san_isa_reader_tooooo's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
booklover1974's review against another edition
DNF.... stopped at page 101. The first part of the book was good but then things started to become so unrealistic that I got annoyed with the book. So sad because I had high hopes.
amellear's review against another edition
emotional
lighthearted
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
divyasudhakar's review against another edition
4.0
I'm filled with a warm glow as I write this review having just finished the book. Chitra's books usually make you feel that way, unless they make you feel empty and in despair, but the point I'm trying to make is she is an author who can conjure strong emotions.
This is a cross-generational story about the womenfolk in a family and the characters that step in and out of and otherwise influence their lives. The story is told through the viewpoints of all these characters and it jumps back and forth through time giving you a little snippet of a momentous occasion in one of these characters' lives and you see the story unfold. The story itself is more of a crutch to flesh out interpersonal relationships and conflicts between these characters but that's how I like my books.
This is also a book about flaws, deep brokenness and flaws. I can't remember any other book of hers where I felt the characters were as timid and weak-willed as this one and prone to all sorts of substance abuse and suicidal tendencies. It truly is a veritable smorgasbord of issues. But it's also a book about forgiveness, of others in your life and of yourself for your flaws.
This is a cross-generational story about the womenfolk in a family and the characters that step in and out of and otherwise influence their lives. The story is told through the viewpoints of all these characters and it jumps back and forth through time giving you a little snippet of a momentous occasion in one of these characters' lives and you see the story unfold. The story itself is more of a crutch to flesh out interpersonal relationships and conflicts between these characters but that's how I like my books.
This is also a book about flaws, deep brokenness and flaws. I can't remember any other book of hers where I felt the characters were as timid and weak-willed as this one and prone to all sorts of substance abuse and suicidal tendencies. It truly is a veritable smorgasbord of issues. But it's also a book about forgiveness, of others in your life and of yourself for your flaws.
olivetoread's review against another edition
4.0
Loved the story told from different perspectives of multiple generations of Indian women.
mjsteimle's review against another edition
3.0
I came to this book with very high expectations, and although well-written the book fell short. This is the story if three generations of Indian and Indian-American women. It explores issues of mother-daughter relationships, marriage, and identity (among others). The chapters jump between characters and time, and we slowly piece together the stories of Sabitri, Bela, and Tara. I didn't dislike this book, but I didn't love it either. It's fits into the modern trend of writing about unhappy people.
ohsusanna's review against another edition
3.0
The last two books I rated with three stars because I wasn't very impressed by much of the book but thought they both had a clever premise. I went and changed their rating to two stars because this book is three stars. While I really enjoyed the story, it isn't one of the best I've read or even a book I'd consider reading again. It had the generational span that entices a lot of readers but not in a way that felt you were in the story. Years would be skipped, showing small instances where so much change would happen without you getting to understand how the character went through the changes. It felt like a book that didn't practice "Show don't tell" well with it's plot, telling you what happened instead of letting you experience it for yourself. The characters were more real and enjoyable than the last two books, something that gives it three out of five stars.
grazanne's review against another edition
3.0
It took me awhile to get into this book, and but for it being the last book of a summer reading challenge, I would have abandoned it. It reads like many short stories that are woven together by the end of the book. It is about three generations of Indian women Sabitri, Bela & Tara, and their repeated mistakes that pull themselves and their families apart. At its heart, it is a story for women of trying to pass on to their daughters to not squander the opportunities that an education and independence can give them. And that you can turn your life around at any age: Sabitri and her sweet shop, Bela and her cookbooks and hopefully Tara.
booksofjj's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
As with a lot of books that take on multiple character perspectives, there are some parts of the book that I found better than others. Most the more modern generations perspective but overall, an okay book.
jeezjane's review against another edition
3.0
*listened to the audiobook*
- i would give it 3.5 stars, not 3
- loved the female reader for the indian characters, thought the male reader was pretty good, but did not like the female reader for the indian-american grandaughter of the novel, tara. and aside from the voice getting on my nerves, i thought tara's parts of the novel were the most poorly written. bc she had 1/3 of the novel's time (maybe less), it made those parts of the novel pretty exasperating.
