Daughters of the House

Set in rural India, this quietly moving tale of doomed passion, scandal and betrayal sensitively probes one family's problems. Chchanda, the sarcastic, precocious teenage narrator, burns with resentment and insecurity when Aunt Madhulika, who raised her, brings home a fiance, selfish lawyer Pretap Singh. The household is a matriarchy: Chchanda's father abandoned them long ago and her mother is dead, leaving the aunt, Chchanda's sister Mala and Parvati, a thorny, vituperative Roman Catholic servant who is nevertheless embraced by the Hindu Brahmin family. Seduced by Singh, Chchanda guiltily carries on a secret affair with him while Madhulika is increasingly crippled by lupus. When her aunt dies, Chchandra, now pregnant, is free to marry her uncle-in-law, but fate and conscience intervene, taking her in a radically different direction. In sharp, shining prose Indian first novelist Aikath-Gyaltsen dissects domestic life with the gimlet precision of Jane Austen. (Jan.)