The Archer - Shruti Swamy

Debut novel by Shruti Swamy, The Archer, will be reviewed here. on Monday 29th Aug 2022. This is such a gently and beautifully written coming of age novel without much of the stridency and anger pervasive in much of the genre. It's set in the 60s and 70s (my own formative years), and so much of the narrative really resonates. 

Here are some teaser/praise excerpts. Book is already available, and is newly released in paperback format from Algonquin. 

Praise for The Archer

MOST ANTICIPATED / BEST OF LISTS:

San Francisco Chronicle: “The Chronicle’s 15 best books of 2021”

BuzzFeed: “The Best Books of 2021”

The Millions: “Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2021 Book Preview”

BookRiot: “The Best Books to Give As Gifts in 2021”

Literary Hub / BookMarks: “The Best Reviewed Books of the Week”

Ms. Magazine: “September 2021 Reads for the Rest of Us”

The Millions: “September Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated (This Month)”

BuzzFeed: “All The Must-Read Books Being Released This September”

BuzzFeed: “25 New And Upcoming Books You Won’t Be Able To Put Down”

Bookish: “Debuts to Read in the Second Half of 2021”

Goodreads: “69 New and Upcoming Debut Novels to Discover”

Library Journal: “Best Debuts: 37 Key Summer & Fall 2021 Titles”

BLURBS:

“This is a singular work, a story of a dancer, and of a hungry self seated at the table of womanness and desire and art, told with unparalleled originality and elegance. Swamy writes with a thrilling clarity of vision that wakes the sleepwalker right into joyful consciousness. Every word is intimate, honest, ecstatic—utterly alive. I will hold this novel close, and return to it for companionship, for instruction, and for pure pleasure. I love and treasure this book.”

—Meng Jin, author of Little Gods

“This novel swallowed me whole: lush and sensual, tasted and felt, with striking images that play out like film behind the eyes. I was reminded of Satyajit Ray's cinematic classic, Pather Panchali; like Ray, Swamy evokes an India that resists flat stereotype and teems with exuberance, beauty, and life. The Archer is timeless yet utterly modern as it asks what it means for a woman to make a life of art.”

—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold

“Shruti Swamy is a writer to celebrate. Her fiction is provocative, precise, and gorgeously inventive.”

—Megha Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning

“[Swamy’s] prose is so assured ... like a dancer staring directly at the audience for an infinitesimal pause. The Archer dazzles as it asks: How does a woman remain an artist?”

—New York Times Book Review

“Mesmerizingly poetic . . . The Archer’s beauty resides in Swamy's sequential narrative form, which reads like music—at times almost exactly like reading a musical score—but with something more; her words carry the visceral power of a dancer's intersection with air . . . [A] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love . . . A sensual, artful dance, powerfully told.”

—NPR

“With its coiled energy and feverish imagery, The Archer often reads more like a lucid dream than a novel, oceans of wild feeling roiling just below the surface . . . Swamy writes about the imperatives of an artist’s life with bright, furious poetry: the singular will of a body that burns to be in motion, and a mind set free.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“This is a singular work, a story of a dancer and of a hungry self seated at the table of womanness and desire and art, told with unparalleled originality and elegance. Swamy writes with a thrilling clarity of vision that wakes the sleepwalker right into joyful consciousness. Every word is intimate, honest, ecstatic — utterly alive.”

—San Francisco Chronicle, The Chronicle’s 15 Best Books of 2021

“Reading The Archer, I often felt the shocking pleasure of watching an artist pull off the unexpected, and like Vidya with the dancers, I did not want to look away… Swamy has the uncanny ability to render a reader more alive to the depth of meaning within the smallest of details. There is much to love and admire in this book.”

—Alexandra Chang in Electric Lit

“[An] intimate portrait about being an artist and a woman in Bombay during the 1960s and ’70s… Swamy brings Bombay to life with her rich descriptions of food and setting, and the richness of her prose continues with its portrayal of Vidya’s inner life. Despite the historical setting, Vidya’s struggles with how to be a wife, mother, and artist are equally relevant today. It’s a gorgeous, sumptuous novel.”

—BuzzFeed