Of Marriageable Age [Import] [Paperback]

Sharon Maas (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Flamingo (1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 000225896X
• ISBN-13: 978-0002258968
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.8 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,413,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sharon Maas was born in Georgetown, Guyana in 1951.

She was educated in Guyana and England. After leaving school she worked as a trainee reporter with the Guyana Graphic in Georgetown, Guyana. She later wrote feature articles for the Sunday Chronicle as a staff journalist.

She spent 1971 and 1972 travelling around Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Her travel articles were published in the Chronicle newspaper. In 1973 she travelled overland to India via England, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. After two years in India she moved to Germany. She now divides her time between England and Germany with her husband and two children.

Her latest book is Sons of Gods -- the Mahabharata Retold, a new version of the magnificent Indian epic, written under the pen name Aruna Sharan. She worked on it for almost 40 years.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Love and cultural heritage, and perfumes from India., July 5, 2002

By 

Themis-Athena (from somewhere between California and Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Of Marriageable Age (Paperback)

An orphan boy adopted by an English doctor, living near Madras, in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu: Nataraj.

A headstrong teenager, daughter of an Indian lawyer in Georgetown, British Guiana: Sarojini.

Back in Madras, earlier, a cook's daughter, of Brahmin descent but a servant girl in an affluent English family: Savitri.

And a cast of colorful supporting characters: a strong-minded but utterly fallible and therefore most "human" father; several brothers, one mean-spirited, one good-natured but weak, and another one, in another family, loving and mischievous; a willful girlfriend with a penchant for the arts; a mother at times more feminist politician than mom; a busybody mother with a constant need to organize, control and meddle; and last but not least, a wise and patient teacher.

Sprinkle this mixture generously with compassion, humor, love in all its incarnations and that profound understanding of the Indian society which only comes from personal experience; then add the author's personal secret touch.

These are the ingredients of the literary feast offered to the reader in Sharon Maas's debut novel "Of Marriageable Age," bringing together the imaginative powers of a born storyteller with a lifetime's worth of personal experience. And like an Indian meal, her novel is rich in flavors, slowly and skillfully blending a myriad of exquisite parts into a perfectly tempered composition, leaving enough room for each ingredient to develop its full perfume while at the same time creating a new, perfectly composed oeuvre of its own.

We first meet each of the three protagonists when they are children: Nat(araj), whom the nuns running his orphanage have baptized Paul in order to give him a "proper" Christian name; Saroj(ini), on the brink of her teenage years, dreading the day that her parents will find a "suitable" husband for her; and Savitri, who talks to animals, has inherited a secret gift of healing never to be used for personal gain or it will be lost forever, and lives "from the inside out," as opposed to most other people whose "thought-bodies" make them live "from the outside in."

Over the course of several decades, we follow Savitri, Nat and Saroj as they make their way into adulthood and as each of them faces their own personal demons. Nat, modestly brought up by his adoptive father in a small Indian village in the hope that he, too, will become a doctor and dedicate his life to helping the local rural population, must learn to overcome the temptations of city life when he is sent to London to study medicine. Independent and willful Saroj fights her traditionalist father for the right to have an education and a profession and grapples with the issue of marriage - arranged and otherwise - supported, it seems to her, only by her African high school friend Trixie and by Trixie's feminist/politician mother. And Savitri must pay a bitter price for her forbidden love of David, the son of her parents' British employers, when from a childhood of ease and happiness she is propelled into an adulthood laden with more than her share of hardships. As the novel progresses, slowly the three storylines come together and we learn how the fates of its protagonists are interrelated.

While "Of Marriageable Age," as the title indicates, deals extensively with love and the concept of marriage, examining it from both the Western and the Indian point of view, it is by no means limited to these issues. Indian society and family life as a whole are under Sharon Maas's looking glass - families and society on the Indian subcontinent (particularly its southern part), but also in British Guiana and in London. And so are the meaning of cultural heritage and its preservation, nationality, prejudice and racism; British condescension towards Indians, and the contempt of Hindu Brahmins for the caste-less British and Africans. Sarojini especially, feeling after her arrival in England that there is no nationality she can truly identify with and fearing that she will always be an outsider, discovers that it is much more important for her to simply be able to say "I am," without having to add anything else; to assert herself in her own right, quasi as a nation of her own.

