This book was everywhere for awhile, so I’m late to the party but at least I made it! I am a sucker for Indian diaspora books (and books about India in general)- I couldn’t get enough post-colonial lit in college and it left me with an enduring affection for female Indian authors (The God of Small Things still looms large in my foundational reads). Which is to say: I was excited to read this before I had any idea what it was about.
The plot follows Nikki, a twenty-something college drop-out who has moved out from the house where her mother and sister still live and is eking out a living tending bar. She knows that she doesn’t want to finish her law degree like her father wanted her too, but she’s drifting as she figures out exactly what she wants to do with her life while being pressured by her mother to go back to school. The action kicks off when Nikki reluctantly agrees to post a marriage ad on the Southall gurdwara’s (Sikh temple) message board for her sister, Mindy. Nikki thinks Mindy is crazy for looking for a ‘traditional’ rather than a ‘love’ marriage but Mindy thinks her odds are better in Southall, which is a south London suburb with a high Indian diaspora population.
While she is posting the message, Nikki sees a job posting looking for a woman to teach creative writing to Indian women at the gudrwara. It twigs her feminist leanings and college writing skills, so she replies and gets the gig. Once a week she travels to Southall and meets with a group of largely middle-aged and older Indian widows. What starts initially as writing and English language lessons quickly turns into ‘creative writing’ with the widows wanting to write and share racier erotic stories. Nikki becomes their scribe and the women grow closer over time.
I had thought that this is where the story was going to stay- a relationship-building novel of women sharing stories, learning more about each other, growing community, etc. It does not! Instead it turns into a thriller, with Nikki inquiring into a mysterious death of a young woman in the community. There is some foreshadowing for this plot-turn, but I didn’t get that from the book description, so it was still surprising to me how much of the end of novel this twist occupied.
I didn’t dislike this, but I did feel like it was trying to be too many things- I would have been satisfied without the mystery twist, and instead more of the focus on Nikki and her family, or the relationships that develop between the women, with the erotic story angle as the quirky hook that holds it all together. There was plenty to unpack in Nikki’s family dynamics (she had a strained relationship with her father at the time he unexpectedly passed away; she and her sister love each other but have very different opinions of what a good life, including being a good daughter, mean; Nikki and her mother have a prickly relationship that I think wraps up too neatly and without the legwork that makes it believable).
Even though I wasn’t expecting The God of Small Things-level love, my expectations were too high. If you go in thinking ‘chit-lit thriller, Indian dressing’ you’ll be better prepared.