“Tell me the story of Everest,” she said, a fervent smile sweeping across her face, creasing the corners of her eyes. “Tell me about this mountain that’s stealing you away from me.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie  (JAN 6, 2014)

Above All Things is the fictional story of George Mallory’s third and final attempt to conquer Mount Everest. I am no mountain climber but those who climb and “conquer” mountains have always fascinated me as does the process these mountaineers undergo to make a successful climb. Years ago I read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, and then Simon Mawer’s The Fall and I was hooked. To me, Everest has always been the “Big One.” Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, its peak rising more than 29,000 feet. Back in the early 20th century it was a mountain that had defeated and/or killed all who attempted to scale her. Mallory and his team had made two attempts and failed. Unfortunately, today more than 3,500 people have successfully climbed the 29,029 ft. mountain and more than a tenth of that number scaled the peak just over the past year. On one day alone in 2012, 234 climbers reached the peak, (a bit crowded)….leaving their “junk” all over the mountain. As more and more people try to test themselves against Everest, often paying over $100,000 for a “guided climb,” most of the people with ambition to scale the mountain, and the money to pay, can reach the summit. Of course modern climbing gear technology and very experienced Sherpas make the difference.

But back in 1924 things were quite different. Many faced the mountain with determination and died making the climb without oxygen and battling the ferocious elements. Mallory joined the 1924 Everest expedition, led, as in 1922, by General Bruce. Mallory believed that, due to his age (he was 37 years old at the time of the ascent), it would be his last opportunity to climb the mountain and, when touring the US, proclaimed that that expedition would successfully reach the summit. The question is whether George really did reach the summit…or not. Historians will probably never know the real story. Mallory died on the mountain. But did he die returning from the summit or on his way to the top? This is a question that has plagued many people for years.

Howard Somervell, a close friend of George Mallory’s and fellow mountaineer who once attempted Everest, watched Mallory leave on his last attempt to climb the mountain in June 1924. Somervell said, “after the final attempt, Mallory had forgotten his camera. Somervell lent his friend his own camera. “So if my camera was ever found,” he said, “you could prove that Mallory got to the top.'”

In 1999,an expedition was organized, funded by the BBC. The purpose was to find Somervell’s camera. Instead the searchers found Mallory’s body. There was no camera, though, and still no answer to the biggest mystery in mountaineering: who climbed Mount Everest first? Opinion remains divided and the discovery of Mallory’s frozen corpse in 1999 failed to yield definitive evidence either way. You will have to read this historical novel to decide for yourself whether he made the peak and was the first man to stand on that extraordinary and virginal spot.

Above All Things is also a love story – actually a love triangle. Mallory and his wife, Ruth, loved each other deeply. She supported him, outwardly, in his endeavors. They had 3 children together. However, her husband was fatally obsessed with his love for a mountain – Ruth’s incomparable rival. The narrative alternates between Ruth, doing the housework and taking care of the children at home in Cambridge, and Mallory climbing and struggling on the slopes. She does want him to succeed but she is afraid, as anyone would be. She wants to live a “normal life” with a full time husband. The couple wrote constantly but as Mallory and his team moved further and further away from civilization, it became more and more difficult to send and receive mail.

The tension really increases when Mallory makes the final ascent with 21-year-old teammate Sandy Irvin.

Above All Things is a gripping, suspenseful and beautifully written novel….poetic at times. There are no spoilers in this review as the finale is history. Ruth’s narrative is at times heartbreaking as she waits daily for word from George. George, meanwhile comes closer to death with every page. Avalanches and falling ice, hypothermia, the extremely high-altitude, pulmonary edema, excessive fatigue, confusion, etc., were and are major causes of death when scaling mountains such as Everest. Many of Mallory’s team, who lived to tell the tale, recounted these hardships.

Tanis Rideout’s characters are quite complex. The extensive research undertaken in order to write Above All Things is obvious, and the real letters, salvaged, between Ruth and Mallory truly give insight into their relationship and characters.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 71 readers
PUBLISHER:	Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam (February 12, 2013)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tanis Rideout
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Essay
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer The Fall by Simon Mawer The Ice Soldier by Paul Watkins

Bibliography:

• Above All Things (2012; 2013 in US)

“In the old days, you had caste, and you had religion: they taught you how to eat, marry, live and die. But in Bombay, caste and religion had faded away, and what had replaced them, as far as he could tell, was the idea of being respectable and living among similar people. All his adult life Mastejri had done so; but now in the space of just a few days, he had shattered the husk of a respectable life and tasted its bitter kernel.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (SEP 20, 2011)

When does the heartfelt convictions of one solitary man negate the jointly held consensus of the rest of any civic society?

