Customer Reviews

Mango Season

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This is the story of Priya, an attractive, assertive, intelligent young woman who just happens to be from southern India. As the story begins she is returning to India for the first time in seven years, and she will have to tell her family about her American boyfriend.

As expected, it doesn't go well. Priya's family are deeply set in traditional (Hindu) values--daughters are supposed to be submissive, they are supposed to marry nice (Indian) boys, and produce nice male heirs. Marriages are supposed to be arranged by the family elders, and love doesn't have much to do with it. While Priya is working herself up to tell the family, and dreading the moment with all her being, family life goes on, with its tensions, rivalries, acceptance, rejection, and--most of all--cooking. Cultures are clashing like great tectonic plates below the earth, while on the surface the women are busy chopping and slicing. The book is full of interesting, spicy recipes, too--one of the most gastronomical novels I have ever read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Author Malladi has a deft way with characterization. You will quickly connect with her characters, their inner turmiol, their struggles, their subtle ways of communicating, and their drive to express and fulfill themselves. So will Priya marry the American boyfriend? Or will she succumb to the marriage proposal hastily arranged by her parents? Will the family finally reject her? Or will she come to her senses and forget her American boyfriend? You will just have to read the book to find out. One small criticism: the book includes a number of words and phrases in the local language, not always clearly explained. A little glossary might be helpful. Still, a delightful book. I heartily recommend it. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

I really enjoyed this book and will read the author's other book, Breath of Fresh Air.

By the way, there is a review here that contains a major spoiler for The Mango Season. I hate it when people give plot twists away so if you want to avoid this, don't read the review entitled "Obnoxious and unrealistic at times". I should've known better because it was rated very low in the "helpful" scale. Figured I'd at least warn others.

THE MANGO SEASON by Amulya Malladi
October 17, 2004

Amulya Malladi's second novel, THE MANGO SEASON, takes the reader back to India with Priya, who has a great career in Silicon Valley and lives in San Francisco with her boyfriend Nick. What her parents do not know, is the fact that Priya HAS a boyfriend, and he is not Indian. They are under the assumption that she is currently single, that she is going to eventually marry a nice Indian boy that is arranged by her parents and his parents, and will live happily ever after. Priya's mission: to return home to India to announce her engagement to her American boyfriend.

Telling her family is a lot harder than she had expected, and Priya procrastinates telling them the truth. In the meantime, she gets involved with the goings on of her family, takes part in the mango season, and finds herself getting back into every day life in India. She's been away for many years now, and realizes that she no longer feels comfortable in her homeland, but would rather be "home" in America.
She fights with her mother every day, and misses Nick with a passion.

Unfortunately for her, Priya's parents decide that she was getting too old to be single with no marriage prospects. Before she can tell them about her engagement, they arrange for her to meet a nice Indian boy from a good Indian family, to see if they will agree to marry! Things had gotten bad to worse.

For those readers who have read Malladi's first book A BREATH OF FRESH AIR, THE MANGO SEASON is quite different in tone and in setting. Her first book was about Indian people during the time of the Bhopal disaster, and how it affected one couple that lived during that time in the 1970's. THE MANGO SEASON deals with Indians who have moved to America and are living a multi-cultural existence, which goes against what their parents' generation believe. Priya has a hard time accepting that her parents will never understand her desire to marry Nick, or to have anything to do with people that are not from India. A BREATH OF FRESH AIR was serious in tone, while THE MANGO SEASON is a light comedy, but filled with enough tension to keep the reader going. It also deals with the mother-daughter relationship, which many will relate to, regardless of ethnic background.

I am recommending THE MANGO SEASON for being a fast read, filled with interesting characters and a lot of drama. It was yet another good book from Ms Malladi, and I will definitely be reading more by her.

This was the first book I read by Amulya Malladi, and I couldn't stop reading it! Malladi tells you so much about India, and the complications of marrying a 'non-Indian', it's really very enlightening. Tricky, tragic, and somewhat humorous familial politics are all over the place in this book!

Funny, delightful and unpredicatble, THE MANGO SEASON is a fabulous read. I loved Priya and how she struggles to tell her family about the American in her life. I am an Indian married to an American myself and perfectly understand what Priya went through. I also liked her aunts very much, both Sowmya and Lata were amazing women; I am ready to read the next book by this author.

