meganbmoore: (rani mukherjee)
Tilo is a young woman trained in the ways of spices and made immortal (in the form of an old woman) when she is sent out into the world (specifically, California) to use her knowledge of spices to help people.

Like the children’s book The Conch Bearer, which is the only other book of Divakaruni’s that I’ve read, the imagery is vivid and involving and almost makes you feel like you’re right there, though the early part of the book went a little too deep into surrealism for me. Unlike The Conch Bearer, the ending actually makes sense and works, instead of leaving the reader if a horrified sense of “WTF?”

Divakaruni focuses on culture and subculture, and not only Indian and Indian-American, as seen through Tilo and the visitors to her shop, which she is forbidden to leave. There’s also an understated romance that plays out a little different from the norm, though in someways, I kind of wish it had just been several hundred pages of Tilo observing her customers and piecing their lives together.

Has anyone seen the movie with Aishwarya Rai? Is it any good?
meganbmoore: (author said what?)

Anand’s family lived a happily middle-class life until his father disappeared and his sister became mute with shock after witnessing a violent death. Now he, his mother and his sister live in poverty in Kolkata, and Anand has had to drop out of school and take a job with a mean stall owner to make ends meet. But then he gives his last food to an old man, and along with a street girl, he’s drawn into a war between a secret brotherhood and an their supernatural enemy.

The book follows the Heroic Boy’s Quest Template as closely as it possibly can, but brings modern India* and mythology to life very well. It’s painfully predictable for an adult used to quest stories, but is probably just the thing for kids.

That said, despite the criticism of predictability, which is primarily based on my being over twice the target age, my only real criticism is the ending, which certainly isn’t predictable, but also makes no sense.

spoilers )
This may be why adults should be careful of what children’s fiction they read?

*According to the author bio, Divakaruni lives in Houston, or did in 2003, at least. If the Texan kids she knows are anything at all like the Texan kids I knew 20 years ago (or know now), then just the setting could make it the most original thing they’ve ever read.

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meganbmoore

July 2020

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