That is the question posed at the center of Aravind Adiga’s audacious new novel, an impressive and propulsive examination of the struggle for a slice of prime Mumbai real estate. It is a worthy follow-up to Adiga’s Booker Prize novel, White Tiger, as he goes back to the well to explore the changing face of a rapidly growing India.

Adiga pits two flawed men against each other.  The first is Dharmen Shah, a burly and self-made real estate mogul who is the “master of things seen and things unseen.” Through his left-hand man, the shady Shananmugham, he offers each resident of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society the highest price ever paid for a redevelopment project in the suburb of Vakola.

Just about every resident jumps at the chance to sell – the anxious Ibrahim Kudwa, an Internet-store owner and the only observant Muslim in the neighborly society; social worker Georgina Rego who loathes amoral redevelopers but wants to trump her wealthy sister; Sengeeta Puri, who cares for her son afflicted with Down’s Syndrome; Ramesh Ajwani, an ambitious real-estate broker and more.

Only one resident holds out: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher who lives alone after the recent death of his wife and the death of his daughter. Only here, at Vishram, can he cling to his memories and so he refuses to sell, even when the pot is sweetened… even when he is threatened emotionally and physically. Masterji is the one immutable roadblock between Shah and his legacy.

Whether the reader sympathizes with Masterji – who stands in the way of his neighbors’ most audacious dreams, and whose integrity and incorruptibility borders on narcissism – may be equivalent to, say, how each of us felt with the Ralph Nader spoiler in the Bush-Gore election. Was he an honorable man to have taken a stand? Or was he simply an egotist? There is a grudging admiration for Masterji’s stand, mixed with an impatience and frustration at how this high-principled man stubbornly torpedoes the will of the majority.

Shah is ruthless but also fair-minded: his price is more than fair. Masterji is principled but tin-eared to his neighbors’ pleas as the deadline to accept the offer looms. And as the developer – and his one-time friends – become more and more desperate, the novel cranks up to almost unbearable suspense, with a hint of a Lord of the Flies scenario. Like Piggy in that novel, Masterji is seen as less and less human as the conflict endures.

The background to this tension-filled plot is Mumbia itself, where countless workers commute on nightmarishly overstuffed trains, where they all emerge: “fish, birds, the leopards of Borivali, even the starlets and super-models of Bandra, out of the prismatic dreams of Mother Garbage. Here, fetid slums, the most luxurious high-rises of the future, and the temples of old co-exist within a fragile and all-too-often corrupt democracy.

A Dickensian quality pervades this ambitious novel, which fearlessly tackles electrifying themes: what price growth? Will good people risk their humanity when faced with a chance to score a big payday? When does the will of a man who foregoes monetary gain resemble selfishness as opposed to virtue? And who can we trust to stand by us when we take a lone stance? This book of contrasts – between a man of finance and a man of virtue (although, of course, it is not as simple as that)… between wealth and squalor… between the old and the new is a tour de force. And it is certain to add to Aravind Adiga’s already sterling reputation.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 94 readers
PUBLISHER:	Knopf (September 20, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Aravind Adiga
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The White Tiger

Bibliography:

• The White Tiger (2008) 
• Between the Assassinations (2009)
• Last Man in the Tower  (2011)

“Fatherhood held at its heart a sweet, paradoxical masochism, the self-abnegation of one willing to die for another. Why else would he have come to this place?”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (JUN 19, 2011)

The core of this exotic fusion of mainstream and literary fiction is defined by the eponymous title– displacement, exclusion, alienation, and even expulsion. The exquisite, poetic first chapter thrusts the reader immediately into a remote setting in Kathmandu 2006, where American cardiologist, Peter Scanlon and his seventeen-year-old daughter, Alex, face a guerilla death squad in the Himalayas. The reader is instantly spellbound with the story, where survival and danger coalesce in a taut, tense thriller that examines contrasts in exile: spirituality within human suffering, inner peace outside of war, and prosperity beyond pestilence.

Backtrack to 2005, and the events that shaped the current peril of the Scanlons. Peter, forced to expel his troubled daughter from proximity to her meth addict mother, removes her from the U.S. to start a new life. At his persuasion, Alex pitches a dart at an atlas to select a new home, which lands on Kathmandu, a deep valley surrounded by colossal mountains, and a politically sensitive and turbulent place marred by outlaws, massacres and instability. Peter gets a job at a volunteer health clinic, where diseases he has never seen and cries he has never heard permeate the city and pierce his cynical American heart.

