Tell A Thousand Lies [Kindle Edition]

Rasana Atreya (Author)

Book Description

In a land where skin colour can determine one's destiny, fraternal twins PULLAMMA and LATA are about to embark on a journey that will tear their lives apart.

Dark skinned Pullamma dreams of being a wife. With three girls in her family, the sixteen year old is aware there isn't enough dowry to secure suitable husbands for them all. But a girl can hope. She's well versed in cooking, pickle making, cow washing -- you name it. She's
also obliged her old-fashioned grandmother by not doing well in school.

Fair skinned and pretty, her twin sister Lata would rather study medicine than get married. Unable to grasp the depth of Lata's desire, the twins' Grandmother formalizes a wedding alliance for the girl. Distraught, Lata rebels, with devastating consequences.

As Pullamma helps ready the house for her older sister Malli's bride viewing, she prays for a positive outcome to the event. What happens next is so inconceivable that it will shape Pullamma's future in ways she couldn't have foreseen.

A mainstream, multi-ethnic, world literature book from India, TELL A THOUSAND LIES is a sometimes wry, sometimes sad, but ultimately realistic look at how superstition and the colour of a girl's skin rules India's hinterlands.

If you like Khaled Hosseini (The Kite Runner) or Vikram Seth (A Suitable Boy), you might like this book.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Shortlisted for the 2012 Tibor Jones South Asia prize.

Nominated for the 2012 Global eBook Awards.

From the Author

Tell A Thousand Lies came about because Indian television is overrun with advertisements from manufacturers of fairness creams (aka skin lightening creams) that promise everything from good grades to nirvana, if only you use their particular brand of product. This bothered me enough that I wrote out a tagline -

Fairness Cream: Finding Solutions to Life's Vexing Problems, One Application at a Time

Then I proceeded to write a novel around it.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• File Size: 1292 KB
• Print Length: 342 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B007IX6W8Q
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,671 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Drama > Eastern
  • #3 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > Eastern

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Tell a Thousand Lies by Rasana Atreya March 19, 2012

By Karen Doering

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Tell a Thousand Lies
By Rasana Atreya
3/19/2012

What can you do if you are a poor girl living in rural India to change your future?

If you are light skinned, pretty and not too well educated your future as a wife will be assured. Your family will be able to find a husband for you even if you don't have much of a dowry. You know what is expected of you. Treat your husband like a prince, please your mother-in-law, dote on your sons and lament the birth of your daughters. The pattern is in place and you have been trained all your life to follow it like generations of girls before you.

But what if you are not light skinned, pretty, have a good dowry or come from a prominent family? Who will marry you when you have nothing of value to add to another family? Where does your future lie. Will you be the one who stays at home to take care of your family in their old age? Will you watch your friends marry and leave their homes behind while you stay static?

Can a light-skinned, pretty, overly educated girl find another path? One that leads to the city and an education in medicine. Or is the future etched so deeply in stone that the ability to change it is too overwhelming?

Three teenaged sisters, twins Lata and Pallamma, and their older sister Malli find the paths chosen for them by tradition and family circumstance changed in an instant. Not by fate and not by accident but by the scheming machinations of a politician who sees a chance to use the sisters to his own ends. His interference leads each sister down a path she has not chosen, changing not only their futures but the lives of their family, friends, villagers and the men each of them will marry.

But "Tell a Thousand Lies" is not only the story of three sisters coming of age in a rural village in India. It is the story of an ancient land, traditions followed for centuries, corrupt politicians, hardship, broken hearts and redemption. The story of a culture so steeped in tradition it turns on itself and destroys its own young.

This is a beautifully written story. The author's ability to set the scene is so strong you feel like you are standing beside the characters as they live their daily lives. The descriptions of the land and the people pull you into the charm and the dichotomy that is India. The story is both life affirming and heart-breaking with a realism that leaves you wondering if these people are characters in a novel or are they real.

Ms. Atreya has given us a tightly written, well-paced story. Her characters are well drawn, fully complete and believable. She crosses all her t's and dots all her I's making sure all loose ends are tied up by the end of the story and the resolution is both believable and inevitable without a literary "miracle" to give everyone a happy ever after.

I highly recommend this book for both young adults and adults of all ages. It is a coming of age novel in the best sense and adult literature in its fullness and complexity.

Karen Bryant Doering

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Heartwarming Read! March 10, 2012

By Holly J. Michael

Format:Kindle Edition

Tell a Thousand Lies is an engaging novel that draws you into the heart and days of Pullamma's India where superstitions, the wrong color skin, and dirty politicians can determine a women's fate.

Raised by her grandmother, after her mother dies in childbirth and her father deserts the family, Pullamma lets go of the comfort of childhood innocence, fun and closeness of her best friend Chinni, to face woman-hood in a peculiar situation she lands in.

We travel with Pullamma and all of her hardships as she goes from a young girl in rural mid-1980s India hoping for a municipal water connection and a good husband--in spite of her dark skin and insufficient dowry--through her years of forced Goddesshood and difficulties and betrayals that take her into her adult years.

Tell a Thousand Lies is a moving comedic story about a woman's survival within societal and familial expectations. It allows us to become a part of the life of an endearing girl who makes the most out of difficult situations. It's a story about bonds of friendships, broken and restored, and love. I couldn't put the book down through Pullamma's travels and trials in India.

Pullamma's determination to overcome so many odds kept me breathlessly turning the pages to see how she would get out of the next pickle, and I don't mean her homemade pickle that became a source of income and a catalyst for female bonding and new friendships. I cheered when Pullamma triumphed under the most difficult situations and bit my nails when she had to face the evil politician's mischief.

Atreya's eloquent writing and detailed observations of life for women in India as well as the beauty and historical charm of India come through beautifully in this novel. I enjoy books filled with cultural richness that enlighten and entertain and Rasana Atreya pulls this off beautifully in her debut novel.

Having traveled throughout India several times and having relatives who live in India, I appreciated the spot-on struggles Indian women faced in the past and continue to face even today.

Tell A Thousand lies is an emotional rollercoaster ride that makes you keep rooting for Pullamma as Atreya delightfully and hilariously infuses issues of class, religion, work, education, sexual roles, and the ties between women.

This is a very descriptive, well written story that draws you into the lives and emotions of the characters. A very good, humorous, poignant and heartwarming read.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars India's Not Really Full of Magic - Esp if you're a woman April 21, 2012

By Sarah Imber Safdar

Format:Kindle Edition

For people who like tales of India and Indians as mystical otherworldly creatures, this is not a book for you. I am grateful that Atreya doesn't resort to tricks of exoticism in her very modern story of life in an undereducated southeast Asian community. The book is fast paced and surprising, and I read it quickly, in just a few days, surprising myself by my urge to know what happened next. The author takes the hat trick of having an undereducated narrator win your sympathy and makes her unreliable as well. That makes the story even more interesting. I definitely recommend it.

More About the Author

Rasana Atreya is a blogger, foodie and novelist living in Hyderabad, India. She is also the mother of two grade schoolers who are desperate for the chance to design the cover of her second book. She's still thinking about that one. Her first novel, Tell A Thousand Lies, is an Amazon category bestseller.