Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee
(Format used for this read: Print–hardback)
I know I have said before that one of my favoritest places in the whole wide world is a used bookstore.
And I will keep saying it over and over and over again because it is one of MY LIFE TRUTHS.
Visiting a “new to me” used bookstore is one of my favorite things to do when I travel somewhere…just find one and get lost in the shelves for hours on end.
(and I ALWAYS leave with my arms heavier and my wallet lighter…TRUST.)
Okay..so that last sentence sounds kinda glamourous and like I actually GO PLACES a whole lot…let me be real clear here….I am not some jet setter and don’t get away much like AT ALL…. except for one trip every February with my bestie and usually one family vacay of some sort with the hubs and kiddos. 🤣
BUT…for those times I actually DO get a chance to go somewhere…ANYWHERE… (or when we move to a new place which happens every few years), I will ALWAYS ALWAYS find myself a local used bookstore to spend my time in.
Ask my bestie…who is NOT a reader like me…I have forced her into one on each annual excursion we take…no matter where we are!
THANK YOU AMBER YOU ARE THE BEST for sucking it up and letting your book nerd friend be in her paradise!
She never complains about it and goes willingly without bribes…but I think she REALLLYYY didn’t mind the time we discovered one in Asheville, NC that also sold champagne 🤣
This book I actually picked up last summer, when I had a quick weekend getaway to reunite with my NOVA girlfriends in D.C.
My two girlfriends (one of which could also spend HOUUURRRSSS perusing pages just like me—-Remember our trips to McKays together, Sara????Ahhhh good times) and I discovered the coolest little used bookstore right around the corner from our hotel.
My “to be read” pile of books on my bedroom bookshelf is forever QUITE large and somehow over the past year this one kept getting overlooked.
In the beginning of this whole pandemic quarantine situation, I dug thru my pile to see what treasures I had forgotten about…
I found this gem and I remembered discovering it in the “LAST CHANCE CLEARANCE” bin outside that precious local place…nothing beats a book for a couple bucks, yall…..ESPECIALLY when it looks like a REALLY GOOD ONE.
I was so happy to dig into these pages!
Here is the official summary:
“National Book Critics Circle Award winner Bharati Mukherjee has long been known for her elegant, evocative prose, and for drawing characters influenced by ancient customs and traditions, but also very much rooted in modern times.
In Desirable Daughters, Mukherjee has written a remarkable novel that is both the potrait of a traditional Brahmin family on the brink of its dissolution, and a contemporary American story of a woman who has outwardly broken with tradition, but still remains tied to her native country. In so doing, Mukherjee has also give us three extraordinary women–sisters–the “desirable daughters” of the title.
Tara, the story’s narrator, marries the perfect Indian man her parents select, then divorces him to carve out a life in San Francisco that in many ways is dazzingly Californian. She and her sisters, thought separated geographically and by radically different lifestyles, remain very close. When danger befalls Tara, it is to her sisters and to her ex-husband that she turns for comfort and renewal, and for help in resolving the mystery that threatens to destroy her and all her family.”
Like I said in my last post, it is taking me 600 forevers to get thru books right now….my normal snappy hare pace of reading has become one that is more like a dragging turtle pace.
But you know…slow and steady, right?
Pages still get read….my brain is just operating on way less cylinders than usual due to this isolation stuff so it takes me MUUCH longer now (or maybe it’s all the wine I’ve been consuming??? 🤣)
So this book—-which is not very long at all with 310 pages–took me WEEKS to get thru, yall.
You know what though?
It wasn’t just the quarantine brain farts that made that happen.
It was because I just did not really like this book.
Which makes me soooo sad because I REALLLLY wanted to like it!
And there were so many things IN IT that were REALLLY interesting!
I think though maybe there were TOO many things jammed into this story all at once…and I felt like the writing was a little “jumpy” and choppy.
I did not feel much flow between all the events in the story…plus I also did not feel like explanations of things or character developments had a gradual and natural feel to their progression.
This book went into the dynamics of traditional Indian familial culture, descriptions of various religions in the country, and also shows us a “behind the scenes” in depth look at the caste system in the traditional Hindu/ Bengali culture that Tara and her sisters grew up with….. and the biases, stereotypes and conflicts this has developed and ensured for many generations.
Tara’s immigrant experience of coming to America and trying to “assimilate” to the culture around her is addressed in her narrative…finding what parts of her culture and heritage she desperately wants to cling to and what parts she wants to let go of and never see again.
Tara also speaks of the dissolution of her marriage, the coming of age of her troubled son, her relationship struggles with her two sisters….and add in to all that a giant family secret is revealed just to her that could be detrimental to many lives if true…but if is revealed as fake could leave them all vulerable and in extreme and immediate danger.
There is love, fear, loss, hope, change, adjustment, mystery, education, drama….yall there were so so so so many things going on in those not so many pages.
Which usually all these things get a big ol’ two thumbs up stellar “YOU HAVE TO READ THIS NOW” kind of review from me.
But I don’t know yall….I just could NOT get into this book.
I just was NOT feeling it.
All of it felt really disconnected….like all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together…but it was in this weird, disjointed way…like the pieces were missing little corners here and there.
I may go back and reread this one day when the brain isn’t in the mode it’s in anymore…just to see if I feel the same.
While I do think there are lots of interesting bits on their own in this book, all together it just feels kinda like a scattered mess. 🤷♀️