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Summary: Family Secrets
Review: "It's like an earthquake, Isn't it? One minute everything is steady, and the next, without warning, It's all fallen down." Desirable Daughters carries the reader into Indian culture by setting up a compelling family secret that, as secrets often do, comes back to nip at the heels of one sister. Tara, an Indian woman living in San Francisco, has to rediscover her place in the world when she gives up her family's traditional model and divorces her husband. A young man turns up and says he's the son Tara's sister gave up for adoption years ago. When Tara tries to learn the truth from her family, she is caught between cultures again--her family diverts, denies and glosses over the mere possibility of the sister's youthful indiscretion. But is the son really who he says he is? The family's refusal to discuss the past may lead to danger for Tara and her son--but the crisis causes Tara to connect with her family in new ways. And Tara's interest in the past leads her to learn about her namesake, Tara Lata, a half-mythologized ancestor who was a freedom fighter for India's independence. Tara sorts out her current relationships with her son and ex-husband, by reconnecting with her past. Through Tara's eyes, Mukerjee gives a good, and often humorous, view into modern and traditional Indian culture. For Tara, and the reader, both, the family turns from irritatingly superficial, to fully realized characters.
Rating: 
Summary: A Five for Exposure to Diversity and Different Culture
Review: A four because I am so ignorant that I could not grasp the cultured references and could not find footnotes to help me get past my ignorance. I am the type of reader that has to have an intriguing beginning a few pages between that keep me interested, a plot that holds me for the middle, a few pages to hold me until the end and a soft, mild, or strong ending. I think the author was attempting this and for this a four point five is well deserving. I have more to read on this one but feel that I am enjoying it for it being different than the normal so called best seller. Books also enjoying; 'The Secret Life of Bees' by Sue Monk Kidd and 'Hemorrhage in My Head' by NMR
Rating:
Summary: Well worth diving into
Review: Although I had a little trouble getting started with this story, it's well worth the effort. Mukherjee combines the often-told story of a woman dealing with the clash of American and Indian cultures, with a mystery/suspense tale of murder, false identities, and hidden pasts. It's well worth sticking with and I look forward to reading more of her works.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: As other reviews make very clear, this is a novel about cultural displacement, not knowing where one fits in. The premise is interesting and I think the novel is culturally instructive. While I felt excited at the opening of the novel, my enthusiasm waned about halfway through, due to the wooden characterization. I very much wanted to feel sympathy, or liking for the characters, but I could not. It isn't that I wanted them to be "nice", but that I wanted them to be fuller, more psychologically real. The internal plight of the main character, Tara, simply did not come through. In the end, the cultural instruction for me failed somewhat as a result. If you are looking for cultural analysis, a sketch of the Indian community in America, you may enjoy this. If you are looking to gain deeper psychological insights about cultural displacement, alienation etc., I would suggest looking elsewhere.
While I admire the work, I was not moved by it, and I found it a chore to finish.
Rating:
Summary: Bharati Mukherjee interviewed on Fresh Air
Review: Bharati Mukherjee was interviewed on NPR Fresh Air on April 1, 2002. She gives a fascinating glimpse into her traditional family life in India contrasted with the new life she chose in the United States. In the interview, you will learn such things as after a two week courtship she married a fellow Iowa Writers Workshop student during lunch, upstairs in a lawyer's office, above a coffee shop. They are still married. She speaks with eloquence about topics ranging from arranged marriages, the women's movement, to racial discrimination...
Rating:
Summary: Definitely worth reading
Review: Bharati Mukherjee's "Desirable Daughters" is the eloquently described conflict between a woman's need to adhere to her parents old world traditions and her desire to be part of contemporary American culture. The narrator, Tara Chatterjee, is divorced after an arranged marriage to Bishwapriya (Bish) Chatterjee, the first son of a privileged Indian family and now a silicon valley billionaire in his own right. She is now a single parent raising their son, Rabi, in an ethnically mixed San Francisco neighborhood. Having embraced the American culture of her contemporaries Tara is living with Andy, a Hungarian, Bhuddist,ex biker,and carpenter. She is at peace with her existence although she finds it difficult to explain her Calcutta roots to her American friends and to describe her American lifestyle to her Bengali parents. Tara returns to her home one day to find her son with a stranger claiming to be her nephew, the son of her oldest sister and a classmate from their childhood. The story he tells is compelling, but there is also the possibility that it is a scam. In order to unravel the mystery of this affair she is forced to confront her sisters and to reassess her relationships and values in the face of possible danger to herself and those closest to her. The rich descriptions of Tara's Calcutta childhood and her involvement in the Indian American community complement the engaging tale, although at time these descriptions are too detailed and unecessarily delay the story. The conflicting philosophies of Tara and her sisters add to the character of the book and to our understanding of the plight of immigrant groups in our country. However "Desirable Daughters" is most effective as simply a compelling and thought provoking story.
