doing just fine.” There is the sense that Vega’s lingering grief over her younger sister’s untimely death has shadowed her ability to forge deep relationships, casting an unrealized darkness over the years that have followed.
This doesn’t mean Vega is vapid though, or totally unaware. Indeed, the book skillfully grapples with some much larger issues and questions. Some of its more engaging moments are when Vega encounters the absurd excesses in America, and the sustained illusion of the American Dream amid the country’s inequality, as well as when she begins to reflect on her own privilege within the Indian caste system. Racism and stereotypes are also well-explored, especially in the context of American academia, where Vega realizes over the course of the novel that “she had never considered that she was entitled to an opinion” and slowly accrues the confidence to begin coming into her own.
Perhaps what lingers most after finishing the book is the feeling of “stuckness” and searching that permeates Vega’s story, as she tries to wrap her head around what one character in the book describes as what is “always an imperfect trade.”
Habitations
By Sheila Sundar
Simon & Schuster
Published on April 2, 2024
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