One Part Woman: When a Village Decides What’s Missing From Your Marriage

Some books comfort you. Some challenge you. Some make you angry.

One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan does something different. It sits heavy in your chest. It makes you uncomfortable in a way you can’t quite shake off.

This is a novel about a couple—Kali and Ponna—who love each other deeply. They have a good marriage. They’re affectionate, loyal, comfortable with each other in the way people who truly know each other are.

But they don’t have children.

And in the pre-independence Tamil village where they live, that one fact—that one absence—is enough to unravel everything.

This isn’t a story about a failing marriage. It’s about how a loving marriage gets slowly crushed under the weight of everyone else’s expectations. How society can destroy something beautiful just by constantly pointing out what it thinks is missing.

The book is slow. Deliberately slow. It takes its time showing you the daily life of this village, this couple, these pressures. And then, suddenly, it speeds up and drops you off a cliff with an ending that refuses to resolve anything.

You’ll finish it wanting more. Needing to know what happens next. And that discomfort—that need—is exactly what Murugan intended.

A Village That Won’t Let You Forget

The setting is a small Tamil village before India’s independence. This is rural South India where traditions run deep, where everyone knows everyone, where your business is everyone’s business.

And the village—not any specific person, but the village as a whole—is constantly reminding Kali and Ponna that they don’t have children.

Not cruelly, necessarily. Not with open insults. But in a thousand small ways.

An aunt makes a comment. A neighbor asks a pointed question. Someone at a festival makes a joke. Another person suggests a ritual they should try. Family members keep bringing up possible solutions.

Each comment, on its own, might seem harmless. Just someone expressing concern. Just someone trying to help.

But they never stop. Day after day, year after year, the reminders keep coming. And slowly, this loving couple starts to feel broken. Incomplete. Like they’re failing at something fundamental.

The village isn’t trying to be cruel. That’s what makes it so painful to read. These are people who genuinely believe they’re helping. Who think childlessness is a problem that needs solving. Who can’t imagine that maybe this couple could be happy and complete without children.

And that’s the horror of it. Not individual cruelty, but collective pressure. Not one villain you can point to, but an entire society that has decided your marriage isn’t valid because it hasn’t produced children.

Kali and Ponna: A Marriage Under Siege

What makes this novel work is that Kali and Ponna genuinely love each other.

They’re not staying together out of duty or because divorce isn’t an option (though it probably wasn’t). They actually like being married to each other. They have fun together. They’re tender with each other. They make each other laugh.

If society would just leave them alone, they’d be fine.

But society won’t leave them alone. And slowly, that external pressure starts seeping into their private life.

They start doubting themselves. Doubting each other. The thing that everyone keeps pointing out as missing—the absence of children—starts to feel like a wound they can’t heal.

Kali feels like he’s failed as a man. Ponna feels the weight of being seen as incomplete. And the love that should protect them from this judgment starts to feel insufficient against the constant barrage of other people’s opinions.

Murugan shows you this erosion with remarkable sensitivity. You watch as doubt creeps in. As joy gets replaced by sadness. As what started as a happy marriage becomes something more fragile, more painful.

And the tragedy is that nothing is wrong with their marriage. The problem is entirely external. But external pressure, when it’s constant enough, becomes internal. It gets inside you. Changes how you see yourself and your life.

How the Book Moves: Slow, Then Fast, Then Gone

Here’s something important about reading One Part Woman: the pacing is unusual.

The book starts very, very slowly. Like a snail. You’re reading about daily routines. Conversations between the couple. Small village events. The rhythm of agricultural life.

At first, you might wonder when something is going to happen. When the story is really going to start.

But that slowness is the point. Murugan is making you feel what this couple feels—the repetitive, suffocating routine of living under constant judgment. The way time drags when you’re waiting for something to change but nothing does.

Then, gradually, the pace picks up. Like a turtle speeding up. Things start happening. Decisions get made. The annual temple festival approaches—a festival that will become crucial to the story.

And then, in the final section, the book suddenly becomes a hare. Everything accelerates. The ending comes at you fast and hard and leaves you breathless.

And then it stops. Just… stops. Right when you most need to know what happens next.

This pacing choice—slow, slow, slow, then suddenly fast, then abruptly over—mirrors the emotional experience of the characters. Years of nothing changing, then a sudden crisis, then uncertainty.

It’s uncomfortable to read. But it’s also brilliant. Because that discomfort is what the characters live with. And now you’re living with it too.

Reading It in Translation: What You Gain and Lose

One Part Woman was originally written in Tamil. English readers, myself included, are reading it in translation (by Aniruddhan Vasudevan).

The translation is good. Clear. Readable. It flows naturally in English.

But you can feel, sometimes, that something is being lost. The rawness of the Tamil language. The specific textures of rural Tamil speech. The cultural nuances that don’t quite translate.

The English version is a bit… smoothed out. Made more accessible for readers who don’t know Tamil culture. Which is good—it means the book can reach more people.

But there’s also a part of me that kept thinking: “I wish I could read this in Tamil. I bet there’s more here than I’m getting.”

This isn’t a criticism of the translator. Translation is hard. You’re always choosing between being literal and being readable. Between preserving cultural specificity and making things understandable.

