Though it's being published in the U.S. after Badami's well-received second novel, The Hero's Walk,
this is actually her first, covering terrain common to many first novels: the relationship between a mother and a daughter. The story of the Moorthy family is first told by Kamini, the elder of two daughters. Enrolled in graduate school in Calgary, Kamini sits homesick in her basement apartment, recalling her childhood from the birth of her sister when Kamini is six to the day she leaves for Canada. She describes a complex family and a conflict between parents that she barely understands—a bitter mother and a father who's always away. Then her mother, Saroja, weighs in, broadening and deepening Kamini's story. Saroja is also the eldest daughter, a smart girl whose ambitions to become a doctor are subverted when her family pushes her into an arranged marriage to a man 15 years older than herself. Her marriage remains as stunted as her ambitions, and Saroja welcomes the attentions of a half-caste auto mechanic. She narrates all this to the women who share her train compartment as she tours places in India she could not visit while raising her daughters. Badami writes graceful, evocative prose and plays complex variations on her themes. All her characters are vibrant and deftly drawn, and her narrators' opposing points of view create a poignant irony. She might have trimmed away some of the many smaller stories to make room for the central drama, but that is a small complaint for a first novel that reveals so much talent. (Mar. 29)
Forecast:Badami got lots of exposure with the publication of
The Hero's Walk, and readers on the lookout for her next book will not be disappointed by this earlier effort.
