PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)At its core, this is a novel about loss – for something that has never existed. Murugan is a master of his setting, and the couple are surrounded by reminders of fertility, from the coconut trees growing in dry land to the leaping calf in the barnyard ... On occasion, the novel digresses to the various itches its author wishes to scratch: colonial oppression; caste tensions. But the scenes explicitly devoted to these themes often seem somewhat shoehorned in. Elsewhere, apparently significant threads are woven in, then left untied. The prose is unrestrained and lascivious, and aware of both: Murugan cuts no corners in writing of desire and sex for what they are – a function of bodies – in this case articulated through a predominantly male point of view ... One Part Woman is sometimes shocking, but always in a way that encourages understanding. Murugan – capably translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan – writes with both empathy and compassion.
