"Don't we all have to pay, no matter what we choose?" a young woman asks in "The Love of a Good Man," one of the remarkable stories in Chitra Divakaruni's beautifully crafted exploration of the tensions between new lives and old. In tales set in India and the United States, Divakaruni illuminates the transformations of personal landscapes, real and imagined, brought about by the choices men and women make at every stage of their lives.

"The Love of a Good Man" tells of an Indian woman happily settled in the United States who must confront the past when her long-estranged father begs to meet his only grandson. In "Mrs. Dutta Writes a Letter," which was selected for The Best American Short Stories 1999 and short-listed for a 1999 O. Henry Award, a widow, inadvertently eavesdropping, discovers that her cherished, old-fashioned ways are an embarrassment to her daughter-in-law. A young American woman joins a pilgrimage of women in Kashmir and, in the land of her ancestors, comes to view herself and her family in a new light in "The Lives of Strangers," Two women, uprooted from their native land by violence and deception, find unexpected comfort and hope in each other in "The Blooming Season for Cacti." And in the title story, a young woman turns to her painting and the wisdom of her grandmother for the strength to accept ther fiance's past when it arrives on her doorstep.

Whether Divakaruni is writing about the adjustments of immigrants to a foreign land or the accommodations families make to the disruptive differences between generations, she poignantly portrays the eternal struggle to find a balance between the pull of home and the alluring promise of change." (adlibris.se)

Bought because of it's lovely cover!

Fika

I'm on the lookout for books to read so when I passed Expresso House, on Drottninggatan 90, today, I took the opportunity to grab this book. Looking forward to reading it.

The cultural restrictions that make the characters in these stories suffer or live in bewilderment or obfuscation is to some degree unfamiliar to me. They seem very Indian. But it also makes me think about what limitations the Swedish, or perhaps the northern European, culture impose on me that I'm not aware of.
The cover of this book is really lovely.