The Village by Nikita Lalwani
Sep. 13th, 2025 11:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
After a long journey from England, Ray Bullard arrives early on a winter morning at the gates of the Indian village which will be her home for the next three months. The door of the hut she will share with Serena, her English co-worker, is a loose sheet of metal, the windows holes in the walls. Outside, village life goes on as normal.
And yet, the village is far from normal. It is an open prison - a village of murderers. And when Ray and her crew take up residence to observe and to make a film, they are innocent visitors in a violent world, on a mission to hold the village up to viewers as the ultimate example of tolerance.
But the longer the visitors stay and their need for drama intensifies, the line between innocence and guilt begins to blue and an unexpected and terrifying kind of cruelty emerges.
A mesmerising and heartfelt tale of manipulation and personal morality, Nikita Lalwani’s The VIllage brilliantly exposes how truly frail our judgment can be.
27-year-old Ray Bhullar is a British-Indian documentary TV director. She and her colleagues (30-something producer Serena and 40-something Nathan, who is an ex-con turned TV presenter) have arrived in a remote village in India. They are there for 3 months to film the village for a series about life in prisons and alternatives to incarceration because it’s an open prison where prisoners are permitted to live with their families and leave during set hours to work (either for their own businesses or for others).
Conscious that filming at the village was her idea and this is therefore her big chance to impress the series producer Nick back in London, Ray wants to do the best job she can. However she soon finds herself butting heads with Serena, who is frustrated by Ray’s desire to get beautiful shots and wants to instead focus on finding a story with some drama among the village’s inhabitants, even if that means provoking it. At the same time Ray is uncertain what to make of Nathan, who she enjoys a flirtation with as they share dope but who equally likes to make sure she knows where her place is and frustrated that despite being the only HIndi speaker in the crew, she struggles to communicate with the village’s inhabitants and guards.
Ray’s main ally in the village is Nandini, a highly educated prisoner who was convicted of murder but now offers counselling to the women in the village as she serves the rest of her sentence. Nandini helps mediate between Ray and the village’s women as she tries to find a story that she wants to tell but which will also appeal to Nick, but as Ray’s friendship with Nandini develops, she finds herself facing a personal quandary as Nandini’s revelations about her crime give Ray the idea for a story that will rival that found by Serena and Nathan ...
Nikita Lalwani’s literary novel about prisons, personal morality and the manipulative techniques of documentary film-makers has some interesting ideas but hinges on a main character who is simply too naive and weak to be believable or one who I could empathise with. At the same time, I was uncomfortable with how two-dimensional the Indian characters all are - including Nandini - while the open ending felt like a tacked on cop-out.
I picked this up because although literary fiction is not my first-choice of reading material, the back cover copy had an interesting premise and I was interested to see what would be done with a village full of killers.
To start with the positive, there is a strong sense of place here with Lalwani capturing the oppressive heat of rural India, together with the dust and mud and the basic facilities that the inhabitants have. The use of British-Indian Ray here who is somewhat of a fish out of water here is well handled as she struggles to communicate with the inhabitants and the heat and is literally sickened by the water. I wished that Lalwani had made more of this than she does as Ray finds herself caught between trying to respect the more conservative social mores there, especially given that she herself is Indian, while also trying to impress her white co-workers, especially Nathan.
The problem is that Ray is basically weak and eager to please and it’s not that I didn’t believe that so much that I struggled to believe that someone her age and in her position would be so naive about what others think and what they do. At the same time, she frequently creates the problems that she faces, e.g. drinking the tap water when she knows she will probably get sick from it because the governor has dared her to, asking the driver to take her to a restaurant to eat chicken when she knows everyone thinks she is vegetarian, taking hash with Nathan late at night and flirting with him and then being shocked that he wants to sleep with her. It got to the point where I was honestly rolling my eyes with irritation, especially when one of the guards decides to blackmail her and she gives in to it.
Serena and Nathan are not particularly well drawn as characters either. Nathan has a mockney accent and a prison past but while there are flashes of manipulation in the way he deliberately keeps Ray on edge, it never gets explored. Serena has even less to work with - a blond with short hair and a clipped manner who also wants to keep Ray in her place and seek to destabilise her (although I did empathise when she reminded Ray what her job was).
Nandini is probably the most interesting and the friendship that develops between her and Ray has real potential until Lalwani blows it in the final quarter. Again, there is potential in the confrontation that Ray manipulates Nandini into having with the husband who tried to kill her but the way in which it falls apart as a damp squib is kind of a metaphor for the entire plot here. So too is the ending to the counter-storyline that Serena and Nathan contrive when they discover that one of the prisoner likely has HIV and they want to force a test and revelation on him and his wife.
To be honest, by the end of the book I had very much lost interest in everyone and the final chapter - with Ray on a train back to Delhi - was everything that I dislike about literary fiction, self-indulgent and with some subtext to the interaction between Ray and the jewellery seller that I really did not understand (although to be frank, I didn’t really care to try).
All in all, this just wasn’t for me and I have to say that I wouldn’t rush to read more of the author’s books.
The Verdict:
Nikita Lalwani’s literary novel about prisons, personal morality and the manipulative techniques of documentary film-makers has some interesting ideas but hinges on a main character who is simply too naive and weak to be believable or one who I could empathise with. At the same time, I was uncomfortable with how two-dimensional the Indian characters all are - including Nandini - while the open ending felt like a tacked on cop-out.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
After a long journey from England, Ray Bullard arrives early on a winter morning at the gates of the Indian village which will be her home for the next three months. The door of the hut she will share with Serena, her English co-worker, is a loose sheet of metal, the windows holes in the walls. Outside, village life goes on as normal.
