A lyrical tale of two cousins growing up in India among the remnants of their family's shattered past and crumbling estate. Born on the same day, their lives are forever entwined. Each struggles for her own identity in the midst of the pressures of family and culture. The tale continues in The Vine of Desire.

I released this book by mail to another BookCrossing member, rubyblue, in the Netherlands. She will read and then release again.

I "found" this book in my mailbox. It was sent to me by Sashafoo from the States. I look forward to reading it, but don't expect to get to it for at least 2 weeks. I plan to release it when I'm finished reading it--see if I can find some tie-in for an appropriate place to leave it.

An excellent story, very well-written.

Today, I mailed the book to another Dutch BookCrosser, Zeldesse, who lives in Utrecht.

HA! Leuk boek in de post! Heb er hoge verwachtingen van. Ook bedankt voor de kopie van het artikel, een voorbeeld dat ik zeker ga volgen.

HA! Great book in the mail today. I have high expectations of it. Thanx as well for the newspaper article in the book, an example I will follow.

This book will be sent to yobero in The Hague when I finish it.

This is a fantastic book. Beautiful story, magical language. I cried while reading it (and when I finished it). It has it all.

One little minus: the story was not finished when the book was. I hate it when that happens. But the rest of the book makes up for it.

Today I received my first BC book in the mail, from Zeldesse. It looks very interesting and I will report back when I have read it. Probably I'll start it sometime over the weekend. Thanks Zeldesse!

I just finished reading this book and found it enjoyable. The writer captures the craziness that is India and also conveys the changes happening in the family that is described. As noted before the story is about two women, cousins, who grow up together and what they represent to their mothers, their fathers having died before they were born. The problem I found is that the "voices" of the women are nearly identical, Both women speak using rather flowery metaphores which no person would ever use in the spoken or thought language. One has to constantly check the chapter heading to see who is speaking at the moment.
But the relationships they enter into after having been almost forced to marry ring true and at the end there is a revelation which I had felt coming for a long time, and wasn't as surprised by as the writer would have liked.
Overall, a good read for the holidays.
I gave the book to my cousin's wife for her vacation on Terschelling this week.