Characters in Jha's novel are seduced by their own illusions and frightened by the worlds they create.
Jha explores how families weaponise information and how power breeds mistrust among those closest to one another.
Everyone wants a share of the manor Indy left to Meher, who wishes to be rid of it and the ghosts it holds.
Aishwarya Jha’s In the Moonlit Kingdom (Penguin Random House) explores a family consumed by fame and how its attendant emotions can lead even good people astray. The narrative is simple but increasingly unsettling. Characters are seduced by their own illusions and frightened by the worlds they create. The real horror lies not merely in the supernatural, but in mistaking self-created fears for reality.
Beginning with the death of a patriarch, Jha explores how families weaponise information and how power breeds mistrust among those closest to one another. Devyani, the widow, is a former successful actor and the most beautiful woman in Munala, yet, she remains trapped in patriarchal expectations. Excluded from important decisions, she is considered just a ‘traditional wife’. But Jha refuses to confine her to victimhood. Beneath her composure lies anger which surfaces even at her breaking point. In a culture that readily legitimises male rage while dismissing women’s anger, Devyani’s fury becomes an act of resistance.
Vidhi may seem spoiled and manipulative, but her greed has its reasons. We are quick to judge women for their unpleasant traits, forgetting that survival in a patriarchal world often demands a certain hardness. A soft-hearted woman can easily become prey to hyenas. This does not excuse Raghu, Indy Singh’s son, whose pursuit of Vidhi’s demands turns him ruthless. Through the subtext, Jha reveals how Vidhi is haunted by her own desires and how her instinct to protect herself can unconsciously turn into mercilessness.
Meher, the daughter of Indy and Devyani, brings both horror and a feminist vision to the novel. Initially presented as quirky, vulnerable and a burden to her mother, she emerges as the one person who can see the ghosts that haunt the Chandra Singh family’s past. Jha traces a family history separately in which its members are both blessed and victims of their own curses. Characters like Mrs. Bhagat and Mrs. Latif evoke Macbeth’s witches, spreading information that breeds suspicion and fear. What they present as ordinary conversation, becomes an instrument of patriarchy, fuelled by capitalism and exclusion. Their gossip reveals how people punish those they envy, desire to become or simply cannot tolerate.
Everyone wants a share of the manor Indy left to Meher, who wishes to be rid of it and the ghosts it holds. But the manor carries her childhood memories, a truth her childhood friend and heartthrob captures when he asks, “If the manor is gone, where do these parts of us go?” The disputes surrounding the property ultimately weigh on Devyani, caught between the silence imposed on her and Meher’s indecision. Their strained relationship reflects the damage patriarchy inflicts on families, turning trust into suspicion. The spectacle of domestic quarrels before guests may seem clichéd, but what can escape repetition when the same oppressive structures invade every aspect of private life? Jha’s horror element disrupts this monotony, making the familiar narrative an unsettling one.
Meher’s detachment from the house’s artificial celebrations keeps her at a distance, but her thought, “Home. The place you could leave. The place that wouldn’t leave you,” lends the novel a Victorian sensibility. It remind you of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, where the protagonist remains bound to his portrait because it holds the life he cannot escape. As the plot revolves around the sale of the manor, family conflicts intertwine with the strange visions Meher experiences, all tied to the house’s history. Her ambition and refusal to submit to convention alienate the family, but beneath her defiance lies a desperate need to belong. Meher resists the bubble she inhabits, yet, Jha reveals through her subconscious how deeply she is attached to it.
The narrative is exhaustive in its cast of characters and the competing dynamics they bring to the plot. Through them, Jha examines the power struggles within families and the damage they cause when left unchecked. She also explores how buried secrets, once exposed, can turn people cold or teach them to resist. Meher embodies both responses. She retreats into detachment, but breaks down when confronted with the secrets that have estranged her from her family. Her resentment is complicated by warm memories of her father, which begin to fray as the family makes decisions about the manor without her consent. These decisions expose the power at the heart of familial relationships, where belonging often counts for less than control.
In the Moonlit Kingdom examines the politics that operate within our private spaces and how they shape our understanding of society. Jha shows how power, resentment, secrecy and exclusion within families often mirror the structures we encounter beyond them. The gothic element emerges subtly, making the memories more visceral and unsettling as buried fears and wounds return to haunt the characters. Jha’s fluid prose and precise diction lend the novel a distinct appeal. The characters reveal as much through their silences, contradictions and subconscious desires as they do through their words. It is through reading the novel closely that we understand not only what they say, but also what they conceal from themselves and others.
(Kabir Deb is a writer, reviewer and translator based in Karimganj, Assam)