Warring Maoists pervade the mountainside and threaten the life of citizens, and the lawless and nihilistic underworld controls the corrupt police and politicians. Moreover, the clinic’s acquisition of life-saving drugs depends a lot on the negotiation with these syndicate bosses of the city, specifically a savage man who runs a huge sex trafficking ring of young females, many who are sick with STD’s. Peter’s desire to save these girls threatens his MD’s license and his personal safety, and his frustration to cure the sick is challenged by the powerful epidemics that are resistant to antibiotics.

Peter and Alex live in relative comfort compared to the natives, but without heat and in extreme temperatures. Peter’s boss at the clinic has arranged for a housekeeper/cook, Sangita, a Tibetan woman whose daughter, Devi, is Alex’s age. Alex and Devi bond instantly, and Santiga’s maternal instincts are a welcome energy to the household. Mina, the nurse at the clinic who functions more like an agitating partner, vexes Peter, as well as beguiles him.
Ailments, treachery, and poverty permeate the city like the thick, grey fog and charcoal sky that hovers over the inhabitants. A feeling of dread snakes through the narrative, yet a soulful backbone of human stout-heartedness and endurance surprises the reader at each descent of gravity. Groner’s exuberant prose imbues the story with keen paradoxes and nimble dialogue that flow with sharp, pointed wit. The pace is quick, thrilling and cinematic; you will probably finish this novel in a few sturdy sittings.

The disadvantage of this hybrid genre of fiction is the tendency to inject the main characters with a staggering puissance. They wear their courage a little too easily, including the teenagers. There are also several convenient and predictable plot turns that are too facile, giving the narrative a rushed simplicity at times. Also, although Peter is out of his element, he steadily challenges pernicious criminals with a force and conniving that periodically flouts credibility.

Mina, who enters as an intriguing individual, flattens out as her contentious nature is mitigated. Sangita turns out to be a straw character, as are several other players in this drama. Buddhist practices lend a warm and exalted glow to the story, but almost tips into precious territory at intervals.

However, this is a potent story that, despite some inorganic elements, never fails to fill the reader with wonder. The magic arises from the immaculate prose and imagery, as well as luminous, cosmic turns of phrase, and the ties that bind humanity. This is a novel ripe with quotable passages, with a landscape of flourishing detail. As a story of exile, it lures and invites the reader within its foreign enclosures to a map that contours the human heart.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Spiegel & Grau (June 7, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Cary Groner
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Bibliography:

• Exiles (June 2011)

“Bakul and Mukunda had populated Songarh with their own secret places and people. To them it throbbed with magic and meanings which only the two of them could share. They had been together always, ever since Mukunda had joined the household when he was six and Bakul four. They had agreed they were ‘both’ orphans: after all, Bakul had reasoned, she was an orphan too because her mother was dead and her father, an archeologist, was away on digs in other parts of the country for such long years at a stretch that she forgot his face in between.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (APR 21, 2011)

The title of this book alone drew me in; that and I’m partial to books about India. This is a fine book on many levels and I was not disappointed. It’s a multigenerational novel, a great love story, a cross-cultural learning experience, and a book about yearning, hope, loss, money and betrayal. It captures the big themes of life and does a great job of keeping the reader turning the pages.

The story starts out in 1907 when Amulya takes his family from Calcutta to Songarh, a small town on the edge of the jungle. He has a wife and two grown sons, along with one daughter-in law. He builds a house in the middle of nowhere. There are no other houses nearby except for one belonging to an English couple across the street. There is dirt, mud, the screech of monkies and not much else. Kananbala, Amulya’s wife, gradually loses her sanity from the loneliness and utters irrelevant profanities at the oddest times. Amulya confines Kananbala to her room so as to avoid embarrassment. There she languishes, for the most part alone and lonely. She takes to watching the comings and goings of the English couple across the street and is witness to a murder. Her interpretation of what she sees has a fascinating outcome.

Amulya owns a spice factory where he concocts herbal remedies and perfumes that he sells. The language in Solgarh is Hindi whereas the language in Calcutta, where they came from is Bengali. Gradually, the family becomes fluent in Hindi but it is a struggle. While Amulya is alive, the factory does very well financially and the house he builds for his family is quite grand.

