101 of 103 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moving and satisfying, great debut..., January 30, 2010
This review is from: Secret Daughter: A Novel (Hardcover)
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This beautifully written book,
Secret Daughter: A Novel, is one that will linger in my thoughts for a long time. It's a poignant story about family -- just who is "family" and what it means to be a part of one. It's also a brilliantly written testimony to mothers everywhere, for "if the mother falls, the whole family falls."
Asha (Hope) was secretly named Usha (Dawn) by her birth mother, Kavita, and is adopted from an Indian orphanage by a married American couple when she is just a year old. Kavita, already grieving the infanticide of a previous daughter in a society that prefers male infants, had made the long journey to Shanti to deliver her 3-day-old child there for safety so that her husband and his family would not also destroy this second unwanted female child. She left her daughter with only a thin silver bracelet and a wish that Asha be allowed to live, grow up, and perhaps have a better life.
Somer and Krishnan Thakkar, both doctors -- she's a pediatrician and he's a neurosurgeon -- have been unable to have a child. He is Indian and came to America to attend medical school and stayed for a better life. She married him without fully appreciating the Indian heritage and his connection to the land of his birth and to the family and traditions he left behind there. When they adopt Asha and bring her back to America to raise, little do they realize that their new beloved daughter will one day defy her parents and seek to restore their connection to their Indian relatives despite the fact that she may hurt them when she begins to trace her birth parents to find out who she is and why they gave her up for adoption.
The story moves forward in time from 1984 to 2009, and is told from the viewpoints of the three main females of the story - Somer, Kavita, and Asha. All are women who have a very strong feeling about motherhood -- and about their own mothers. In addition, each woman sees a different India and comes to appreciate the country in different ways even as they realize that "Mother India does not love all her children equally."
The story of each woman's journey to epiphany and self-realization is very moving and satisfying. I highly recommend this book.
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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Gaps in the story, September 12, 2010
This review is from: Secret Daughter: A Novel (Hardcover)
I agree with the reviewer who wrote "Good Plot, Weak Characters." The idea of following two families who do not know they are connected, one who places a child for adoption because she is a girl, and one who lives halfway around the world who adopts the girl, is wonderful. Ann Hood did this to some extent in "The Red Thread," but she did not follow the Chinese mothers for the rest of their lives, as Shilpa Gowda follows Kavita. Kavita is married to Jasu, who had their first-born daughter killed. They can only afford one child, and he will do anything for a son. When Kavita produces yet another girl child, she runs away from her small village to an orphanage in Mumbai, to leave the wrong-gendered infant and spare her the fate of her older sister. Meanwhile, we meet Somer (American, Caucasian, Protestant) and Krishnan (Indian, Hindu), a young married couple living in California whose efforts to give birth have produced nothing but grief. They travel to India to adopt the little girl that Kavita placed in the orphanage, whom they call Asha (Hope).
It is not clear what attracts Somer and Krishnan to each other in the first place; perhaps Somer is drawn in by the exotic, foreign Krishnan, so different than anything else in her otherwise plain vanilla life. Somer has little if any interest in Krishnan's culture, so unless Krishnan is trying to escape all memories of India (and there is nothing that indicates this), it is hard to see what attracts him to Somer (yes she is bright and attractive, but can someone really love another person who has no interest in his native land/culture?). The adoption and raising of Asha hold this couple together, but when Asha leaves the nest for college and a fellowship in India, the cracks in the marriage show all too clearly.
Meanwhile, Kavita gives birth to the long-dreamed of son, Vijoy (Victory). The family's move from village to city (Mumbai, naturally) proves economically sound, but plays havoc with the traditional family bonds, as Vijoy is influenced more by friends than family, and grows up to be a drug dealer. Why his parents take his ill-gotten money when they know what he is doing is not clear to me, as Kavita is portrayed as a long-suffering saint and Jasu slowly reveals that, despite having his first child killed, he has (almost) a heart of gold.
Growing up, Asha has shown some curiousity about her birth family and birth culture This section of the book needs considerably more substance if we are to believe that Asha travels to India to stay with her father's relatives whom she does not know and winds up wholeheartedly embracing the family (and vica versa) and the culture, and of course, finding love (while writing prize-winning articles to boot). She also searches for her birth family, which is totally believable, but the resolution is wishy-washy.
One gaping omission is the role of the caste system in the life of Indian society. Does caste really play NO role in this story? How can that possibly be? Why is it never mentioned when it is so important in Hindu India? Would all of Krishnan's family truly embrace this adopted child, most likely from a lower caste than they? Would Asha really be given such an honored role at her grandfather's funeral? Is the author saying that caste is meaningless in India, or does she just wish that were true?
This could have been a very compelling story about cross-cultural and transracial adoption if it had examined more thoroughly and realistically each member of the adoption triad and the cultures that they came from.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of my top 5 books so far in 2011, May 9, 2011
I had breakfast with a friend the other morning and she brought this book to me. We swap books and book recommendations, but are fairly careful to only pass along things we really like. If a book is just average, it never gets mentioned. It had been a while since she had brought me anything so I bumped this up at the top of my huge, massive TBR pile and started it last week. On the first day, I read a huge chunk of it since I didn't want to put it down. I am a fan of Jhumpa Lahiri and will pretty much devour anything she writes. After reading this particular novel, Shilpi Samoya Gowda is jumped into that same category (and it's just her debut).
In the opening of the novel we meet Kavita as she is about to give birth in a small village not too far from Bombay and the year is 1984. This is the second child she has born recently and the first was "disposed" of since the child was not a boy. Once the child is born and it's a second girl, Kavita takes matters in her own hands and does what she can to save the child by getting her to an orphanage in Bombay without the father's knowledge. About the same time, another couple in the United States is discovering that the miscarriages and failing fertility treatments may mean no biological child for them but what about adoption. Since the husband of the couple is originally from India, would it be possible to adopt a child from there? These two stories are interwoven and these two families are the basis of this incredible novel. One that grabs you early and just never lets go. By the end of the novel, twenty years have passed and the fate of all concerned is known.
As I said at the beginning, this was an absolute joy to read and a second novel by this same author will be snatched up quickly by me. Another reading friend of mine asked me within the past couple of days what have been my favorite reads in the last several months. I gave her a list of five books that stood out above everything else and this one was on that very short list. Absolutely great!
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