A review by cathd80
The Private Life of Mrs Sharma by Ratika Kapur

3.0

Often the first person narrative is used by an author to create doubt in the mind of the reader. Ratika Kapur does the opposite in her novel, The Private Life of Mrs. Sharma, with a narrator who calmly tells the truth about her actions from the novel’s beginning to its end. She is a respectable woman—a wife and mother who works at a doctor’s office in Delhi, India. She lives in a one bedroom apartment with her fifteen-year-old son and her in-laws while her husband lives and works in Dubai, earning money they need to buy a home. He’s been gone for almost two years, but despite missing him Mrs. Sharma knows it is necessary in order to have the life they want.

Into Mrs. Sharma’s crowded but orderly life comes a young man named Vineet. He takes the same train as she does each day and after he stands up for her to a rude man she accepts his invitation to go for coffee. Soon they meet several times a week—which is fine as she comes from a very good family, is happily married and is a proper wife. Mostly, she just likes the company and nothing untoward happens even as she becomes more involved in his life without ever divulging much of her own. After all, if he never asks why is there any reason to tell him she is thirty-seven, with a husband and a teenage son?

The rest of this review is available at The Gilmore Guide to Books: http://gilmoreguidetobooks.com/2016/12/the-private-life-of-mrs-sharma/