Amazon.com Review
At 32 years old, Sharmila Sen is a successful graphic artist in Chicago, and possesses the natural beauty of her Indian heritage ("You know, big eyes, full mouth, shoulder-length black hair, and a slender body," she explains). Indeed she seems to have it all--except for one thing: a husband. As the daughter of educated upper-caste Indian immigrants, Sharmila is assured by her parents that they can arrange the perfect marriage with an affluent and handsome bachelor in India. "I'm almost the last person I'd expect to marry an up-and-coming young executive in New Delhi," she admits, but apparently having lost all patience with American men, Sharmila agrees to marry the widower Raj Khosla, who seems to have all the qualities a woman would want: good looks, money, and charm.
When Sharmila arrives in India, she is first met by Raj's driver, Prem, because Raj has been delayed on business. This initial disappointment is the first of a series that Sharmila experiences as she adjusts to her new world, a world that both appeals to her Indian identity and offends her modern sensibilities. Raj is away a lot on business, so there is little chance for the betrothed to get to know each other. His household, run by his controlling mother, is haunted by the tragedy of his first wife's death and is not the sanctuary Sharmila longs for. Her personal tour guide and only true friend, Prem, grows more and more attractive each day, but his low status as a Dalit (an "untouchable") complicates their relationship. As the bride-to-be inwardly struggles with both her instinctive distrust of Raj (even his mother warns her that "Raj has always been popular with the women") and the rigid social conventions that disapprove of her feelings for Prem, she must face the fact that her future happiness is in jeopardy.
Bharti Kirchner, who has authored several Indian cookbooks and one other novel, Shiva Dancing, has conceived a compelling story complete with betrayal, forbidden love, and heated moments of passion--but one-dimensional characters, predictable plotting, and overwrought metaphors ("An invisible sword of neglect wounds me") leach the tale of its richness. Nevertheless, there's a certain charm to Sharmila's search for love and belonging, and Kirchner's skillful infusion into the narrative of the exotic smells, colors, and chaos that make up India goes a long way toward mitigating the book's flaws. --Rebecca Robinson
From Publishers Weekly
Sharmila Sen, Chicago-born graphic artist and aerobics instructor, is a "thoroughly modern" 32-year-old woman who's looking for lasting love and a way to get in touch with her Indian heritage. Reeling from a series of short, broken romances, Sharmila counterintuitively tries to achieve both goals with one move: bowing to her concerned, traditional Indian mother's wishes, Sharmila agrees to an arranged marriage. Soon, New Delhi electronics executive Raj Khosla, whom she has never met, is chosen as her fiance, and Sharmila moves to India, a country she vaguely remembers from a single childhood trip. The premise of Indian-born Seattle novelist (Shiva Dancing) Kirchner's amorous misadventure seems like a pretext for a witty dissection of some of India's anachronisms and rigidities, notably arranged marriage, male chauvinism and the stigmatization of lower-caste or "untouchable" persons. Sharmila, arriving in Delhi, tries hard to fall in love with Raj, even as she discovers that her exacting fiance, a stuffed shirt, travels constantly, beds other women and may be concealing a dark secret about the circumstances surrounding the death of his first wife. Fortunately, Sharmila comes to her senses when she discovers Raj in bed with the housemaid, and by then she's found genuine love with the Khoslas' chauffeur, honest, noble Prem, a well-educated "untouchable." But in one of the many improbable plot twists, Sharmila's mother destroys her plans to marry Prem, offending his pride with a $50,000 bribe to get lost. The novel bristles with postfeminist insights into "how women perpetuate their deplorable condition" in India, but more eerily describes how the families of the betrothed conspire to keep the ill-matched pair together despite their obvious discord. Though Kirchner's cautionary tale is sometimes smart, swift and funny, with rich dollops of local color, the story's unlikely trajectory makes it hard to muster much interest in Sharmila's romantic dilemma.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
by Bharti Kirchner
