Shruti Swamy: The Intensity of Language
Photograph by Abe Bingham Shruti Swamy’s debut story collection, A House Is a Body, vibrates with life on every page. Her characters are often grieving a loss or working through a major transition. They suffer through the depths of depression or anxiety and either feel abandoned or struggle to be present for those around them. Though these scenarios can sound dark, the book is full of moments of levity and light. Swamy so vividly depicts her characters, that in reading, one melts into their lives.
This is in part due to Swamy’s keen awareness of the pleasures of the body. One woman describes how the name Rishikesh “in her mouth felt cool, like water running against a great thirst.” Another woman watches her brother, “He never hid his fists in his pockets or the folds of his coat, each hand with the bony elegance of cats.” And in the story, “Mourners,” you have this wonderful rendering of a child’s growth: “It is the courage to live in an expanding body, with limbs lifting outward, with teeth pushing up, with hands and mind growing finer, with eyes settling on color, with body unbending from the earth and standing upright, balancing perilously on two legs, and then moving forward, walking, running forward, teeth losing, filling, knees scraped and healing, voice gaining depth and sureness, hips and breasts accruing, skin darkening, stretching, blood slipping out from the thighs, and death always, always, at the back.”
The stories in Swamy’s collection have won two O’Henry Awards, and appeared in The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review Online, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Swamy and I spoke over Zoom about the short story form, writing the body, and more.
