BOOK REVIEW: The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff is an entertaining revenge fantasy that is simultaneously amusing and disturbing. Set in an unnamed rural village in India, the novel incorporates tropes and truths of poverty, the caste system, male privilege and oppression of females, alcoholism, domestic abuse, rape, and governmental corruption. 

Geeta, the protagonist, is an outcast. Five years ago, her husband disappeared. Everyone assumes she killed him. Even those who don’t believe it pretend to, and she is feared and mocked as a churel, a witch-figure. Since her husband’s disappearance, Geeta has supported herself by jewelry making – her entrepreneurship aided by a government micro-loan. The loan is not to her as an individual, but to a group of five women, who must meet weekly to make payments to a loan officer. The women are not her friends (though one of them used to be her best friend) but they are bound to each other by economic necessity. It’s a lonely life, but aloneness has its advantages.

Her life changes when one of the women comes to her for a favor. Farah wants to kill her own abusive husband and needs help. Geeta reluctantly helps her, and before long, she is the go-to murder consultant.

It’s a novel of female friendship, or at least, solidarity. The plot, however, requires a good deal of female cattiness and backstabbing before friendships are cemented. It’s a fast-paced book with numerous plot twists, some of which surprise and some of which are predictable. The pacing of the book is aided by easy-to-read “familiar” language. There is a good deal of snark. The women’s dialogues and Geeta’s inner monologues sound like young Americans talking (“yeah, right,” the verbal tic “like,” “screw it” etc) – but I have no knowledge of, so can’t claim to judge, whether this jargon is realistic in translation or a sort-of Americanized style of speech adopted so readers can be in on the jokes. The over-the-top violence, particularly at the story’s climax, is interwoven with a cartoonish bumbling to counteract the darkness of what is going on. The ending gets preachy. Nevertheless, it’s a page-turner. And readers will want the women to prevail.

BOOK REVIEW: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Lately I’ve been reading some good books, some great books, and some mediocre books. And now, I’ve just finished reading The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese, which is in a category all by itself. This novel is monumental. I think I loved it even more than I loved Verghese’s earlier Cutting for Stone.

Some novels draw you in slowly. Others capture you from the very first words. The Covenant of Water is one of the latter. It is a long book, over 700 pages, but it reads quickly because it is impossible to put down.

This sprawling multi-generational saga follows, in particular, the life story of Ammachi (Big Ammachi) of Parambil in South India. In 1900, at the age of 12, she marries a widower with a young child and she grows to become the matriarch of the family and a pillar of the community. Her husband’s family has a long history of a strange “condition,” a familial inheritance of a tendency to die by drowning. The future victim can be identified by their avoidance of water and varying degrees of deafness. This fascinating medical oddity is tracked through the generations, influencing the course of their lives. 

The second major protagonist is Digby, a surgeon from Glasgow who enters the Indian Medical Service because, as a Catholic, he is denied further training in the British system. Digby is a kind, lonely man and an excellent surgeon. However, a scuffle with his chief and a disastrous love affair force his exile from Madras and he must make a new life for himself.

There are too many characters to mention and too many twists and turns of the plot to summarize more. And yet, Verghese manages to keep the interest level high with his beautiful prose and his well-developed characters. Their lives all connect like the system of rivers and canals on which they live. The story manages to be completely realistic even as a tiny bit of magical realism is injected. I was particularly fascinated by the medical aspects of the storyline, but there is something in here for everyone.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

BOOK REVIEW: The Secret of the India Orchard by Nancy Campbell Allen

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

Finally! I’ve read a book. This has been a bizarre summer and I’m getting no reading done.

However, The Secret of the India Orchard by Nancy Campbell Allen is being released this month, and it sounded like a good candidate for bringing me out of my reading slump.

I’ve read a few books in the Proper Romance line published by Shadow Mountain. They are clean romances that are consistently a cut above. The Secret of India Orchard is no exception.

Sophia Elliot, sister of the Earl of Stansworth, has caught the eye and the heart of her brother’s best friend, Anthony Blake, the Earl of Wilshire. He has determined to court her formally. Unfortunately, on the same day that he plans to ask her brother’s permission, he is contacted by his old employer, Lord Braxton, head of spies in the War Department. Although Anthony felt himself happily out of the business when he inherited his title, Braxton has another job for him. A top secret document, naming all the important spies as well as their habits, families, and acquaintances, has been stolen from Braxton’s office. Anthony is the only one he trusts to hunt down the document before it is sold to the French or some other enemy.

Anthony does not like Braxton and wants to refuse. However, that would put all his former colleagues at risk, as well as his friends. Sophia is named in the document. To keep her safe, he must take the job.

The onerous duty requires that he leave immediately, dumping Sophia in a letter which stresses the brotherly friendship he feels for her, to return to the continent and resume his previous undercover activities, which include acting like a devil-may-care playboy.

Sophia is heartbroken.

Two years later, the document is still not recovered. Anthony has traced it to India. Sophia has also decided to go to India for an adventure to take her mind off her continuing heartbreak. There is an alternative marriage mart there for Englishwomen who haven’t had success in London. (Sophia would have had great success but for her continued devotion to Anthony, despite her best attempts to forget him.) Sophia wants to move on. On the other hand, she knows Anthony will be there. . .

Naturally, they are thrown together and the feelings they had for one another blaze back to the fore. To the book’s credit, the love story does not bog down in mutual misunderstandings and petty recriminations. They care for and respect one another too much for that.

In addition to a thoughtful, mature, sweet Romance, there is a page-turning mystery for the two to solve. Who stole the documents and why? There is abundant danger, a little bit of clashing of cultures, and despicable villains–something for everyone! For those who enjoy historical mystery/Romance, this one comes highly recommended.

BOOK REVIEW: The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter

The next book in our history/historical fiction book group is The Strangler Vine by M.J. Carter. One reason I love historical fiction is for the perspective it brings to current day problems. Whenever I start to think we are living in times of unprecedented corruption and instability, a good historical novel reminds me that this stuff has been going on in some form or another for all of recorded human history and probably before that.

In this adventure set in India in the mid 1800s, two men, employees of the East India Company are sent deep into native lands to look for Mountstuart, a missing poet whose latest work has offended the Company and its wealthy backers.

William Avery is a first-year, low-level soldier who is naive, loyal to the Company, and a romantic devotee of the poet who has disappeared. Jeremiah Blake is a disillusioned ex-officer who has gone native and wants nothing to do with the Company’s orders. However, he has reasons of his own for wanting to find Mountstuart.

There are elements of the "buddy" novel that I always enjoy. The two men are ill-suited at first, but grow to trust and depend on each other. Blake is the hardened jack-of-all-trades who can speak all the native languages, is a master of disguise, and who seems to have a secret knowledge that gets him out of any difficulty. Avery is fumbling and a poor judge of character, but he rides well, shoots even better, and is blessed with what he himself calls "stupid good health," which is crucial given the clime and the various injuries he sustains. He’s a very honorable man, so his disillusionment hits him hard and the reader will empathize.

Mountstuart left Calcutta for the interior ostensibly to find the subjects for his next poem: adherents of the Thuggee cult, murderous natives who kill to please the goddess Kali. An extensive mythology has sprung up around them thanks to their study by a particularly zealous Company commander who has made it his life’s work to root them out. Avery and Blake are in constant danger from the moment they leave Calcutta, but it becomes increasingly unclear who it is that they have to fear.

This dark novel puts the reader squarely into the exotic locale where the intrigues are palpable. The two heroes are easy to root for. And the historical context is top notch. This is a book one, and there are two more in the series so far, so they are now on my to-be-read list.