Rating: 
Summary: Desirable Daughters
Review: Steeped in Indian (specifically Brahmin) culture and legend, this story of 3 sisters is "narrated" by the youngest of them, Tara. Having grown up in Calcutta in the strictest of Brahmin upper-class households, the three sisters each find their own niche in the world, be it in the homeland or in the more modernized setting of America. The main idea of the story revolves around Tara's life, and everything she's ever believed to be true about her family, being turned upside-down by the appearance of a young man who claims to be a close relative. Tara suspects he has underhanded motives and is determined to find the truth. In her journey to do so, she becomes reacquainted with the sisters who have remained so aloof from each other even through their regular contact. The plot branches off into another secret, this time one held by Tara's own son, and delves into her relationships in general which strengthen considerably when she is faced with an element of danger she must try to free herself of. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Desirable Daughters is, without a doubt, elegantly written which is to be expected of an English professor such as author Bharati Mukherjee. Unfortunately, the story itself is heavily overshadowed by the powerful lesson on culture and the overly-long background descriptions of each character. At any given point in time, the reader can become lost in a sea of information that wasn't necessarily required for the plot to succeed. Had the book been a non-fiction one based solely on Brahmin life and legend, it would have been excellent indeed. Since it was meant to be a fictional story with a thread of suspense and mystery, however, it was somewhat of a disappointment. Any suspense that may have built up was quickly drowned by yet another in-depth look into the inner workings of one of the characters. Bharati Mukherjee is an amazing author and the reader is given a brilliant and fascinating look into a world they may otherwise never have known. Those facts are indisputable, but this particular book didn't have the balance needed to make it a successful piece of fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Snapshot of a Culture
Review: Tara, the main character, is not entirely likeable at first. She tries to come across as a rebel who has defied her cultural traditions by leaving her wealthy, good-looking husband, yet she is appalled at the thought that her sister, in her youth, had a child out of wedlock with-- gasp-- a Christian. And she still seems to look down on members of lower castes and employ some small prejudices that a truly progressive person would have long since put aside. The point of the book seems to be that she is trying, little by little, to break out of these mindsets. The things she discovers about her sister's past help her to continue opening up to a wider world. The message you might get is that sometimes personal evolution can come about from dealing with something thrust upon you from the outside world as much as from your own decisions and actions. Tara is contrasted with her oldest sister, who insists on denying that she ever had the child, and whose whole world is based solely on appearances.
The book could have been more enjoyable if she had managed to pull off a little more tension in the suspenseful parts of the story. Her prose was enjoyable nonetheless and the story was an interesting snapshot of a culture that is different from mine. I learned a lot about what it is to be an Indian in the US and what it is to be a Brahmin in the modern world.
Several of the other Amazon.com reviewers have been disturbed by the lack of political correctness. I'd rather be given a more accurate portrayal than have any unpleasantness glossed over in the name of PC. Politically incorrect novels can be the most thought-provoking.
This was the first of Bharati Mukherjee's works that I've read and I'm looking forward to reading more.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your time.
Review: The author of this book has a poor and boring writing style. The story had the potential to be enlightening, but the author did not effectively pull it off. This is definitely the worst book I've read in the past 2 years.
Rating:
Summary: Unconvincing and disappointing plots
Review: The only reason I finished this book is hoping there might be an interesting and surprising ending that makes sense for all the previous, disjointed threads -- the desirable daughters' high life in india, the attempted extortion/murder, the shady life Didi lead, etc. The ending is more disappointing than the plots lead to it, and makes even less sense.
The characters and their life seem to be "made up", inconsistent and unconvincing. For example, Didi's life is portrayed as an indian "diva" among the affluent Indian American community, but she is practically a sales girl for the jewlers and apperal merchants. I also don't see the echoing between the life of modern day Tara and the ancient tree-bride Tara, yet the author seems to place an emphasize on strong boundage between the two Tara's.
It is just a very strange book.
Rating:
Summary: Oversold
Review: This book, reviewed TWICE by the New York Times, was a stunning disappointment. Ms Mukherjee writes as though caught in the early twentieth century-producing pages of plodding, repetitive descriptions, and emphatic references to character traits without ever showing those traits in motion. This book seems to want to attach itself to current fashionable writing, with its themes of Silicon Valley wealth and the son-who-turns-out-to-be-gay, and there's nothing wrong with writing about what people are interested in, but give me a break!! This is a first draft of something that might have become quite interesting if the narrator were more self-reflective, less a stick figure. I would take anything written by Chitra Divakaruni over this book any day.