- i did enjoy the other 2/3 but it did not create that much of an emotional impact on me, and i am usually pretty moved by immigrant stories
- the writing (for the 2/3 of the novel) is very nice: a good balance of prose and dialogue. the pacing felt a bit fast, though not necessarily rushed. the author doesn't bother to go through life events in heavy detail, quite the opposite of, for example, midnight's children. but there is also not a lot of gaps in knowledge either bc the author did a good job making sure that all key life events were still mentioned
- the story of three generations of women: grandmother, daughter, granddaughter. each woman's life gets centre stage at various parts of the novel as we skip back and forth through time and POV (although in general it goes from past to present day). it is about all of them trying to make a good life for themselves. sabitri: to become rich, bella: to survive immigrating to the US, and tara: to find a purpose in life i guess? i found all of their motivations to be very... idk. it wasn't as if they had an internal drive to pursue some passion (e.g. sabitri wanted to be a teacher but then gives up on that dream to obsess over her first love, then she wants to be rich so she'll never be looked down on again, but there is no unifying thread. as she grows, her desires change). i would say this is very realistic, that they have normal aspirations that unsurprisingly alter as they age and get jaded about life, but because there is no "i definitely want to do this" character traits, and no "passing on" of anything from generation to generation (e.g. i guess aside from cooking skill, although tara doesn't have any), the writing did not suck me in as much. that there is no thematic motivation for the characters is not a detriment to the writing or the plot, but i like themes and i like things to come full circle and so overall i couldn't help feeling a little disappointed in the novel
- there is a "history repeats itself" pattern though: each woman drops out of college in order to focus on love/marriage, and each woman ends up with a broken relationship eventually. the mothers never have a close relationship with the daughters. the mothers always advise the daughters to finish their education so they are not limited in finding work later. the story is really about regret. i guess the author wants us to know that each woman regrets not finishing her education (although tara does finish eventually - to very little fanfare in the novel itself, which is strange given how much importance they place on education!) but there is little mulling about education itself. instead the emphasis is on relationships deteriorating. so if there is a lesson to be learned, passed on from mother to daughter, it would be to not get married, and not to have a daughter haha
- i was very frustrated with a few parts of the book:
1) sabitri really didn't do anything wrong (okay she slapped her child and that was obviously not good) in terms of her marriage. she didn't marry for love but she was a good wife, and her husband adored her. i don't understand why, when they seemed to have such a strong marriage, her husband would completely do a 180 and become an abusive alcoholic once he found out that she had an old flame when she was like 20 years old. maybe he is super insecure because she didn't marry him due to love, but like sabitri said, she loves him now. why isn't that enough? by all other accounts their life together is perfect, and he HAS her, isn't that more important than who she was in love with in the past? it just seems so out of the blue, for him to have a turn of personality like that. i guess his character was originally not very fleshed out so maybe it wasn't ooc -- but as a reader (i.e. listener) it really felt horrible the way that sabitri's marriage crumbled due to something completely outside her control
2) tara also has a moment like this where she, after not speaking to her mom for who knows how long, decides to call her mom when she's feeling terrible about her abortion. a guy picks up, she hears her mom laughing the bg. tara immediately hangs up and labels this as a betrayal, which she actually holds over her mom for the rest of her life. i? don't? understand? this???? why would she be so selfish as to think that a) if her mom doesn't pick up, that means she has moved on from their fallout, b) if her mom moved on, that means she no longer cares for her daughter, c) this means her mom was not there for her at this crucial moment and it's bella's fault? like this does not compute. just fucking call back later, you idiot girl???
oh, and when her dad confesses to her that he is going to ask for a divorce, tara gets so upset that she never speaks to him again. again... like.... what is the decision making process involved here? she ADORES her father and her father adores her. he's never done wrong by her for two decades. the minute he says something that will upset her, she is like "WTF get out of my life"? the dad expected tara to side with him instead of bella, and tbh that would have made so much more sense. and even if she didn't side with him, she didn't try to understand why he would ask for a divorce either. she seems incapable of thinking about her parent's feelings and assumes everything they do is an attack on her personally. so infuriating
3) we don't actually see them lament their lack of education. i mean, they do... but both sabitri and bella find ways to turn cooking into profit, and so the book puts more value on entrepreneurship than on education. it could be that the author did not feel the need to bash the reader's face with the fact that the ladies can't find good jobs right away due to lack of a degree, and trusts that we can infer it. which is fine. only the book starts off with sabitiri writing to her granddaughter, imploring her not to drop out of school, and then trying to justify this advice by relating it to her own life and how she suffered -- except it seems like most of her suffering was due to her husband and his alcoholism, and his sudden death. when she had her own (successful, btw) sweets shop she was very happy, and had a manager who loved her too. and later in life, she suffered because her daughter fled the country and never came back. so the connection that her hard life is due to a lack of education is kind of tenuous. as well, for example, when tara drops out of school, we don't see her wishing to go back. actually her desire to drop out is not very well explained either. she has more angst about her relationship with her mom, and her abortion. true that she has to do shit jobs, but she has a mentality of "life sucks" rather than "shit, i totally should have stayed in school". like none of these things are bad but i'm just left confused. is this a lesson about staying in school, or is a lesson on not being dependent on a man, or is it a lesson on "when life gives you lemons, which it always will sometime or another, keep on trucking"? it feels like the latter
4) was not a huge fan of the flipping between 3rd person and 1st person povs
5) other moments of stupidity from tara: she has a line where she says something like "i really changed my life after my car crash, and my therapist says that near death experiences will do that. but i'm not sure that catalysts of change can be so easily identified." WTF you nearly DIED of course that was the catalyst for change!!! wtf. and she has another line like "it's ironic how people leave your life but their things stick around longer." is that ironic? things last forever unless you throw them out. ugh i just did not like tara at all. i will give kudos however that she is the only girl to break out of the cycle of unhappiness, and not only got her degree but also reconciled with her mother, but as a character she was so lame. the writing for her parts were noticeably worse, to the point that i thought the author wrote everything else, but left tara's parts to some teenager.
