NOT SOON FORGOTTEN

Samrat Upadhyay is Nepalese writer who writes in English. He is a professor of creative writing as well as Director of Graduate Studies at Indiana University. He is the first Nepali-born fiction writing in English to be published in the West. He has published two short stories which are Arresting God in Kathmandu (2001) and The Royal Ghost(2006) and two novels:The Guru of Love (2003) and The City Son (2012).

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The City Son is the latest novel published which explores about the division between Kathmandu and village. As his stories before, in this novel too, the female character is forced into arranged marriages and later abandoned by her husband who fall in love with other women.  In The City Son, acclaimed and award winning author Samrat Upadhyay has crafted a spare, understated work examining a thorny subject: a scorned wife's obsession with her husband's illegitimate son.

Didi who is dominating lives in a village with ther two young sons while her husabnd, the Masterji lives in Kathmandu where he teaches math- their marriage was a financial arrangement in which Masterji benefited. In the beginning of the novel, Didi knows that the Masterji has married a young tutee and have a beautiful son. After knowing this, she immediately collects her own sons and moves to the city where Masterji livesand takes over the household. Masterji and his second wife, Apsara are firgtened to avoid her. Didi, on the another hand, is succeed in taking out Apsara and Tarun out of her house, but her control over the boy is just beginning.  But, as Tarun gets older, Didi's domination of the boy turns from the emotional to the physical, and the damages she inflicts spiral outwards threatening to destroy Tarun's one chance at true happiness.


CHARACTERS 
There are nine characters in this novel which are: Didi, Tarun, Masterji, Mahesh Uncle, Amit, Sumit, Rukma, Apsara and Sanmaya. Among them, Didi and Tarun are the main characters. She is domianting character and somehow hunger for the sex. She has been exploiting Tarun for many years. Being step-mother, she has s physical rleationship with him. She has done black magic towards him. She usually  becomes attractive but one day when Didi begins to wear red lipstick and powder her cheeks, perhaps signaling her transition to the ways of the city, Tarun finds her more attractive. She calls Tarun her “labar,” or lover, in her rural accent. She is becoming one of the “sahariya women.” And yet, the manner in which she wreaks havoc on the lives of all those around her suggests that she is trying to impose her own — rural — will upon her surroundings.

Tarun, on the another hand, is young guy who is attached towards his stepmother. He cannot think about any girls besides her. He finds her beautiful and spends most of the time with her rather than her own mother. He is not that much socialized person and when he grows older, he is confused whether he is doing right or wrong with Didi and tells Didi about it but she gets angry. However, he convince her. Whenever, he used to talk about girls, Didi could tell him that "All these girls are not worth your time. These sahariya types. They’ll stab you in the back the first chance they get. They don’t have any morals, just like your mother. Look at how she so unabashedly fornicated with your father".

The another character Rukhma who is wife of Tarun is disturbing girl. When they got married, she told about her past-affair with Newar lover and how they apart. But later, she finds Tarun a different person as if he is hiding something from her. When she didn't the love as she was expecting, she tries to get from her first love but he gets married with somebody;s else and gets shocked when he sees her at his home.

The other characters role are less but most prominent . Like when Apsara was in need Mahesh Uncle helps her and gives her and Tarun a place to live. Apsara role is also less but whenever her role is explain, she is disturb as she never gets love from both son and husband and dies because of heartsick.

CONCLUSION 
At the beginning part, I felt boring to read the novel but as I read more chapters, I found the novel more interesting. There are suspense too. The best part is the ending. The reader could have predicated something else but happens something else. The another best part is Samrat Upadhyay explains the story in detailing like what the characters are doing, why they are doing etc. The language of the novel is simple to read out. As in this novel, he hasn't describe about the political aspects which is also the best factor of the novel. But what I didn't like is that he usually writes about extra marital story and uses sex in his stories. In The Guru of Love, too, he uses sex. He, in his second novel too, he uses sex. I really don't want him to use sex and extra marital story again if he writes next novel.

But the novel The City Son, is a novel not soon forgotten. Its a vivid, potent, disturbing, and gorgeously stark in its execution.

Reference: 
1) https://lareviewofbooks.org/review/lost-way-city
2)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samrat_Upadhyay