For some reason I am drawn to books by Indian women about their experiences with their culture and their experiences with immigration. This is one that feels a lot like Jhumpa Lahiri to me, because it was very well-written and succeeded on a deeper level with themes about mothers and daughters and their problems and relationships. The story covered three generations of women in the same family, and each chapter was from a different perspective, either the grandmother, mother, or daughter, or one of the men from their lives. Each chapter jumps around chronologically as well, so you learn different things about the women at different times in their lives, and goes between India and Texas, where the mother and daughter live. I started this a few weeks ago and stopped reading in the first chapter because I could tell the story in that chapter was going to end badly, and I didn't want to deal with the bad news at the end of the chapter, but once I picked it up again tonight I made it through and read the whole book. It was so sad to me how these relationships between mothers and daughters were so affected by the mistakes they had made, and how the expectations that others (particularly men) had of them. I felt so sad seeing how each of them had to make a mess of their own lives and then had to figure out how to pick back up and continue on.
I really enjoyed this one and I think it was well worth the read. It definitely made me think and was very well done.
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