As time progresses, Nirmal, the single son, takes a wife named Shanti. They have a daughter named Bakul but Shanti dies in childbirth and Nirmal is left to raise Bakul on his own. Nirmal is an archeologist and geologist who is also a roamer. He is home very infrequently and sometimes does not see Bakul for years at a time. It just so happens that Amulya is sponsoring Mukunda, a young boy in the local orphanage. He brings Mukunda home to provide a friend for Bakul. Bakul is four and Mukunda six when Mukunda comes to live in Amulya’s household. This causes a whole set of difficulties because Mukunda’s caste is unknown. He may even be a child from a jungle tribe.

Mukunda and Bakul grow up together and are close in every way. They love to play at Mrs. Barnum’s house, the Englishwoman from across the way. She lives under the shadow of suspicion as her husband was killed on her front stoop and she has always been a suspect in the murder. Nevertheless, Mrs. Barnum, who likes to drink a lot, stages monthly birthday parties for herself and the children are always invited. She has a huge library that Mukunda goes through, reading just about every book there.

As Bakul and Mukunda grow older, the family starts to worry about improprieties. What if they were to be too intimate with one another? How do they know the appropriate way to act? They stay out together to all hours and all their time is spent with one another. A decision is made to send Mukunda away to boarding school. The reason given is that it is necessary for him to get a good education. However, he feels betrayed, thrown out just like he was thrown out when he was put into the orphanage. He becomes bitter and resentful, blaming Nirmal for his perceived exile.

The years go by and we learn about Mukunda and Bakul’s adulthood. There are many surprises in this book and as the story unfurls there is a lot of tension and build-up towards the finale. Parts of the book have coincidences that seem too much like a deus ex machina. However, it all falls into place beautifully. The novel is in the third person except for the last part of the book which is told in the first person by Mukunda. This part is his story. The writing is lyrical and the story is gripping. Though this is a debut novel, the reader would never know it. Anuradha Roy writes with a polished hand and the result is a reader’s delight.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Free Press; Original edition (April 5, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Anuradha Roy
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Haunting Bombay by Shilpa Agarwal The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

Bibliography:

• An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008; April 2011 in US)
• Folded Earth

“Sometimes when a false self cracks, we find there’s nothing inside. One of the sad things you learn in therapy is that there are some people who are beyond help, I mean direct help. They’re like black holes. They can suck the life out of anyone who tries to help them. So you need to take care of yourself, yes?”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett  (FEB 13, 2011)

The amazingly versatile Gruber has done it again, filling us armchair adventurers with knowledge as well as thrills and making the outlandish plausible.

This time he leaves behind themes of previous books – the diabolical intricacies of the art world (The Forgery of Venus), Shakespearean intrigue (The Book of Air and Shadows), Cuban Santeria (The Jimmy Paz trilogy) – to take on the intrigues of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Before you start groaning, let me say that those who find the whole muddle a hopeless quagmire will gain greater understanding and those who prefer their political thrillers in black and white should look elsewhere.

The narrator is Theo Laghari, a Pakistani-American U.S. Special Forces soldier with a back-story any boy would envy. Born to a prominent Lahore family, he enjoys a privileged upbringing, a bit marred by the storms his Polish-American former circus magician mother creates by her outrageous behavior, like going on the Haj disguised as a boy then writing a book about it.

A sudden tragedy ends this comfortable if insecure boyhood, inculcating the young Theo into the code of the Pashtuns (the tribe of his best friend and his grandfather’s best friend, Theo’s foster father) and spiriting him off to Afghanistan where he joins jihad against the Russians, training that well prepares him for his third incarnation in the U.S. military.

The present-day kidnapping of Theo’s mother, Sonia, along with the international group she has gathered together in Pakistan for a peace conference, kick starts the plot. Point of view alternates between Theo and Sonia, with detours to Cynthia Lam, an ambitious Vietnamese-American NSA officer whose facility for languages leads her to believe that intel concerning a Pakistani nuclear bomb plot is a hoax.

Sonia is appropriately larger than life, manipulating her unsophisticated captors with Sufi dream interpretations and Jungian psychology. She can discuss all aspects of jihad, Islam and hypocrisy, and arouses brutal anger as well as doubt.

Religious observance – her native Catholicism in the West and her adopted Islam in the East – grounds her, but she is a Sufi at heart. “They believe that everything written about God is in some sense wrong….He’s always a surprise and trying to chain Him to a human religion is folly.”

This is a talky novel, but the ideas are well put, thought provoking and go some distance toward making sense of Islamic and Pashtun honor, tradition and history, though no easy solution to the mess is on offer. The kidnap situation is highly unstable, including videotaped beheadings, and Theo’s rescue plans unfold in classic thriller style.