This book was a good read, and the recipes had me curious ("can I make that?" "where can I get those ingredients?").
Priya is a native of India and moved to the United States when she was twenty. During her seven years in the States, she fell in love with, horrors, an American. Now she returns home, during the mango season, to inform her very traditional family that the man she loves and is going to marry is not Indian. How does she inform this family that believes in and has survived through arranged marriages? How does she tell this family while they are planning her first sitting with a prospective groom? How will she be able to tell them during their hustle and bustle of arranging her marriage, arranging a marriage for her aunt Sowmya, and preparing mango pickle? Priya approaches these landmines as only a strong-willed daughter can: sometimes she walks around them, sometimes she steps on them full-force. Like most of us who are daughters, she learns that some things in the family will never change, but we can sometimes voice our opinions in opposition and be heard, even if the opinion is not accepted. Like some of us who are daughters, Priya found out what family, love, and support really are and that they don't always come in the expected form. I appreciated the surprise Ms. Malladi gives the reader at the end, and I cheer her for giving Priya's two aunts Sowmya and Lati their unexpected voices.
This was the first book I read by Ms. Malladi. I am inclined to read others, as well as revisit two Indian films (Mississipi Masala and Monsoon Wedding). In a twist of my life, a co-worker invited me to an Indian restaurant the day after I finished "Mango" and I approached my first taste of Indian food with a good background.
In all, I liked "The Mango Season," although I was thrown by her usage of some English words. I grabbed my dictionary a couple of times to see if a certain word had a meaning I am not aware of. Also, I wondered if Priya's family was as globally knowledgeable as the author depicted them; it seemed odd that Priya would refer to American cities and not states when speaking to her family. Does everyone around the world know about Memphis? Read the book, go to the grocery store.

I finally got around to reading "The Mango Season" after having it on my shelf for a few years. The author shares with us a familiar life experience of what it means to return home after leaving in our youth. Who hasn't returned home to find the people, places and things you once knew appearing quite different to your travelers' eyes? You eventually discover that it is you that has changed and not home.

I enjoyed learning new and interesting things about the Indian culture. The author gives you a good sense of what its like in India during the summer mango season. Though I never really got the feeling I was actually there, I did buy into the main character Priya's visit home and her dilemma.

The story did at times take on a teen fiction feel, but the attitudes of the characters were very real and well developed. I felt as if I was looking at the world through the eyes of a twenty-five year old. I suppose that was the author's intent with Priya being 27 yrs. old. Advice to older readers, though we may have fond memories of our twenties, it really isn't much fun revisiting those years through a character in a book. Maybe its just me who finds my patience running out in a story when a mature approach in dealing with life issues can bring about a quick resolution to a problem.

Again, enjoyed the cultural education and foods but next time might stay away from cultural family matters being told by a twenty-something.

3.5 Stars

The brightest element of this work is its evocation of the family tradition of extended female members uniting yearly in the laborious process of making mango pickle. However, I found the characters to be either flat characatures of universal types or unevenly developed.

The family "one up-manship" of talent and pride in picking the best mango, in skills related to the process, etc., are the back-biting pecking order innuendos that are perhaps ubiquitous. The mother, however, shows me nothing but rigid thinking. The case isn't clearly made for why this young woman cares so much for her approval or the others' opinions.

Good grief, all they do is put our heroine back in the same slot that she occupied in relationship ten years previously when she had left. Also, the central character swings widely from mature and insightful to petty and needy.

I'd have been much more interested if the author had developed the character of the subserviant "unmarriageable" cousin, "ugly" and in a vulnerable position, whose role is servant and general stray dog that everyone has tacit permission to kick around.

And the coup de grace, the damning period, is the trick ending. good grief. This is closer to Bollywood than any semblance to serious literature.

In fact, it isnt literature; it's fiction gussied up because it's from an Indian writer. This one wasn't ready for prime time. I had hoped that the mango itself would become a central metaphor, and that the character would come to a self revelation from the experience, but alas, her inner conflict, for me, is way underdeveloped and poorly explored.

Summary of the Book:

A cursory look at an Indian-American's social fabric and the challenges faced by woman in rapidly changing Indian society. The protoganist is based in the SanFran and is in love with an American but does not want to break that news to her conservative family, who do not want her to marry outside her caste/race. The rest of the book records her travel to India to see her extended family and break them the news of her love.


Assessment:
- Rich characterization of the women characters
- Nothing new in they way she developed the plot
- No context for the Indian words
- Did not provide enough context to understand why her family was against the marriage.

Summary:
Overall an easy read if you are planning on attending any of your Indian friend's wedding. Don't expect any literary fireworks from this Mango.

Fred "G" Sanford

I am an American married to a man from south India. Like the characters in the book, we fell in love in college. His parents had a girl picked out for him to marry after graduation. This book is so true, we laughed through the entire book.