GHOST-EYE

A sprawling novel that blends magical realism with all-too-real climate change.

It’s 1969, a time of turmoil in India and the world. Three-year-old Varsha Gupta, “a pretty, cherubic girl with nut-brown eyes, short black braids and a sparkling smile that lights up her whole face,” shocks her wealthy family when she announces, “I want to eat rice and fish. Don’t you understand? I want fish!” Given that the Hindi-speaking Guptas are strict vegetarians, the demand comes out of the blue, as does Varsha’s insistence, in Bengali, that she is a fisherman’s daughter who was killed by a snakebite in an earlier life. The alarmed family calls in a psychologist, Shoma Bose, who recognizes it as “a case of the reincarnation type” and discovers that Varsha has an encyclopedic knowledge of the differences in both behavior and flavor among various kinds of fish. That knowledge, which implies “a prodigious understanding of…native flora and fauna,” will be key in saving the Sundarbans, a mangrove forest on the Bay of Bengal. There, in the Covid-19 era, environmentalists find notes on Varsha’s medical history left behind by Shoma. One, Tipu, has heterochromia, the “ghost-eye” of the title, thought to indicate powers of clairvoyance, while Shoma’s nephew Dinu, now living in Brooklyn, has exhibited “certain behaviours related to his previous self,” which Shoma suspects was aquatic. Ghosh’s fluent novel is rich in its detailed knowledge of reincarnation, metempsychosis, and ichthyology, while also sounding an alarm about the deleterious effects of predatory capitalism and climate change. There’s a deus ex machina moment at the end that seems a touch hurried, though with an explanation of Dinu’s former self, aquatic indeed. Yet the story hangs together well, and Ghosh’s vision of environmental action taken by ordinary people against corporations is inspiring.

A story that is both dense and complex but irresistibly readable.