There are a number of twists and surprises at the end as well as some unanswered questions and at least one gratifying thread-tying development.

Gruber is a fine writer and researcher (who has in his past life been a chef, a marine biologist, a traveling hippie and rock group roadie, a civil servant at the highest Washington echelons, an environmental expert, a speechwriter and more) who puts his eclectic talents to excellent use in his wide-ranging fiction.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 91 readers
PUBLISHER:	St. Martin’s Griffin; Reprint edition (February 15, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Michael Gruber
EXTRAS:	Michael Gruber discusses The Good Son Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Valley of Bones

Bibliography:

Jimmy La Paz Series

• Tropic of Night (2004)
• Valley of Bones (2005)
• Night of the Jaguar (2006)

Stand-alone thrillers:

• The Book of Air and Shadows (2007)
• The Forgery of Venus (2008)
• The Good Son (2010)
• The Return (September 2013)

Young Adult:

• The Witch’s Boy (2005)

“Acharya’s keen twinkling eyes surveyed the boy through a comfortable silence that to him was always a form of conversation. Adi turned nervously towards his father and raised his eyebrows. Archarya’s eyes then slowly became lost and distant. “Of all human deformities, he said softly, ‘genius is the most useful.’ ”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman  (JAN 2, 2011)

Manu Joseph’s debut book is seriously good – a wickedly funny, surprisingly warm and stunningly stylish satire that strikes its target over and over again, taking the reader along for a rollicking ride.

The book introduces us to two equally willful men with runaway egos: Arvind Acharya, a bigger-than-life astrophysicist at the prestigious Institute of Theory and Research, a would-be Nobel candidate who is rumored to have been banned from the Vatican for whispering something untoward in the pope’s ear. The other is his personal assistant, Ayyan Mani, a Dalit (or “untouchable”) who is “smarter than the average bear” (in this case, the average Dalit) with an IQ of 148.

Ayyan, his wife Oja, and their rather geeky son Adi live in a large gray tenement teeming with humanity, “born into poverty that no human should have to endure” but Ayyan has his dreams and the wiles to achieve them. He and his half-deaf son play a secret little game: Ayyan feeds Adi some high-level math and physics answers to amaze and astound his teachers. At the same time, he spins flattering stories about his son that he pays a reporter to run. The result: 10-year-old Adi is soon hailed as a boy-genius throughout the community…and indeed, the nation.

Meanwhile, his boss Arvind is engrossed in his own quixotic project: an attempt to prove that extraterrestrial life is raining down on Earth through a “Balloon Project.” By doing so, he sets himself at odds with underlings, jealous scientists who are far more interested in searching for life in outer space with a “Giant Ear.” And to make matters more complicated, an incredibly attractive astrobiologist – the Institute’s first female scientist – has her cap set for the much-older Arvind and is ready, willing and able to betray him.

Both Ayyan and Arvan are involved in high-stake games: Ayyan is embroiled in the “bewitching life of creating a whole myth” with his son to save himself from “the tired face of Oja, the despondence of Adi, the thousand eyes that gaped vacantly in the grey corridors…” At the same time, the egotistical Arvind is aspiring beyond his capabilities with his belief in a souped-up theory.

As these two egos meet – as this “odd couple” becomes more symbiotic – Manu Joseph weaves an amazingly compelling story. We laugh as Ayann Mani writes his daily “quote of the day,” falsified sayings from the likes of Einstein or Newton that tweak the narcissistic Brahmins. Or when Arvind sets himself up against the “Big Bang” theory, which he considers a Western plot because “the Vatican wanted a beginning.”

Yet throughout, Ayyan, Arvan and the others who inhabit the world of Serious Men are not treated merely with humor, but with compassion – from status-crazy youngsters to pushy nuns, from May-December romances to predictable bureaucrats. The result is a pitch-perfect look at two evenly-matched compatriots who define their lives on their own terms and play for the highest stakes. If this is Mr. Joseph’s debut, I can only imagine how fabulous his next book will be.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 18 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (August 2, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Manu Joseph
EXTRAS:	ExcerptHindu Best Fiction Award 2010
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another satire from the region that we enjoyed: A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif

Bibliography:

• Serious Men (August 2010)

“You only saw a bit of danger and intrigue and thought you would like to have it for yourself. But you must open your eyes to the rest of it. To the tedium and the hard work and the dedication it requires. You cannot play at being a detective, Julia. To do so demeans the work of one who does it seriously.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky  (DEC 26, 2010)

