The Confines by Anu Kandikuppa

Anu Kandikuppa’s debut short story collection ripples with emotion. Featuring stories set in India and the United States, The Confines (Veliz Books) centers on reflective characters struggling to know themselves, their desires, and their hopes in light of the expectations placed on them by their parents, families, and broader culture. Through nuanced, precise, devastating language, Kandikuppa provides readers with stories of yearning and discovery that will remain with them long after finishing.

The volume’s opening story, “Lunch at Monsoon,” provides one of the collection’s uniting emotional themes: “You’re not good for me, but I still want you” (11). This line is delivered by Srini to his pregnant wife, Priya, as he takes one of their routine outings—a weekend lunch at the Indian buffet where she gorges on food and he typically refrains from eating anything—as an opportunity to reflect on the dynamics of their relationship. Touches of humor, like Srini wondering “Who took time to pick nice coat hooks if they were miserable?” (4), provide welcome levity as Srini’s reflections alternate between disgust and longing.

Kandikuppa uses a similar touch in “The Service,” in which Venu, a widower of three days, contemplates the significance of his marriage—and confronts his wife’s ghost at her funeral service. As he wrestles with his wife’s lack of affection for him, Venu realizes that “he wished Sarla loved him was more aggravating than that she did not—why couldn’t he walk away?” (98). Throughout The Confines, several characters grapple with the ramifications of not walking away, of remaining in relationships that fail to live up to their expectations or desires.

The Confines features two sets of interconnected stories that provide an additional layer of depth and cohesion to the collection. The stories “Please Don’t Make Me Hate You,” “Gardening,” and “The Uglies” take readers through three significant stages in the marriage of Meenu and her husband Adi. In the opening story, Meenu struggles with her dissatisfaction with her relationship. “We talk in parallel lines” (37), she tells Adi; “you are just not the right person for me” (44). While “Please Don’t Make Me Hate You” proves to be a successful stand-alone story, the two subsequent stories explore how, despite these revelations in the opening story, Meenu proves to be one of the characters in The Confines who “can’t walk away.” The other set of paired stories— “Manu and Me” and “Humbug”—provides a surprising contrast. In this set, readers see the unfolding impact of alcoholism on the relationship between Manu and his wife, Bela. Upon the death of her husband, however, the return of a former boyfriend allows Bela to see that the path not taken may not have led to a happier life.

Several stories confront darker circumstances and plotlines. “If It Shines” features a man wrestling with his beliefs about class and social status (and the associated trappings), which ultimately prevent him from confronting a former friend who is physically abusing his daughter. In “All the Good Things,” a young woman who struggles to cope with the after-effects of an inappropriate uncle whose actions were interrupted; her struggles gain poignancy as she reflects on the abuses suffered by one of her aunts. “The Belfort” centers on Sati, an Indian woman isolated in Boston after an arranged marriage to a man twice her age. Each of these stories features characters grappling with cultural and social pressures that strongly shape their values and desires. In “The Befort,” Sati contemplates writing to her mother about her marital struggles, to say “I’m lonely and unhappy and afraid of him.” She abandons this solution, however: “she knew what her mother would say. You wanted this” (172). The stories gain poignance and depth through the author’s deft handling of these emotions and punctuating the stories with human levity and awkwardness.

Personal revelations, however, prove to be just as devastating in The Confines. In “Notes on an Affair,” the narrator, Shweta, reflects on an early breakup with a boyfriend, known only as “R,” that crushed and consumed her for years. Working up the courage to ask herself “What was the meaning of those wasted years? Why did it happen?” she discovers the devastating answer: “I learned that I am not special, that I am not exempt from being dealt unimaginable blows, that the mere fact that I want a thing more than anything else in the world would not be enough” (164). Kandikuppa approaches these revelations with a brutal honesty, but one that provides a simultaneous sense of sadness and relief at confronting an emotional truth. One of these personal revelations from “The Uglies” could also be said to define the volume as a whole. At the moment of revelation, a man and his wife have settled their once tumultuous relationship into a steady life. Rather than providing contentment, however, he realizes “I don’t want summer all year long. I like seasons. I like punishing cold followed by pouring rain followed by heavenly warmth” (70). Readers who delight in ever-changing emotional weather will find their attention captivated and held by this stormy volume.