Rating: 
Summary: A Triumph for Mukherjee
Review: This clear-eyed tale of Tara Chatterjee begins in an unlikely place, a forest lit by oil lamps in 1879 as a five-year old bride is led on a palanquin to marry a tree, an ingenious ceremony designed to protect her honor. It soon becomes clear that the narrator of this strange event (and the novel as a whole) is Tara Chatterjee, a divorced single mother living in San Francisco who was named after the Tree-Bride. Tara comes from a prestigious Calcutta family, the Bhattacharjees, the youngest daughter of three, and can trace her ancestry back to the five-year old bride. Now a school aide living with a Buddhist carpenter, Tara's life goes against everything she was raised to be. The only constant is her emotional devotion to her family. When a suspicious man shows up claiming to be the illegitimate son of her oldest sister, however, Tara's understanding of both her sister and the world is shaken. Danger and secrets lurk everywhere, and Tara finds herself alone in the middle of a crowded society as she searches for both truth and security. This complicated novel examines with startling honesty the prejudices. ambitions, familial ties, and the culture of India primarily as they manifest themselves in contemporary America. Mukherjee accomplishes this tapestry through the likeable, trustworthy voice of Tara. The result is an intimate portrait of a woman in transition. Mukherjee throws out exoticism for candidness, relying not on lyrical prose but on insight. For these reasons, DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS is a refreshing addition to the canon of contemporary Indian literature. The major flaw of this novel is the contrived full-circle ending. Mukherjee is absolutely brilliant up to this point, and manages to pull off potentially melodramatic material in a sensitive, believable manner. Until the disappointing final section, I would have ranked this book as one of my all-time favorites. The momentum and the emotional drive is lost, and the reader is left with little to hang onto except the final line. Still, what comes before is stunning in its execution. With its page-turning danger and vibrant description, this novel should appeal to readers who enjoy both plot and thematic depth to their fiction. Especially if you enjoy the works of Jhumpa Lahiri and Anita Desai, you're likely to find yourself engrossed in this wonderful novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Perfect For TV
Review: This was my first introduction to Bharati Mukherjee whom I discover lives in my neck of the woods, the S.F. Bay Area. Other reviewers have admirably summed up the story of this book and I will not go into the details. However, I have a very different point of view than many of the reviewers. I found this book to be on the same level as most movies made for television. The type of shallow dialogues, insight, and, formulated writing, bored me to no end. I wound up feeling that this is some rich woman's way of involving herself in the arts. I appreciated a lot of the cultural play that goes on within Indian families and a lot of the flavor that is used to describe India and its people, but, this story bordered on meaninglessness to me. This type of writing should not be classed in the same genre as some of the other great Indian and Indian descended writers such as Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, and, Salman Rushdie, who are all geniuses in their own way, and, who are writing literature which will be classics for coming generations. I found little depth of emotion and much too much yuppie identified cliches that is so common to the S.F. area. Go deeper Ms. Mukherjee. Much deeper.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This was the first of Bharati Mukherjee's books that I read. It was a wonderful book and her writing style is beautiful. I've read the other reviews and some have seen her extensive descriptions of the charactor's religious and cultural backgrounds as negative. I, on the other hand, bought the book for those very descriptive backgrounds and was not dissapointed! As the American/caucasion wife to an Indo-American Bengali Brahmin and the mother of our 4 mixed heritage children, I found the book an enormous education into my husband's family heritage and culture. I gained invaluable insite into the complexities of mixing 2 very different worlds and doing so while maintaining your sanity! I've since read Bharati Mukherjee's other books and have been equally excited and pleased with each one! Instead of dry - non-fictional - text-book type reading, her books have given me the opportunity to learn and explore in the more pleasurable and even more insightful format of a beautifully narrated fictional story, gracefully intwined with religous, historical and cultural history lessons.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely dissapointed
Review: While the author tries to make the book appealing to the immigrant Indian woman, she ends up with too many directions in one book. The amount of gossip and superficiality is way too much and as she keeps introducing a zillion characters through the narrative, none of them seem to interest the reader.
Inspite of being a person who enoys literature based on immigrant themes, i was extremely dissapointed after skimming (Not even able to read) the book.
Rating: 
Summary: An absorbing novel of stunning contrasts.
Review: With one of the all-time great opening chapters, a traditional Hindu marriage of a five-year-old girl, Mukherjee establishes her themes, conflicts, and contrasts. Amidst the lyrical, atmospheric details of flickering oil lamps, the impenetrable jungle, banks of fog, and smoke from cooking fires, she inserts the singular detail of retching coughs from tuberculosis, suddenly shocking the reader and abruptly signaling that this is not a novel which will sugarcoat reality. And when the bride's and groom's families differ in interpreting the events which occur on the way to the ceremony and the bride ends up married to a tree, "It seems all the sorrow of history, all that is unjust in society and cruel in religion has settled on her." Tara Chatterjee, the main character and a descendant of the tree bride, is an orthodox Bengali Brahmin from a well-known Hindu family, someone who accepted without question the groom her father chose for her and who settled in the U.S. when he established a business in California. Now a woman in her mid-thirties residing in Atherton, California, she is divorced, raising her son alone, living with a red-haired biker, and teaching kindergarten. When a stranger, Christopher Dey, arrives at her house claiming to be the illegitimate son of one of her older sisters, she is shocked and forced to contend with the issues he raises, while facing possible dangers, as she tries to check out his story. The contrasts between life in Calcutta and Atherton, between her ex-husband and her lover, and between her traditional, protected life in India and her free and independent life in the U.S. are very obvious throughout, but as Tara deals with the complexities of Christopher Dey's appearance, we also see how tradition and family stories also guide her inner world, shape her responses, and affect both her views of the external world and her behavior within it--even after she has "changed worlds." At times the contrasts in Tara's life seem exaggerated and perhaps less realistic than they could be, with the dramatic plot and its violence somewhat at odds with the more subtle (and, to me, more interesting) internal conflicts she faces. The shocking climax, which causes Tara to reevaluate her connections to the past and plan for the future, brings the themes full circle, while leaving some of the details unresolved, a tantalizing reminder that only mortal time is linear--"Brahma time is circular."
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