Sometimes, marriage is the kiss of death for a series in which a man and woman quarrel incessantly but finally realize that they are essential to one another’s happiness. Fortunately, the union of Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane enhances rather than detracts from Deanna Raybourn’s Dark Road to Darjeeling. The author keeps us engrossed by removing her characters from their comfort zone and placing them in a lovely Indian tea garden amid scenic mountains and valleys; making it clear that although Julia and Brisbane remain passionately in love (as we are reminded incessantly every time they repair to their bedchamber), they still have issues about Julia’s habit of courting danger; and providing supporting roles for Julia’s sarcastic siblings, Portia and Plum, Julia’s grumpy maid, Morag, and Portia’s sweet-natured friend, Jane, who is widowed and expecting her first child.

The year is 1889, and after a nine-month honeymoon during which Julia and her husband explored “the most remote corners of the Mediterranean,” the newlyweds are ready to go home. Portia has other ideas. She drags Julia to India to visit Jane, whose husband, Freddy Cavendish, recently died in India under mysterious circumstances. Not only does Portia want to spend time with Jane, whom she adores, but she wants to determine if Freddy died from natural causes. Naturally, Julia likes nothing more than a good mystery and she wastes no time sticking her nose into the affairs of every individual in the vicinity. Julia learns that quite a few people, including Jane herself, had sound reasons to want Freddy dead. During the course of the narrative, Julia’s husband, who makes his living as a private enquiry agent, clashes with someone from his past, liaisons are formed between unlikely couples, and the March siblings all evolve emotionally in ways that they never could have foreseen.

Dark Road to Darjeeling is an uproarious, lively, perfectly paced, and thoroughly entertaining romp, filled with witty dialogue and offbeat characters. They include a perpetually inebriated physician, a female photographer named Cassandra Pennyfeather who is unabashedly avant-garde, a “White Rajah” who, on the surface, seems to be “a darling old gentleman,” Freddy’s stern and formidable spinster aunt, Camellia Cavendish, and a young boy with a zeal for scientific experimentation. There is even a man-eating (or possibly woman-eating) tiger roaming the neighborhood. The ladies are instructed to shoot themselves rather than allow the tiger to tear them limb from limb. Red herrings abound and nothing, we soon ascertain, can be taken at face value.

As if all this were not enough to keep us turning pages, Raybourn touches on a few serious themes, such as the role of women in British society; the treatment of servants and others of the “lower classes;” and the inequities in the laws of inheritance. Julia’s brother, Plum, brings up a particularly telling point when he says of himself, Julia, and Portia, “We are dilettantes, but never virtuosos. We have talent, but because of father’s money we are never forced to use that talent to drive us.” Julia comes to realize that, as a well-to-do and pampered daughter of an earl, she must find more productive ways to fill her time. Otherwise, she may wind up spending her days as little more than a decorative ornament, unhappy and unfulfilled.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 56 readers
PUBLISHER:	Mira; Original edition (October 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Deena Raybourn
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Silent on the Moor Silent in the Sanctuary Silent in the Grave

Bibliography:

• Silent in the Grave (January 2007)
• Silent in the Sanctuary (January 2008)
• Silent on the Moor (March 2009)
• Dark Road to Darjeeling (October 2010)

“Shyamji, why don’t you sing classical more often? Why don’t you sing fewer ghazals and sing more at classical concerts?” Shyamji was always impeachably polite. He now turned to study the Managing Director’s son’s face with curiosity, as if he were reminded again of the boy’s naivety. “Baba,” he said (his tone was patient), let me establish myself so that I don’t have to think of money any more. Then I can devote myself completely to art. You can’t sing classical on an empty stomach.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (SEP 23, 2010)

The Immortals is a tale of two families: one luxuriating in a new world of corporate affluence and the other getting by on the old world of musical tradition. Together, they are joined by a “common, day-to-day pursuit of music.”

Music is the thread that ties this book together, and Amit Chaudhuri knows his stuff. He is, himself, a composer and musician and the meticulous detail and grand amount of exposition is clearly written by a man who has inhabited the world he creates.

This is a populous novel; it’s easy for the reader to lose his or her way in the first 50 pages, and indeed, in other places in the book when many characters are introduced and exotic musical terms are freely used. It demands close attention to the text. Those who surrender to the text will be rewarded with lush language and a complex emotional landscape.