- there were parts i liked:
1) thought all the secondary characters (the old indian lady who tara is hired to take care of, bella's neighbour, and bella's husband, and the professor tara drove around, and the manager of sabitri's store) were all charming and lovely characters. the managers speaking of how he fell in love with sabitri was especially lovely
2) i did like how there was a gay character, and the professor's regret over mistreating his daughter who came out
3) i thought that bella's scheme to get rid of her husband's friend was a very good reveal
4) some descriptions of life in india were so beautiful, like the backyard full of grass so lush you could swim in it
5) i enjoyed reading about sabitri's and bella's successes and thought they were well deserved
6) also enjoyed the descriptions of the food
7) and i liked the indian accents each of the readers did
overall: would recommend but is not going to be on any of my favourites lists
question that lingered: who was the 3rd person whose death bella took responsibility for? one, her mom, and two was her husband's friend. who was the third??
- i would give it 3.5 stars, not 3
- loved the female reader for the indian characters, thought the male reader was pretty good, but did not like the female reader for the indian-american grandaughter of the novel, tara. and aside from the voice getting on my nerves, i thought tara's parts of the novel were the most poorly written. bc she had 1/3 of the novel's time (maybe less), it made those parts of the novel pretty exasperating.
- i did enjoy the other 2/3 but it did not create that much of an emotional impact on me, and i am usually pretty moved by immigrant stories
- the writing (for the 2/3 of the novel) is very nice: a good balance of prose and dialogue. the pacing felt a bit fast, though not necessarily rushed. the author doesn't bother to go through life events in heavy detail, quite the opposite of, for example, midnight's children. but there is also not a lot of gaps in knowledge either bc the author did a good job making sure that all key life events were still mentioned
- the story of three generations of women: grandmother, daughter, granddaughter. each woman's life gets centre stage at various parts of the novel as we skip back and forth through time and POV (although in general it goes from past to present day). it is about all of them trying to make a good life for themselves. sabitri: to become rich, bella: to survive immigrating to the US, and tara: to find a purpose in life i guess? i found all of their motivations to be very... idk. it wasn't as if they had an internal drive to pursue some passion (e.g. sabitri wanted to be a teacher but then gives up on that dream to obsess over her first love, then she wants to be rich so she'll never be looked down on again, but there is no unifying thread. as she grows, her desires change). i would say this is very realistic, that they have normal aspirations that unsurprisingly alter as they age and get jaded about life, but because there is no "i definitely want to do this" character traits, and no "passing on" of anything from generation to generation (e.g. i guess aside from cooking skill, although tara doesn't have any), the writing did not suck me in as much. that there is no thematic motivation for the characters is not a detriment to the writing or the plot, but i like themes and i like things to come full circle and so overall i couldn't help feeling a little disappointed in the novel
- there is a "history repeats itself" pattern though: each woman drops out of college in order to focus on love/marriage, and each woman ends up with a broken relationship eventually. the mothers never have a close relationship with the daughters. the mothers always advise the daughters to finish their education so they are not limited in finding work later. the story is really about regret. i guess the author wants us to know that each woman regrets not finishing her education (although tara does finish eventually - to very little fanfare in the novel itself, which is strange given how much importance they place on education!) but there is little mulling about education itself. instead the emphasis is on relationships deteriorating. so if there is a lesson to be learned, passed on from mother to daughter, it would be to not get married, and not to have a daughter haha
- i was very frustrated with a few parts of the book:
1) sabitri really didn't do anything wrong (okay she slapped her child and that was obviously not good) in terms of her marriage. she didn't marry for love but she was a good wife, and her husband adored her. i don't understand why, when they seemed to have such a strong marriage, her husband would completely do a 180 and become an abusive alcoholic once he found out that she had an old flame when she was like 20 years old. maybe he is super insecure because she didn't marry him due to love, but like sabitri said, she loves him now. why isn't that enough? by all other accounts their life together is perfect, and he HAS her, isn't that more important than who she was in love with in the past? it just seems so out of the blue, for him to have a turn of personality like that. i guess his character was originally not very fleshed out so maybe it wasn't ooc -- but as a reader (i.e. listener) it really felt horrible the way that sabitri's marriage crumbled due to something completely outside her control
2) tara also has a moment like this where she, after not speaking to her mom for who knows how long, decides to call her mom when she's feeling terrible about her abortion. a guy picks up, she hears her mom laughing the bg. tara immediately hangs up and labels this as a betrayal, which she actually holds over her mom for the rest of her life. i? don't? understand? this???? why would she be so selfish as to think that a) if her mom doesn't pick up, that means she has moved on from their fallout, b) if her mom moved on, that means she no longer cares for her daughter, c) this means her mom was not there for her at this crucial moment and it's bella's fault? like this does not compute. just fucking call back later, you idiot girl???
