Customer Reviews

Memories of Rain: A Novel

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I read Memories of Rain over a year ago, and even though I've read many books since then, I find myself often thinking about this beautifully written novel.

Immerse yourself in the stinking, steamy, strangely beautiful city of Calcutta. Moni, languid, imaginative, ready for experiences beyond the cloistered life she leads, falls hard for the polished, sophisticated British student.

Married in London, Gupta brilliantly exposes Moni's fears and insecurities as she watches her new husband lose interest and stray. She is paralized and shocked by the disintegration of the relationship and humiliated by his blatent disrespect for her being.

Her emotions are heightened and accented superbly by the gray of the British weather, the drab buildings, and the bewildering pace of life in a new country. Gupta masterfully contrasts the fecund, languid beauty of faraway home with the bleak internal and external circumstances in which Moni now finds herself. Gupta's images rise exotic, beautiful, yet instantly recognizable, from her twining, flowing coils of sentences.
The action, which is mostly internal, takes place over the course of a weekend and leads up to Moni's final departure with her young son. Tension builds as she weighs the consequences and finally makes her decision.

I hope this author is working on her next book right now, I am greedy for more of this! I highly recommend this wonderful book

Sunetra Gupta's deeply absorbing tale simply took me away with its meandering stream-of-consciousness narrative cloaked in rich prose. With passionately rendered impressions, she weaves a tale that is at once truthful and heartbreaking. I *felt* this story as much as read it. Even though this is fiction this kind of human drama surely occurs again and again. What makes this telling of it so interesting is the way it is told--with thick slices of experience slathered with the truths of human feelings. Having been to India myself (though not in the rainy season) the mood, the feeling of the place, is captured in these pages. When I finally put down this book and looked around, the world around me had changed. I felt as though waking from a long dark dream with eyes that now looked more closely at the world and my own story of how I had lived it. Like coming out into the light from a very dark place--the way sadness can give depth and girth to life. Though some might find it's run-on style tedious, I relished every passage. Take some time and feel your way through this fine literary work. It'll move you.

While I was reading this book, I didn't know whether to like it or not. When I got to the second chapter, I was very disappointed, but since this book had been regarded so highly, I finished it. I hate poetry that wants to be fiction. When I wasn't bored with the plot and the people, I was irritated at being plunged into prose that could drown a whale. I really did not care for this book. I love poetry and fiction. This book represents a marriage of the two that should have ended in divorce.