The key character, Nirmalya Sengupta, is the teenage scion of a corporate father who enjoys all the trappings of the Indian nouveau riche. Not unlike many teenagers, he is trying to find his own way with the judgmental zeal that only the privileged can exude. With his long hair, grungy goatee, torn kurta and earmarked copy of Will Durant’s Story of Philosophy, Nirmalya is a purist: he dreams of classical music and softly condemns his mother Mallika, an excellent singer, for “selling out” to commerce over art. He is also more than a little naïve and spoiled: “Nirmalya had never known want; and so he couldn’t understand those who said, or implied, they couldn’t do without what they already had.”

His guru Shyamji, is from the Brahmin caste; his father was a famous classical musician, but he has squandered his artistic inheritance by tutoring and enabling the dreams of the wealthy. Nirmalya might claim he “sold his soul” by straddling the two distinct worlds of classical versus popular music. The juxtaposition of Nirmalya and Shyamji sets up an intriguing premise: who should be granted more respect, the “upper born,” artistically-gifted guru or the newly-wealthy who are now, for all intents and purposes, his employers? What is the relationship between commerce and art and how does it “play out” in reality?

Mallika – Nirmalya’s mother — ponders this diachtomy: “Mallika had wanted recognition, that pure woebegone desire for a reward for her gift had accompanied her life from the start but never overwhelmed it; but she hadn’t wanted to dirty her hands in the music world; she’s wanted to preserve the prestige of being, at once, an artist and the wife of a successful executive. She knew, with an uncomplicated honesty, what her worth was; to what extent would she compromise or to which level stoop if others pretended not to.”

There are flaws. The greatest is that at times, the demand for familiarity with Indian music – particularly classical music – can be disconcerting or even downright frustrating to the uninformed reader. A glossary or short introduction would have been immensely helpful. Still, The Immortals is a fascinating look at the Bombay of 30 years ago — a Bombay that existed in pre-boom India. Most of all, it’s a meditation on how – or if – art and commerce interconnect through insightful observations that are both precise and graceful.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 6 readers
PUBLISHER:	Vintage (September 21, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Amit Chaudhuri
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More fiction for music lovers : Nocturnes by Kazoa Ishiguro The Rose Variations by Marisha Chamberlain

Bibliography:

• A Strange and Sublime Address (1991) Betty Trask Prize
• Afternoon Raag (1993)
• Freedom Song: Three Novels (1999)
• A New World (2000)
• Real Time: Stories and a Reminiscence (2002)
• The Immortals (2009; September 2010 in US)

Nonfiction:

• D. H. Lawrence and ‘Difference’: Postcoloniality and the Poetry of the Present (2003)
• Orange Flags (2003)
• Clearing A Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture (2008)

“Puri considered the doctor’s stern warning as he sank his teeth into another hot, crispy pakora and his taste buds thrilled to the tang of salty batter, fiery chili and the tangy red chutney in which he had drowned the illicit snack. He derived a perverse sense of satisfaction from defying Dr. Mohan’s orders.

Still, the fifty-one-year-old detective shuddered to think what his wife would say if she found out he was eating between meals — especially “outside” food that had not been prepared by her own hands (or at least by one of the servants).

Keeping this in mind, he was careful not to get any incriminating grease spots on his clothes. And once he had finished his snack and disposed of the takeout box, he washed the chutney off his hands and checked beneath his manicured nails and between his teeth for any telltale residue. Finally he popped some sonf into his mouth to freshen his breath.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (APR 21, 2010)

Vish Puri, founder of the Most Private Investigators Ltd., and something of an Indian Hercule Poirot, supports his comfortable lifestyle with matrimonial background checks, but every once in a while something more worthy of his talents comes along. Puri is often compared to Sherlock Holmes for the acuity of his observation, but Puri disdains the comparison, preferring to cite 2,000 year-old Indian detecting principles – Holmes’ inspiration.

A decade earlier, Puri and his wife moved to the rural fields outside of Delhi to escape the sprawl and pollution of the city. But the New India has caught up to them. Housing developments, factories and office buildings have gobbled the farmers’ fields and roads criss-cross the land spewing smog. Every morning Puri gives his precious chili plants a bath and the next morning they are coated in grime once again.

In this first appearance, Puri, dressed to the nines, munching mouth-watering hot and crunchy snacks, and bemoaning the breakdown of society, comes to the aid of a lawyer who has just been accused of raping and murdering his servant girl.