oh, and when her dad confesses to her that he is going to ask for a divorce, tara gets so upset that she never speaks to him again. again... like.... what is the decision making process involved here? she ADORES her father and her father adores her. he's never done wrong by her for two decades. the minute he says something that will upset her, she is like "WTF get out of my life"? the dad expected tara to side with him instead of bella, and tbh that would have made so much more sense. and even if she didn't side with him, she didn't try to understand why he would ask for a divorce either. she seems incapable of thinking about her parent's feelings and assumes everything they do is an attack on her personally. so infuriating
3) we don't actually see them lament their lack of education. i mean, they do... but both sabitri and bella find ways to turn cooking into profit, and so the book puts more value on entrepreneurship than on education. it could be that the author did not feel the need to bash the reader's face with the fact that the ladies can't find good jobs right away due to lack of a degree, and trusts that we can infer it. which is fine. only the book starts off with sabitiri writing to her granddaughter, imploring her not to drop out of school, and then trying to justify this advice by relating it to her own life and how she suffered -- except it seems like most of her suffering was due to her husband and his alcoholism, and his sudden death. when she had her own (successful, btw) sweets shop she was very happy, and had a manager who loved her too. and later in life, she suffered because her daughter fled the country and never came back. so the connection that her hard life is due to a lack of education is kind of tenuous. as well, for example, when tara drops out of school, we don't see her wishing to go back. actually her desire to drop out is not very well explained either. she has more angst about her relationship with her mom, and her abortion. true that she has to do shit jobs, but she has a mentality of "life sucks" rather than "shit, i totally should have stayed in school". like none of these things are bad but i'm just left confused. is this a lesson about staying in school, or is a lesson on not being dependent on a man, or is it a lesson on "when life gives you lemons, which it always will sometime or another, keep on trucking"? it feels like the latter
4) was not a huge fan of the flipping between 3rd person and 1st person povs
5) other moments of stupidity from tara: she has a line where she says something like "i really changed my life after my car crash, and my therapist says that near death experiences will do that. but i'm not sure that catalysts of change can be so easily identified." WTF you nearly DIED of course that was the catalyst for change!!! wtf. and she has another line like "it's ironic how people leave your life but their things stick around longer." is that ironic? things last forever unless you throw them out. ugh i just did not like tara at all. i will give kudos however that she is the only girl to break out of the cycle of unhappiness, and not only got her degree but also reconciled with her mother, but as a character she was so lame. the writing for her parts were noticeably worse, to the point that i thought the author wrote everything else, but left tara's parts to some teenager.
- there were parts i liked:
1) thought all the secondary characters (the old indian lady who tara is hired to take care of, bella's neighbour, and bella's husband, and the professor tara drove around, and the manager of sabitri's store) were all charming and lovely characters. the managers speaking of how he fell in love with sabitri was especially lovely
2) i did like how there was a gay character, and the professor's regret over mistreating his daughter who came out
3) i thought that bella's scheme to get rid of her husband's friend was a very good reveal
4) some descriptions of life in india were so beautiful, like the backyard full of grass so lush you could swim in it
5) i enjoyed reading about sabitri's and bella's successes and thought they were well deserved
6) also enjoyed the descriptions of the food
7) and i liked the indian accents each of the readers did
overall: would recommend but is not going to be on any of my favourites lists
question that lingered: who was the 3rd person whose death bella took responsibility for? one, her mom, and two was her husband's friend. who was the third??