SOURCE: "The Quiet and the Loud: Anita Desai's India," in Imagining India, Macmillan Press, 1989, pp. 45-58.

In the essay below, Cronin examines Desai's treatment of India and Indian life and culture in such works as The Village by the Sea, Fire on the Mountain, and Clear Light of Day.

'Quiet writing, like Anita Desai's, can be more impressive than stylistic fireworks', wrote Victoria Glendinning in The Sunday Times. Anita Desai may let fireworks into her stories, but not into her style. At the end of The Village by the Sea, Hari and his sisters celebrate Diwali: 'Hari carried the basket of fireworks onto the grassy knoll in the coconut grove, and, to the sound of Bela's and Kamal's excited shrieks, he set off a rocket into the sky where it exploded with a bang into a shower of coloured sparks'. The rocket bangs, the girls shriek, but the...