The evidence is thin – even proof that the girl is dead is shaky. But the lawyer has angered some powerful people. He’s a crusading type who has taken on corruption in government and refuses to be bribed or silenced. The case gives Hall a chance to explore India’s vast, hilariously, stunningly complex bureaucracy and its attendant miasma of corruption.

Puri has his methods of cutting the tangles of red tape, however, and help from his team of loyal and quick-witted assistants as well as his tenacious and even quicker-witted mother (looking into an attempted shooting of her son) and unflappable wife, keep things moving at home and throughout the city.

Though the plot is entertaining the real fun here is the eccentric Puri; his appreciation of spicy – very spicy – food, his strong opinions, his various eccentricities and his ingenuity and resourcefulness.

Hall, a British journalist, captures the contradictions and hugeness of modern India with its mania for growth and its love of tradition, its new rich and ever poor, its giddy wealth and grinding, shocking poverty.

Charming, witty, clever and atmospheric, Hall’s foray into fiction is a winner.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 155 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster; 1 edition (April 20, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Tarquin Hall
EXTRAS:	Publisher’s interview with Tarquin Hall Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another detective story set in India: Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra

Bibliography:

• The Case of the Missing Servant (2009)
• The Case of the Man Who Died Laughing (2010)
• The Case of the Deadly Butter Chicken (2012)
• The Case of the Love Commandos (2013)

Non-fiction:

• To the Elephant Graveyard (2001)
• Salaam Brick Lane: A Year in the New East End (2006)

“The girl moved like water itself, unthinkingly toward the darkening horizon. She was only sixteen, or maybe seventeen. A brilliant red sari clung to her body. Tangled hair lashed at her face.”

Book Review:

Review by Lynn Harnett (MAR 31, 2010)

It’s 1960 and partitioned India is rife with factions, superstitions, violence and oppression.

The Mittal household, living in a rambling bungalow in the old colonial enclave of Malabar Hill, Bombay, presents a comfortable, serene exterior to the world. But behind the walls, amid the remnants of British raj furnishings and “the aroma of sandalwood, peppers and fried cumin,” the extended family seethes with desire and discontent.

At the center of the story is Pinky, still more child than woman at 13. Left motherless at partition, she was claimed as an infant by Maji, the formidable matriarch in a white widow’s sari, who rules the household although crippled with obesity. Pinky may be Maji’s favorite but her aunt Savita despises the child. “She’s not your sister, she would admonish her sons whenever Maji was out of earshot, she’s your destitute cousin. Remember that.”

Savita’s husband, Maji’s only son, Jaginder, head of the family shipbreaking business, sneaks out every night to get drunk. The twins, 14, are rambunctious and teasing though not cruel. But the eldest boy, Nimish, 17, has always been kind to Pinky. Too kind, perhaps.

Pinky is devastated to discover late one night that her cherished Nimish is in love with the girl next door, a girl even more sheltered than Pinky. In her anger, hoping Nimish will come out of his room to stop her, Pinky unbolts the door to the children’s bath, a door that has been strictly bolted every night of her life.

Though at first no one else in the house is aware, Pinky has unleashed the unsettled ghosts of a tragedy that shattered the household 13 years earlier. Disbelieved by everyone, menaced by the ghost no one else perceives, Pinky gropes for understanding – hoping to appease the ghost with empathy.

But the ghost is having none of that and as the torrential monsoon breaks the stifling heat, tensions within the family – at first lulled by the cooling rains – reach a shattering point.

Agarwal, a native of Bombay, now living in Los Angeles, sets the arc of this debut novel to the rhythm of India’s climate. The parched heat strains tempers, and the still air lies heavy with secrets. The first monsoon rains bring giddy relief, renewing married love and awakening forbidden young hopes before the relentless wetness seeps into every crack and corner of the place, sprouting mold and hastening decay.

Her prose is rich with aromas and colors and tactile sensations. The magic realism of spirits and superstitions festoon the daily routines of everyday. Women’s lives are homebound and prescribed by virtue and duty (until cursed by widowhood), but men’s bonds, though less visible, are nearly as restricting.

The characters grow as the novel progresses, particularly those who seem at first to be almost background – the servants, especially Parvita, a formidable woman who has already survived more than most. And Agarwal branches out to include the sprawling city – from the Christian bars to the stultifying slums (where the shipbreaking company’s workers live) and the terrifying underworld of criminals and mystical tantriks.

A captivating, transporting novel.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 20 readers
PUBLISHER:	Soho Press (April 1, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Lynn Harnett
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Shilpa Agarwal
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Another ghost story: The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Bibliography:

• Haunting Bombay (April 2009)