Rating:
Summary: A stunning novel from a great writer
Review: Bharati Mukherjee's "Desirable Daughters" is a stunning novel that combines serious, literary exploration of issues of identity and ethinicity in a multi-cultural world with mystery, adventure and cutting social commentary. It has one of the all-time great opening chapters. But the main story, though it seems at first more mundane because of its contemporary setting, is ultimately just as compelling and rewarding. Drawing on her own experience as a member of a Hindu Brahmin family who has successfully spanned cultures, Mukherjee introduces readers to a world that most Americans know not at all. This aspect of the novel I found to be fascinating, while the mystery that perks along in the background makes "Desirable Daughters" a real page-turner. By the end, I literally couldn't put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting for culture, poor writing
Review: I am a fan of Mukherjee's _Jasmine_, a much shorter and more controlled piece of writing. I heard about her newest book while watching Bill Moyers's _NOW_ a few weeks ago and rushed to the library because of the effusive praise he gave. Unfortunately, I was quickly disappointed. With the exception of a delightful first chapter, which situates the context of the plot in a rich local legend, I found the rest of the book poorly written. The characters are drawn in an amateurish fashion (more telling than showing), the plot is very baggy, and the prose has no remarkable qualities. The one redeeming feature of the book is that it reveals a great deal about what it means to be a modern female Brahmin originally of Calcutta. The novel's three sisters, situated in San Francisco, New Jersey, and Bombay, together offer an image of paths such women have taken in recent years. Since I plan to travel extensively in India, I finished the book to see what I could learn culturally. Had I not wanted the education, I would have returned the book to the library before the halfway point.
Rating:
Summary: Our book group recommends it, but with reservations
Review: I am the moderator for a Washington, D.C. literature discussion group, and am writing to share our thoughts on the book. With one strong exception, group members liked the book and would recommend it to others. The consensus was that it was well written, some parts were laugh-out-loud funny, and those who have read other Indian writers might recognize Desirable Daughters within that post-colonial style.
We all agreed, however, that the author may have covered too much territory on the immigration story -- entrepreneurship, religion, education, parenting, cultural values, gender and patriarchy, class, Western vs. East Asian ideology, etc. etc. There was sooo much there that one person pointed out that it seemed to be more a collection of short stories than a unified novel. Another person suggested that a strong editor could have helped her better narrow her focus to a key storyline (even though we disagreed on which of those story lines would have been the best read).
The multiple stories also meant that there was weak character development. All of us did not like the "illegitimate son" story introduced by the Christopher Dey character. It read like a poorly scripted "whodunit." Further, new characters appeared in the book simply to introduce a subject matter, like homosexuality or the role of the police in immigrant communities. There was no denying that the writing was compelling -- I particularly enjoyed the introduction of the Tree Bride, a character thread that she has continued into a just-released book of the same title. However, many of those threads were not neatly tied together in the end, including the thin thread tying together the Tree Bride-Tara and the modern day Tara.
In summary, Desirable Daughters is a good read, if you read it as a collection of enjoyable vignettes and do not place too much emphasis on deeply plumbed characters.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written
Review: I was extremely disappointed in this book. In a time when young Indian authors are showcasing their literary talents, this was a major setback. Characters are superficial, dialogue was immature and the story was unbelievably contrived and silly. It was chosen as our book club selection and 7 out of 7 rated this as one of the worst books we've ever read in our 8 years of book club. I'm still trying to figure out what Ms. Mukherjee and the publishers were thinking when she allowed this to be published. If you're interested in this genre of books, read Rohint Mistry, Mohsin Hamid, Arundhati Roy. They are amazing storytellers!
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