The Woman Who Knew Gandhi: A Novel [Paperback]

Keith Heller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 7, 2004

Based on an aside in Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography, in which he mentions a brief but seductive youthful flirtation with an Englishwoman, The Woman Who Knew Gandhi boldly imagines a long correspondence between a spiritual leader from the East and an ordinary woman from the West. In 1948, just after Gandhi's assassination, Martha Houghton receives a letter from Gandhi's son, who himself lies dying of tuberculosis in Bombay. Having found a stash of her letters to his father, he asks to meet her. The request sends Martha into a tailspin, for her husband knows nothing of her lifelong friendship with Gandhi.
Martha and her husband are forced to reevaluate their long marriage, and she must find a way to reconcile the disparate halves of her life. Moreover, their small community becomes a magnet for the press, and Martha finds her words twisted and used against her. Ultimately, she must decide whether to meet her old son's friend on his deathbed, or to remain in England and mend the rift in her marriage. Charmingly and elegantly written, The Woman Who Knew Gandhi explores the many definitions of love and friendship and the surprises of marriage.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Inspired by a line in Gandhi's autobiography, this "what if" story recreates a half-century-long friendship between the celebrated Indian pacifist and an ordinary English housewife. Martha and her husband, Samuel, a retired ironmonger, are idling away their twilight years in the rural English village of Hedge End, confident in their devotion to each other. Then, in 1948, just after Gandhi is assassinated, Martha receives an unlikely letter from his eldest, estranged son, Harilal. Alone and dying of tuberculosis in a Bombay hospital, Harilal has one last wish-he wants to meet the author of decades of secret, intimate correspondence with his father. To ensure Martha's compliance, he threatens to expose the clandestine relationship. Disinclined to yield to his demand-she's never traveled further than the Isle of Wight-Martha confesses the secret to Samuel, insisting it was nothing more than a platonic friendship, begun when Gandhi lodged with her aunt in Portsmouth. However, Martha is ill prepared for her husband and children's reactions, much less the disapproving attention from their Hedge End neighbors (who already find her spry independence unnerving) and the needling media. Post-WWII England and India provide an evocative backdrop as Heller explores the fragile bonds between marriage partners, friends, parents and their children, and breathes realistic life into Gandhi and his improbable paramour.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Martha Houghton, resident of a small English town, receives a letter indicating that someone knows about her long correspondence with the recently assassinated Mohandas Gandhi. Faced with a delicate threat of exposure, Martha tells her husband about the letter, precipitating a reevaluation of their marriage and a family crisis. Heller uses the particulars of the Houghtons' situation to explore the effect of the unexpected on a long-term marriage, tracking patterns of injury and healing and the ebb and flow of anger and forgiveness. He also portrays with detail and verisimilitude England in 1947 and the political ferment and social upheaval of the country as it recovered from WWII. Martha's plight and the way she resolves it center the book, provide the action, and keep readers' attention. The ending, however, based on improbable and inadequately understood motivations, leaves the reader ultimately baffled. Although it is not quite as cozy as the work of D. E. Stevenson and lacks the finesse and substance displayed in Barbara Pym's novels, this tale will still please readers of English village fiction. Ellen Loughran
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 207 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (January 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618335455
• ISBN-13: 978-0618335459
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,942,756 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Keith Heller has traveled widely and lived for extended periods of time in Japan, Spain, Argentina, and France. His first books were historical mysteries set in eighteenth-century London: Man's Illegal Life, Man's Storm, and Man's Loving Family. These were followed by a Holocaust novel, Snow on the Moon, that was a bestseller in the U. K. Most recently, The Woman Who Knew Gandhi was a finalist for the Best Novel by a Northern California writer. He is now working on a Young Adult thriller and preparing to return to France with his composer wife.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful read, January 9, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The Woman Who Knew Gandhi: A Novel (Paperback)

I stumbled across this book in a store-- I hadn't heard anything about it. And so I was surprised at how great it was. Keith Heller is a beautiful, understated writer and this is a really "satisfying" (as Elizabeth Berg says on the front) book. It's about the two sides of love, the practical and spiritual sides, and how one woman must reconcile them. I highly recommend this novel if you like subtle, rich, elegant writing and reading about the extraordinary moments of ordinary lives.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Classic Novel, August 25, 2004

By 

C. L. Taber "Froehliche Frau" (Indpls, Indiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Woman Who Knew Gandhi: A Novel (Paperback)

This novel has every element of a classic American novel. Post-war England is contrasted with the newly independant India. The characters are multi-dimensional, unlike too many "cardboard" characters in current writings. Character development is a key element of the novel, though the plot is engrossing as well. The reader is drawn into the story from page one and each page has some pithy observation which the reader is eager to discuss with someone else. There are subtle leit-motivs if one is inclined to look for them. Besides the philosophical comparisons of various marriages, religions, countries, values, happiness, there seem to be subtle questions about loyalty to one's country, mate, family, history and other human importances. This is a book that I will read again, even though there are yet so many unread books out there. After a marathon of reading this summer, finding this gem outweighs all the precious time spent reading mediocre books. After reading the last paragraph of this book I was reluctant to begin another. What can follow perfection?

5.0 out of 5 stars Rethinking Friendships, Relationships and the Past, November 17, 2007

By 

Cecelia E Connally (Cleveland, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Woman Who Knew Gandhi: A Novel (Paperback)

A friend of mine mentioned this book to me because his book club was reading it. Upon hearing the title, the premise sounded intriguing and I picked it up at the library. I had no idea that I would discover such a treasure and do not understand why this book was not on the best seller list. Reading it was like watching an Academy Award Winning Judi Dench movie and if its ever made into a movie, she would be ideal for the main character, Martha.

As is obvious from the title, the book deals with a British woman in the late 1940's who has shared a friendship with Gandhi in her youth. Unbeknownst to her husband, the friendhip continued over 5 decades, mostly through letters. The novel centers on the time period immediately after the death of Gandhi when Martha's husband, family and friends find out about the relationship and how they are changed by the knowledge. Martha discovers her true friends and also discovers a great deal about her children and her husband.

There are a number of underlying themes that the prosepective reader might want to watch for that will enhance their enjoyment of the work. One is aging - dealing with getting old and how people and relationships change over time. Another is the extent to which something a person did in their earlier life affects their contemporary relationship - do relationships change because of the infusion of some piece of knowledge? Readers should also consider the concept of forgiveness - that is if you think that Martha did something for which she has to seek forgiveness. There is also the theme of male/female relationships - can such a relationship exist without sexual overtones and be purely plutonic? Sprinkled throughout the novels are the subplots of imperalism - the relations between the Britain and India and of course sutble racism. If you don't like the word imperalism, you might want to substitute exchange of cultures - how did the British and Indian cultures mix and how did this effect the relationship between Martha and Gandhi and the Martha's family's view of the relationship? Would they have treated the knowledge of the relationship the same if the person she knew in the past was Churchill or any other white male who became famous or not so famous?

Everyone who reads this novel will stop and consider some past relationship and perhaps reevaluate current relationships. Would your current relationship survive a situation such as the one in the novel? Can a relationship of many years totally change because of one conversation? Was there perhaps a distrust between Martha and her husband Samuel all the time? I would offer one caveat to the reader, try to read the book in the contxt of the time in which it is set - 1948. If you try to impose 21st century values on the characters, you will perhaps judge them too harshly. But no matter what the context, I'm sure you will come away dwelling into your own past.

And for those romantics, like myself, there is the ever present question of whether or not everyone has one true love that will last no what the time, distance or circumstance.