China Room by Sunjeev Sahota

There are two threads in this novel that weas long listed for the 2021 Booker award. The first is n unhappy addicted youth who returns to Punjab, where his great-grandmother lived, and the more substantial part of the story is that of the woman herself. The bulk of the story involves Mehar, a 16-year-old bride who finds herself living in the “china room” – a small, seldom used building on a farm, its nickname derived from the willow-pattern plates that adorn it – that looms largest in the novel. Mehar shares the room with Harbans and Gurleen, two women she has only recently met; the three of them have been married, in a single day, to three brothers. Now, they spend their days doing chores and waiting for the matriarch to tap one of them on the shoulder, thereby summoning her to a bedroom to meet her husband and, it is hoped, become pregnant with a son. The brothers knows which wife is which, the veiled young women do not, and so a deception that is ultimately corrupting begins.