As a national coming-of-age tale, the book is powerful. Suri, an Indian-born math professor, vividly depicts a nation striated by religion and caste, where tradition and modernity battle for dominance. Women, especially, are torn between custom and the cosmopolitan example of Indira Gandhi.
Meera is no exception. The daughter of a stubbornly secular, intellectual father and a proudly illiterate mother, she inherits her parents' obstinacy as well as their clashing worldviews. But while Suri's protagonist embodies the political tensions of her era, she lacks motivation of her own. She is almost purely reactive, by turns obeying and rebelling against the men who rule her world. Her only passion is an increasingly unsympathetic one: her smothering, semi-incestuous love for her son.
As a teenager, Meera impulsively seduces her older sister's working-class boyfriend, Dev. When they are caught, she demands to marry him, assuming her father will forbid it. Instead, he calls her bluff. "You may not realize this now, but you've just ruined your life," he tells her.
Suri admirably captures Meera's culture shock as she moves into her in-laws' devout, modest household, where the bride and the refrigerator that is part of her dowry are shown off to the neighbors with equal pride. Meera eventually finds kinship with Dev's mother and sister-in-law, if not with her husband. A scene in which the three women stuff themselves with food before a ritual fast is one of the book's most delightful.
