Customer Reviews

The Tree Bride

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is easily one of the best fiction books I have read. Ms. Mukherjee weaves at least 4 stories together, connecting the lives of Tara Lata Gangooly (the Tree Bride); her great-great niece, Tara Chatterjee; Tara's OB-GYN Dr. V. Khanna; the Dr.'s grandfather Vertie Treadwell; John Mist, founder of Mishtigunj; and Abbas Sattar Hai, leader of the Indian Mafia.
These stories tell of the magic of "coincidence", how each person we meet can have an impact on our lives. An impact that is not felt, sometimes, for generations. As I read the magical history of the Tree Bride, interrupted to retell the adventures (worthy of any Robert Louis Stevenson novel) of John Mist and how he came from a foundling home in London to have a town in East Bengal named for him, I felt like I was hanging on to the sails of an "Indiaman" ship--or running from a tiger through a jungle. But I kept on, hardly able to wait to see how this story connected to the others when I reached the port or crossroads, panting in the sweltering Indian heat.
This book effortlessly takes the reader from modern-day California, to 19th century London, to India during the war for independence, back to England--post WWII, to India from native and English points of view during the British Colonial Period.
I was truly lost in the storm, and, when the ending did come, beautifully, I wanted to go back and delve deeper into each of the stories.
Magical, and highly recommended.

This book is a continuation of the story started by the author in the novel Desirable Daughters (also a great read). It is the fascinating examination by the main character of the history of her great-aunt, Tara-Ma, who died in police custody during the struggle for Indian independence. Tied into the storyline is the main character's own life and the late-life pregancy she is experiencing as she gets back together with her ex-husband. There is an element of suspense as she and her husband try to uncover the location of the man who tried to kill them in the previous book. This book is excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who can read!

was a trilogy either. It is not mentioned anywhere on the book jacket. I am not sure if knowing this would change my rating though. The book is very slow moving. I stopped at page 70 or so. The first 70 pages and perhaps the rest of the book are truly a history of India (and Britain's control of it). I found the history very interesting but there was not much of a story going on here. I was looking for more of a storyline than a history text.

Note to Readers: "The Tree Bride" is volume two of a trilogy and builds on the events that took place in volume one, "Desirable Daughters." These are extraordinarily beautiful, complex and somewhat mystical stories.

In order to understand and appreciate "The Tree Bride" you must read "Desirable Daughters" first. The missing piece of the "Tree Bride" --a beautifully written explanation of who and what the tree bride is-- can only be found in "Desirable Daughters."

Chalo. Kajey hat lagao. Let's get on with it.

Mukherjee's books are constructed with several layers of meanings. The very absorbing story line of each of these books follows the adventures of Tara Chatterjee, her husband Bishu, and their son, Rab. In volume one, Tara and 'Bish' are reunited after a gangster from India causes an explosion that destroys Tara's California home, seriously wounding Bish.

In volume two, the gangster reappears, and using the same cell-phone-based technology, causes another explosion aimed at Tara but killing instead her new friend, Victoria Treadwell.

A series of strange coincidences now leads Tara back to India to research her family tree. In India, she uncovers historical connections between herself, Victoria, and the gangster. She writes, "I am enough of a mystic, like Bish, to believe there are no coincidences, only convergences." [pg 27].

In "Desirable Daughters," which largely takes place in California and New Jersey, Mukherjee uses an underpinning of tectonic shifts, earthquakes, social dissonance and explosions as her framework. "The Tree Bride," mostly set in historic India, Mukherjee again uses the natural elements to frame her story; in this case, real and symbolic mist and fog.

Mist and fog are important in the founding of Tara's home village Mishtigunj by John Mist, a self-named English orphan, and reappear in the death scene of Victoria's ancestor, Vertie Treadwell, a retired British Civil servant who had been recalled from India at the end of the Raj.

As the elderly Vertie Treadwell dies, his life passes before his eyes. The fog of his thoughts and memories become a literary device to help teach the reader the history of British India and its independence movement. As his mind stumbles through the mist of time, the story of the tree bride, freedom fighter Tara Gangooly, becomes clear.

The deeper level of meaning in this book is the interplay of past and present in all of our lives: "The dance of free will and destiny is a complicated one in which each side casts a shadow."

This is a beautiful book, well-worth reading.

Kim Burdick
Stanton, Delaware

I picked this book because of its intriguing title. A tree bride! A child wed to a tree becuase of village beliefs. I looked forward to a fascinating read, since I am interested in women's stories from various cultures.
BUT -
I found myself plowing through accounts of men, foundlings in 1830's London orphanage homes, scurvied shipmates, pirates, East India company men, and a tangled mish-mash of Hai and Gangooly fellows dating back generations. Hello? Where is the tree bride? How does she live, day to day? Where are descriptions of her seventy decades of life?
As for the main character and her OBGYN - none of their conversations were believable. The book seems to assume that we know who this "famous" protagonist Tara is, and care for her and her family. Excuse me? Oh, this is part of a series? WELL WHY NOT SAY SO ON THE COVER?
Badly misrepresented, wordy, and assuming. Lost me at about page 70, too.
Only giving it two stars becasue I recognize Ms Mukherjee's talent and value her research. But DEFINITELY not worthy of a 5 Star.

Reading here for the first time that this is part of a trilogy, I see that there may be a reason why I felt a little let down at the end of the Tree Bride (not understanding, still, why the main character's life was threatened by a bomber). It's sort of like reading "The Two Towers" without knowing about the Fellowship of the Ring or the Return of the King. That said, I enjoyed this book immensely (I bought it in an airport and read it instead of Stephen Sears' "The Landscape Turned Red" -- which is not to say anything against the always excellent Stephen Sears). It is true that The Tree Bride has a large ensemble cast and one must be patient to understand the threads connecting the fabric of the story (the theme of which seems to be the conflict between artificial partition and natural connection) but if you are you will be rewarded. I thought the characters were well developed and interesting and I particularly enjoyed the micro review of Indian independence and partition -- so much so that I would like to read more.

And now that I know this was part of a trilogy, I am looking forward to reading "Desirable Daughters" and the third book.

READ "DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS" FIRST.

I'd even go with 3.5 stars -- though perhaps I would have enjoyed it more and ranked it higher if I'd known this was a sequel prior to reading it. I have ordered the first book "Desirable Daughters" and hope that "Tree Bride" comes together more fully after I've read the first installment.

Nothing on my hardback copy of "Tree Bride" indicated it is a sequel -- QUITE disappointing and, as it turned out, it lessened my appreciation of this book quite a bit.

Well-written, definitely -- Ms. Mukherjee is a talented writer. It just seemed disjointed and, I thought, could have benefited greatly from inclusion of a family tree. Perhaps with the first book as background I might not have needed a family tree -- I do not yet know.

This is an enchanting tale of a young Indian woman's search for her roots in old Bangladesh. The search itself is like following the roots of a tree, a fantastical tree that is the husband of her old aunt. Each bit of knowledge takes you deeper into the narrator's past, India's past, the ambivalence of modern Indians whose ancestors had to find identity under the British Raj. How much is fact or fiction in the telling of this history doesn't matter. The story, myth, mystique take us deep into the soul of India, as deep as we can go not having experienced it ourselves.

This book is second in a trilogy (first was "Desirable Daughters). I look forward to experiencing the third.

I'm sorry, but I found this book tedious and boring. The description on the book jacket made it seem much more interesting than it turned out to be.

The writing was prose in this novel but the plot was SO confusing. I really don't know what I read most the time. The only thing I got from the book was the main character's pregnancy in later years and how she dealt with it's changing herself. Other than that, the story was mish mash!