Sunday, December 2, 2012

The Ghosts That Come Between Us by Bulbul Bahuguna

The Ghosts That Come Between Us by Bulbul Bahuguna

I'm on the fence about this one.  I received an advance reading copy and was initially anxious to read this.  I love reading stories set in exotic locales such as India.  In fact awhile ago I read a really wonderful book with a similar title, The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar that was also set in India. 

I was all in on this book.  Nargis is a young Indian girl who tells her story.  I became mesmerized by the viewpoint of this child.  The author had a very uncanny ability to submerse the reader into the life of the child.  I saw everything very clearly through her eyes.  As Nargis grew up so did how she spoke and reacted to life around her.  I was hooked. Even though they had very minor parts, the Bollywood actress named Dimple and Nargis' daughter whom she named Mandy, said this book was made for me.  Dimple, without the 'S' was my nickname in college and Mandy is the main character in my own novel, One Clown Short.

In every story something bad has to happen to give the main character an impactful event that will change their view of the world.  Nargis was the youngest child in a military family.  Her father controlled every aspect of the people around him.  Her mother retreated into her shell because of it.  For many reasons, religion, culture, the family of the nineteen sixties and seventies remained trapped in the father's clutches.

The pacing of the first half of the novel kept me interested.  But when Nargis left home to attend medical school in Russia, the story slowed to a crawl. She met and married an Indian boy she met in Russia.  By the end of the book, she's singing her husband's praises yet we know almost nothing about him.  He's never mentioned throughout her entire struggle to mend her relationship with her mother after her father's death.  And yet the conflict with her mother went on for years.  In fact the author dragged it on to the point I didn't care about it any more.  Sure, Nargis' father was a bad man.  But the child's voice I loved in the first half of the book, made me want to say 'grow up' when used to describe her adult battles.  Enough was enough.

The first half of this story, I loved.  The second half, I could have lived without.  It didn't resolve anything for me.  I don't think it resolved anything for Nargis either.  So maybe we're even.  On this one, I'll just have to stay on the fence.

1 comment:

  1. Due to misleading indexing and incorrect labeling, please remove the following tags: 'bulbul bahuguna' and 'The Ghosts that come between us'. Thank you.

    ReplyDelete

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