The Inheritance [Hardcover]

Indira Ganesan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 1998

In her first novel since her debut with The Journey, Indira Ganesan gives us the story of Sonil, who at fifteen has come to her adored grandmother's house on a paradisiacal island off the coast of India ("a tiny eye, to the teardrop that was Sri Lanka") to mend her shaky health. She has been living on the mainland with her aunts, to whom she was sent by her mother when she was a baby, and she yearns to find out why she was exiled and where her American father might be.

On the island, she spends her time studying Italian with her absentminded uncle . . . talking about boys and clothes with her favorite cousin, Jani . . . spying on her mysteriously distant mother. The gorgeous surroundings--the mango trees, the flowers, the heat, the monkeys--awaken her senses, and ours too, as she settles in for a seemingly endless summer.

Little by little, her spirits revive, and we see Sonil begin to move out of the magical world of her grandmother's compound into the wider life of the island, until she finds the perfect escape from her mother's rejection in a passionate affair with a young American. It is through her feelings for him that she begins to discover the means to forgive her mother and to look to herself for the answers she will need in the coming years.

Inheritance is a lush, lovely novel that transports us to a timeless place, an exotic island crossroads of many peoples and cultures--an Eden where the drama of love and family, loss and acceptance, still works its powerful and encompassing magic.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Remember all those hippies who ran off to India in the 1970s in search of enlightenment? One of the little delights of Indira Ganesan's Inheritance is getting an Indian view of how those truth-seekers fit into the culture and affected the people around them. A kind of mild feminism guides this unassuming novel of adolescence and self-discovery, set on an island off the Indian coast. The story meanders with its 15-year-old narrator, Sonil, whose chronic poor health has landed her a prolonged break from school at the home of her grandmother. There, time drifts, and events unfold in the flat, unquestioned perspective of youth. Sonil is fatherless, and men appear only fleetingly as silhouettes, sharply outlined but unfathomable. Her relationships with the three generations of women in the household--especially her hostility toward her aloof, eccentric mother--define the girl. But she encounters a young American man, in India to study Ayurvedic medicine, and for a while, the chaos of Sonil's sensuality focuses on Richard, a passionate but emotionally immature hippie, twice her age.

Through her short-lived relationship with him (lots of lovemaking to the music of Bob Dylan, George Harrison, and the Talking Heads), the wavering line of her life begins to trace a circle, leading her back to her mother and her unknown father, an American who disappeared from India before Sonil was born. Her inheritance, it seems, is a mandala, full of repeating patterns, which, as the book ends, Sonil is beginning to draw deliberately. Ganesan's prose style has a frank simplicity that is pleasing but evanescent.

From School Library Journal

YA-In this coming-of-age novel set in India, 15-year-old Sonil spends the summer at her adored grandmother's home on a lush island off the subcontinent's coast. There, she meets her distant, enigmatic mother, who sent her away when she was a baby to live with her aunts on the mainland. Sonil yearns to know why and who her American father might be. Ganesan's lithe and sensuous tale follows Sonil as she spends languid days with her great-uncle, talks about boys with her favorite cousin, and spies on her mysteriously remote and silent mother. She is angered by the woman's frequent evening absences from the house and her refusal to talk to her. It is only through her passionate relationship with an American twice her age whom she meets in the marketplace that she is able to begin to understand and forgive her mother. Toward the end of the novel, Sonil says, "I had thought that inheritance was inescapable. It is, but not in the ways I imagined....I am a random mix of genes and attributes. I do not have to be like my mother...yet a shard of her exists in everything I do." Inheritance deals with universal dramas of love and loss, family and acceptance. It should reassure young adults that the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of families and the need to accept them cross many cultures.
Pat Bangs, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 193 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (February 3, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679434429
• ISBN-13: 978-0679434429
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,315,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The cover is better than the book, April 23, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Inheritance (Hardcover)

This story is told from the perspective of a 15-year-old Indian girl -- but it lacks the meaning and perspective a writer should bestow to make it a novel, not just a a series of events. Unlike the rich and colorful cover, the writing style is flat and trite, at times reading like the writer's journals and therapy notes, sometimes pedantic lecturing on Indian views. I didn't care about the characters, who remained flat and lifeless to me.

2.0 out of 5 stars Waste of a good start, June 16, 2011

By 

M. Venketraman (His world) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inheritance (Bluestreak) (Paperback)

Here is a story that just merely starts with a neat premise and very quickly meanders. The authors' attempt to explain the intricacies of Indian family, religion, and topography of Sri Lanka ( Probably Jaffna more likely Mullaitivu) are all consistently awful.It gets worse with two dimensional glum characters and recurring single dimensional characters (Just names)thrown in the middle of the unnecessary detours. The closest experience to this was trying to listen to my neighbour's kid playing the Alto sax. He sure did hit all the high notes but just missed the music part.

4.0 out of 5 stars beautiful though not perfect, November 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Inheritance (Bluestreak) (Paperback)

While the book maybe slightly simplistic, it still had some wonderful moments that make it worthwhile. The main character, or at least some of her concerns and ideas, are well-developed and much of the text is beautiful. Other characters, mostly Jani and the mother, are presented as interesting frameworks but need to be expounded upon more. Overall its quite worth the read.