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The Seduction of Silence [Hardcover]

Bem Le Hunte (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)


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Book Description

January 7, 2003

Infused with the magic of India and the great mysteries of life, The Seduction of Silence follows the spiritual and emotional journeys of a remarkable Indian family through five generations.

Aakash, venerated sage and healer, is the founder of Prakriti -- an abundant farm in the Himalayas. From this soulful mountain home, his children embark on the journeys that will sway the destinies of future generations: gentle son Ram, whose fierce search for enlightenment will force him to choose between his family and his soul; daughter Tulsi Devi, whose convent schooling provides an unexpected, brutal education forever altering her life; Tulsi Devi's beloved first child, Jivan -- born in the waters of the Ganges, cruelly separated from his mother; and Aakash's granddaughter Rohini, who travels across the world on a painted bus to a new land and a new kind of freedom, immersing herself in the London of the 1960s.

With Rohini's daughter, Saakshi, the search for enlightenment comes full circle, and the great-granddaughter returns to her spiritual home -- the holy mountains of Prakriti, where their family story first began. Both magical and utterly compelling, this spellbinding novel interweaves family sagas with the richness of Indian mysticism, creating an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family.



Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sydney-based writer Le Hunte makes her American debut with this story of several generations of Indian women who span decades and continents in their quest for enlightenment. In the 1930s, the sage and wealthy landowner and patriarch, Aakash, and his son, Ram, head for the highest mountain peaks in search of spiritual awakening, leaving behind Aakash's daughter, Tulsi Devi, and his rigidly traditional wife, Jyoti Ma, at the family's Himalayan farm. Tulsi Devi would have liked to go on a spiritual quest of her own, but instead is sent to a convent school at Lahore, where a traumatic incident lands her in a loveless marriage. She manages to imbue her daughter, Rohini, with a more independent spirit. Rohini becomes a doctor, but she also marries an Englishman, a move that leaves her estranged from all her family-except, that is, for the spirit of her grandfather Aakash, who communes with her regularly and guides her on her own spiritual path. The magic realist touches scattered throughout the novel have won Le Hunte comparisons to Isabel Allende and Salman Rushdie, but Le Hunte has a snappy, more commercial style (when Rohini tells her pregnant daughter to stop complaining, the acid-tongued daughter thinks, "Thanks, Mama. Can you remember to tell me your worst birth stories just before I go into labor? We'll put some time aside, OK?"). Those who are not yet weary of multigenerational women's sagas will appreciate Le Hunte's fluid storytelling and vivid scene setting.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

India-born Le Hunte concocts a glorious melange of family saga, social commentary, and treatise on spirituality in her debut novel. Encompassing five generations, the story begins with Aakash, a patient teacher and ayurvedic farmer who joins his son in the search for pure Being, guided by "the power and potential of Silence," and ends with his great-granddaughter in childbirth, convinced that her newborn daughter has taken on Aakash's enlightened soul as her own. Three of the generations sandwiched in between contain an Indian-English marriage, and Le Hunte seems to draw parallels throughout the novel between this tightly knit, though contentious, extended family and the ongoing relationship between India and England during those same years. Each of these marriages eventually fails, torn apart by miscommunication, differences in values, and power struggles, echoing the political environment that surrounds them. But just as Aakash is inextricably linked to his family, speaking through a medium to his great-granddaughter years after his death, Le Hunte obviously feels that India and England, though deeply divided, are perhaps forever intertwined. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 416 pages
  • Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (January 7, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 006052197X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0060521974
  • Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,588,466 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
5 star:
 (4)
4 star:
 (2)
3 star:
 (1)
2 star:
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1 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Five generations of social commentary, August 6, 2003
This review is from: The Seduction of Silence (Hardcover)
The thread of a search for spirituality wends its way through The Seduction of Silence, India-born Bem Le Hunte's lovely book that spans the years of English influence in India. The writing in this book is as glorious as the background upon which it is based. There is a mystical quality in both the story and the prose that is not unusual in the works of Indian authors, but Le Hunte, now based in Sydney, Australia, seems to have her feet planted in Western reality even as she wiggles her toes in Eastern philosophy. Her story deals with five generations within a family, couplings that are sure to end in disaster when East meets West through intermarriage.
A social commentary within a novel.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The Seduction of Fairy Tales, February 24, 2003
By 
Richard Wells (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: The Seduction of Silence (Hardcover)
"The Seduction of Silence," is an easy book to read, quite involving, and 2/3's good. As you've read, it's a multigenerational saga, and though the author distances herself from the Indian slant, it is, through and through, a novel of India.

Bem Le Hunte places her story in rural India - the villages of the Himalayan region - and in that aspect as well as in the gentleness of the spirituality portrayed, it's unlike the seething urban dramas we've gotten used to. It's also quite connected to the "Ramayana," and a reader who knows that story will find many parallels in the wanderings of Aakash and Ram with Ram, Sita, and Lakshman. The primary spiritual lesson is "god will provide," and in this story god does provide - through thick and thin.

Ms. Le Hunte has a good feel for class, caste, character, and Hindu cosmology and though the novel is a bit on the "fairy tale" side I found the reality to be grounded enough to keep the story on track. She runs into difficulty when the venue shifts from village India to the hippie London of the 1960's. Her grasp of the milieu seems much less sure, and the story seems to suffer for being rushed; and though she provides us with a touching conclusion, it's a little too "deus ex machina," to be completely sasifying.

Even so, I recommend this book for its understanding of how the myths play out in daily life, and for an entertaining read.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent first novel, excellent novel period, January 15, 2003
This review is from: The Seduction of Silence (Hardcover)
I am always delighted in finding new fiction that is both entertaining and that it gives the reader several views of culturally rich characters and location.
After hearing Bem le Hunte read and share some excerpts from the book I am eagerly awaiting her second novel and I am recommending
The Seduction of Silence to many of my friends.
The combination of an almost perfect character, an inperfect wife, the trials of their offsprings and the beautiful setting in which the story develops make this book a favorite that has been well received abroad and finally comes to the US.
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
"Of all mountains, the Himalayas are the highest." Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Tulsi Devi, Jyoti Ma, Sister Mary, David De Souza, Guru Dev, Loreto Convent, Sister Agnes, Hari Krishna, Colonel Chopra, Jyotir Math, Shiv Kapoor, Uttar Kashi, Lord Krishna, Hari Rama, Hyde Park, Ishwar Das, Jesus Christ, Shankaracharya of the North, Chandni Chowk, Delhi Zoo, Good God, British Army, Divine Grace, Doctor Khanna, Patni Devi
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