Much of the novel is set against the background of the lush tropical gardens and elegant mansions of Georgetown, British Guiana, and colonial Madras. Undoubtedly its German title, "Der Zaubergarten," was inspired by this setting (literally, that title translates as either "The Enchanted Garden" or "The Enchanting Garden" - both versions work). Yet, there is also the indescribable poverty of India's countryside, where one prolonged and severe rainy season is enough to wipe out entire villages, kill their old, their sick and their children, and destroy their houses, fields and livelihood. And there is the chaos, noise and dirt of India's cities, particularly Madras - a major turnoff for many a visitor from the West and even something that Sarojini has to get used to when she first visits India, searching for her roots and her place in life. Sharon Maas makes us understand that all of these things are parts of India, as germane to the subcontinent as its immensely rich historical, cultural and social heritage; and in the process, she truly does create both an enchanted and an enchanting garden, populated by complex people, beautiful inside and out - a sparkling kaleidoscope of colors, images, sounds and scents. It is a mystery to me why this novel, which has been translated into several languages and is currently storming French bestseller lists under the title "Noces Indiennes," has not yet found an American publisher, which would make it more widely available to audiences in the U.S. But I hope that this omission will only be of a temporary nature. Like the best of Indian cuisine, reading this novel is an exhilarating experience, leaving the reader completely satisfied and at the same time longing for more, and regretting that it eventually has to come to an end.

Also recommended:
Peacocks Dancing
The Speech of Angels
Interpreter of Maladies
The God of Small Things

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A ready-made screenplay, December 12, 2004

By 

Amanda Richards (Georgetown, Guyana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Of Marriageable Age (Paperback)

A rich, colorful explosion of Indian culture spanning from Madras to Demerara, this novel is so vividly told and so skillfully woven that you'll find yourself visualizing the story as you go along, in full color with surround sound, smells and all.

Three children, two countries, three stories, three different decades - separate, yet cohesively bonded into one epic saga.

Nataraj (Nat), plucked from an orphanage in India by a white doctor, is given the chance to receive a good education, and quickly discovers within himself the power of healing.

Sarojini (Saroj) lives a comfortable life in British Guiana, until she encounters racism and hatred, and repeatedly defies her ethnically blinkered father, having recognized inner beauty in other people despite external appearances.

Savitri is a cook's daughter from Madras, the central character of the book, who despite her strict Indian family, manages to tie herself to the white family who employs her father, leading to a heart-rending sequence of unfortunate events.

Flitting like a butterfly between the three stories, the author explores deep, dark issues of humanity, but these are not permitted to consume the story, as they are beautifully counterbalanced by love and respect, by breathtakingly descriptive passages and exotic settings.

It's a period piece, a geography lesson, a mystery, a tragedy, a drama, a soap opera, but most of all a love story, not only for the central characters, but for the author to pay tribute to two countries that have made their mark in her heart.

If you like sweet, sappy love stories, or rich Indian culture and tradition, or even if you just liked the movie "Monsoon Wedding", this book is highly recommended for you.

Amanda Richards December 12, 2004

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Intricate Tapestry, June 30, 2002

By 

booknblueslady (Woodland, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Of Marriageable Age (Paperback)

When speaking of the book Of Marriageable Age by Sharon Maas it is difficult not to use such words as tapestry, intricate and woven. Each thread of the story seems to be woven in such a way as to create an intricate tapestry which presents a delicate picture of the lives of the characters in this book. It is true that author Sharon Maas believes that there exists a grand scheme to our lives and that if we are sensitive to, in her words "the magnetism" we will indeed benefit. This belief is aptly demonstrated in the book.

The setting for the book is on three continents, India in Asia, Guyana in South America and Britain in Europe and the time span is from the 1920's through the 1960's. The main characters are tied to each other in intricate and mysterious ways. The older generation who grew up in India, are David, an English boy and Savitri, daughter of his servants and the younger generation, Saroj a young girl of Indian descent growing up in Guyana and Nat, an Indian orphan. For those of us who came of age in the 1960's in the United States it is interesting to see that people of other countries and cultures were dealing with similar issues at that time. For Saroj, a young woman from Guyana and Nat, a young man from Indian the issues of rebellion and independence from the older generation were part of their struggle for maturity.

Saroj grows to adulthood nurturing a hatred for her father who she feels is all things evil and who wants to control her and subjugate her. When she is a young teenager he arranges a marriage for her, which she desperately fights against. Her dream is to become educated in England and to achieve that dream she feels she must wage a successful battle against her father.

I would encourage readers to follow Saroj, Savitri, David and Nat in their journey through life to see what composite picture is finally revealed as their lives interweave.