But it’s worth noting: if you read this in English, you’re getting a version that’s probably softer and more accessible than the original. The bones of the story are there. The emotional truth is there. But some of the texture has been sanded down.

The Ending That Refuses to End

I can’t tell you what happens at the end without spoiling it. But I can tell you this: the book doesn’t resolve.

It stops at a moment of maximum uncertainty. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know what characters are thinking or feeling. You don’t get closure.

And this isn’t a mistake. Murugan is doing this intentionally.

He’s leaving you in discomfort. Making you sit with the uncertainty that his characters are sitting with. Refusing to give you the comfort of knowing everything turned out okay (or didn’t).

Some readers hate this. They want to know what happens. They feel cheated by an ending that doesn’t resolve.

But I think the ending is perfect. Because life doesn’t always resolve neatly. Sometimes you’re left in uncertainty. Sometimes you have to live with not knowing.

And after spending the whole book watching this couple deal with constant judgment and pressure, it feels right that we don’t get to escape into a neat conclusion. We have to sit with the mess. Just like they do.

The Two Roads Forward

Here’s something interesting: One Part Woman has two sequels. Or rather, two alternative sequels.

A Lonely Harvest and Trial by Silence.

Each one picks up where One Part Woman left off and takes the story in a different direction. Two possible futures for these characters.

I haven’t read them yet. But knowing they exist makes the original ending even more powerful. Because Murugan is essentially saying: “Here’s where I’m leaving you. If you want resolution, there are two different ways it could go. Pick one. Or imagine your own.”

It’s a bold choice. And it reinforces the idea that this story isn’t about what happens, but about the situation these characters are trapped in. The ending of One Part Woman isn’t the point. The struggle is.

The Controversy You Should Know About

I can’t review this book without mentioning what happened after it was published.

The English translation came out, and suddenly the book became controversial. Certain Hindu groups accused Murugan of blasphemy. Of hurting religious feelings. Of defaming women.

The issue was a fertility ritual depicted in the book. A practice that happens during a temple festival. I won’t describe it in detail to avoid spoilers, but it’s central to the plot.

The ritual Murugan describes is fictional. Or historical. Or both—it’s not entirely clear, and that ambiguity became part of the problem.

The backlash was severe. There were protests. Threats. Pressure on the author.

And Perumal Murugan, exhausted and hurt, made a public statement essentially saying that the writer within him had died. That he would stop writing.

For a while, it looked like one of Tamil literature’s most important voices had been silenced.

But in 2016, the Madras High Court stepped in. They quashed the cases against him. They upheld his freedom of expression. They made a clear statement that writers have the right to write fiction, even when it makes some people uncomfortable.

After that, Murugan started writing again.

I’m telling you this not to be sensational, but because it’s part of the book’s history. And because it highlights something important: the gap between what a book is actually saying and what people think it’s saying.

One Part Woman isn’t trying to offend anyone. It’s not attacking religion or culture. It’s telling a story about two people struggling with social pressure in a specific time and place.

But that story made some people so uncomfortable that they wanted it silenced. And that says something about how threatening honest literature can be to people who prefer comfortable myths.

Who Should Read This

One Part Woman is not for everyone. It’s slow. It’s sad. It doesn’t offer easy answers or happy endings.

You’ll probably connect with it if:

• You appreciate slow, immersive literary fiction
• You’re interested in how social pressure affects private lives
• You want to understand rural Tamil culture
• You’re comfortable with ambiguous endings
• You like books that make you think more than books that make you feel good
• You’re interested in the intersection of literature and censorship
• You value stories about ordinary people’s struggles

You might struggle with it if:

• You need fast-paced plots
• You want clear resolutions
• You get frustrated with books that end without answering your questions
• You’re looking for something uplifting
• You prefer stories where problems get solved
• You need to like all the characters
• You’re not interested in cultural specificity

This is a book for patient readers. For people who can sit with discomfort. For readers who understand that sometimes the most honest thing a story can do is refuse to offer comfort.

What Stays With You

Days after finishing One Part Woman, you will still think about Kali and Ponna.

Not because of any specific dramatic moment. But because of the accumulated weight of their situation. The quiet, relentless pressure they live under. The way their love isn’t enough to protect them from everyone else’s judgments.

I think about how societies, not governments or laws, but just communities of people can be so cruel without even realizing it. How collective expectations can crush individuals who don’t fit the mold.

I think about all the couples I know who’ve dealt with questions about when they’re having kids. How invasive those questions are. How they assume everyone wants children, everyone should have children, everyone’s life is incomplete without them.

And I think about how rare it is to see a book that takes childlessness this seriously. That treats it not as a problem to be solved but as a reality some people live with, sometimes happily, sometimes not, but always under the judgment of people who think they know what’s missing from your life.

Final Thoughts

One Part Woman doesn’t argue or preach. It doesn’t tell you what to think about fertility, tradition, society, or marriage.

It just shows you two people trying to live their lives. Trying to love each other. Trying to survive in a world that has decided their marriage isn’t good enough.

And in showing you that quietly, patiently, without drama or spectacle, it makes you confront something uncomfortable: how easily we judge other people’s lives. How casually we point out what we think is missing. How rarely we consider that maybe it’s not missing at all.

The book observes. And in that observation, it leaves you to think about how quietly a society can wound the people who live within it.