And yet, the village is far from normal. It is an open prison - a village of murderers. And when Ray and her crew take up residence to observe and to make a film, they are innocent visitors in a violent world, on a mission to hold the village up to viewers as the ultimate example of tolerance.
But the longer the visitors stay and their need for drama intensifies, the line between innocence and guilt begins to blue and an unexpected and terrifying kind of cruelty emerges.
A mesmerising and heartfelt tale of manipulation and personal morality, Nikita Lalwani’s The VIllage brilliantly exposes how truly frail our judgment can be.
27-year-old Ray Bhullar is a British-Indian documentary TV director. She and her colleagues (30-something producer Serena and 40-something Nathan, who is an ex-con turned TV presenter) have arrived in a remote village in India. They are there for 3 months to film the village for a series about life in prisons and alternatives to incarceration because it’s an open prison where prisoners are permitted to live with their families and leave during set hours to work (either for their own businesses or for others).
Conscious that filming at the village was her idea and this is therefore her big chance to impress the series producer Nick back in London, Ray wants to do the best job she can. However she soon finds herself butting heads with Serena, who is frustrated by Ray’s desire to get beautiful shots and wants to instead focus on finding a story with some drama among the village’s inhabitants, even if that means provoking it. At the same time Ray is uncertain what to make of Nathan, who she enjoys a flirtation with as they share dope but who equally likes to make sure she knows where her place is and frustrated that despite being the only HIndi speaker in the crew, she struggles to communicate with the village’s inhabitants and guards.
Ray’s main ally in the village is Nandini, a highly educated prisoner who was convicted of murder but now offers counselling to the women in the village as she serves the rest of her sentence. Nandini helps mediate between Ray and the village’s women as she tries to find a story that she wants to tell but which will also appeal to Nick, but as Ray’s friendship with Nandini develops, she finds herself facing a personal quandary as Nandini’s revelations about her crime give Ray the idea for a story that will rival that found by Serena and Nathan ...
Nikita Lalwani’s literary novel about prisons, personal morality and the manipulative techniques of documentary film-makers has some interesting ideas but hinges on a main character who is simply too naive and weak to be believable or one who I could empathise with. At the same time, I was uncomfortable with how two-dimensional the Indian characters all are - including Nandini - while the open ending felt like a tacked on cop-out.
I picked this up because although literary fiction is not my first-choice of reading material, the back cover copy had an interesting premise and I was interested to see what would be done with a village full of killers.
To start with the positive, there is a strong sense of place here with Lalwani capturing the oppressive heat of rural India, together with the dust and mud and the basic facilities that the inhabitants have. The use of British-Indian Ray here who is somewhat of a fish out of water here is well handled as she struggles to communicate with the inhabitants and the heat and is literally sickened by the water. I wished that Lalwani had made more of this than she does as Ray finds herself caught between trying to respect the more conservative social mores there, especially given that she herself is Indian, while also trying to impress her white co-workers, especially Nathan.
The problem is that Ray is basically weak and eager to please and it’s not that I didn’t believe that so much that I struggled to believe that someone her age and in her position would be so naive about what others think and what they do. At the same time, she frequently creates the problems that she faces, e.g. drinking the tap water when she knows she will probably get sick from it because the governor has dared her to, asking the driver to take her to a restaurant to eat chicken when she knows everyone thinks she is vegetarian, taking hash with Nathan late at night and flirting with him and then being shocked that he wants to sleep with her. It got to the point where I was honestly rolling my eyes with irritation, especially when one of the guards decides to blackmail her and she gives in to it.
Serena and Nathan are not particularly well drawn as characters either. Nathan has a mockney accent and a prison past but while there are flashes of manipulation in the way he deliberately keeps Ray on edge, it never gets explored. Serena has even less to work with - a blond with short hair and a clipped manner who also wants to keep Ray in her place and seek to destabilise her (although I did empathise when she reminded Ray what her job was).
Nandini is probably the most interesting and the friendship that develops between her and Ray has real potential until Lalwani blows it in the final quarter. Again, there is potential in the confrontation that Ray manipulates Nandini into having with the husband who tried to kill her but the way in which it falls apart as a damp squib is kind of a metaphor for the entire plot here. So too is the ending to the counter-storyline that Serena and Nathan contrive when they discover that one of the prisoner likely has HIV and they want to force a test and revelation on him and his wife.
To be honest, by the end of the book I had very much lost interest in everyone and the final chapter - with Ray on a train back to Delhi - was everything that I dislike about literary fiction, self-indulgent and with some subtext to the interaction between Ray and the jewellery seller that I really did not understand (although to be frank, I didn’t really care to try).
All in all, this just wasn’t for me and I have to say that I wouldn’t rush to read more of the author’s books.
The Verdict:
Nikita Lalwani’s literary novel about prisons, personal morality and the manipulative techniques of documentary film-makers has some interesting ideas but hinges on a main character who is simply too naive and weak to be believable or one who I could empathise with. At the same time, I was uncomfortable with how two-dimensional the Indian characters all are - including Nandini - while the open ending felt like a tacked on cop-out.
Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.
