Tamarind Woman

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful insight into Indian experiences
Review: I must confess that I didn't buy it at Amazon - I picked it up at a local [book] store that highlighted a set of new authors.

And as I started reading the book at their store, I just couldn't stop it....It was absolutely riveting....I had finished more than half of the book, before I realized that they were going to close the store in 10 minutes or so !!

This book is an absolute page-turner, if you are from India....The attention to small small details, from an Indian childhood are just amazing.

For instance, the author talks about the frequent transfers that many families of banks/railways/govt officers have....and all the accompanying problems of being a child in desh - frequent fights between parents, too much emphasis on God & religion, awkward circumstances of even getting an oil bath.....

This author has a remarkable memory and wraps it around the basic story of the daughter (in Canada) walking down her memory lane....at the same time, the mother (in Madras) has an entirely different view of the same circumstances !! (which you realize after completing the book.....)

Anyways, I would rate it as a must-buy, if you are an desi immigrant to North America....check it out.... and you realize that an author like Anita can package all your desh experiences in one nice book. (it also gave me a new insight of taking that package and stop worrying about all the awkward things of childhood....can press the delete button on the package!!)

Regards,

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful trip to a far away place
Review: I was sad to finish Tamarind Woman. It was that good. What struck me the most about this book is how alike we all are, even if we're from different parts of the world.

The author skillfully weaves the present and different versions of the past together. Aunty Vijaya from the book remarks that memories are never the same between two people--"They are pictures we create in our hearts you see...and each of us uses different sticks of chalk to colour them." The dialogue is excellent. The characters and relationships are varied and interesting. The descriptions are vivid--"...the tree was covered in blossoms, fiery with colour sucked from the sun."

As I was skimming the book to include a couple of my favorite sentences in this review, I caught myself re-reading it! I had to make myself stop. I'll recommend Tamarind Woman to my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, and I'm going to add Badami's second book The Hero's Walk to my wish list right now. If you enjoy learning about other cultures or if you're just interested in human relationships, you'll enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Can do away with all the foreign words
Review: Tamarind Woman is a beautiful story although the main plot has been done over and over in the past few years by a number of authors: relationship problems between mother and daughter. I think the author has overdone the use of foreign words (Indian words) and can easily push away certain readers. In one page alone, I counted six Indian words with no reference whatsoever to their meaning or origin. I love reading novels that take place in another country or are written by foreign authors being a foreigner myself but the use of words in Tamarind Woman was a little too much and can make the reader feel a bit lost in the journey.

Rating:
Summary: Well, the best books need a plot...
Review: The main problem with this novel is its complete lack of continuity. There's no plot, so the story consists almost entirely of flashbacks of the childhood through adulthood experiences of the two narrators (Saroja and Kamini, who are mother and daughter.)

TAMARIND WOMAN is not meant, however, to be a thrilling tale, but rather an in-depth look at the tangled relationships of family life -- especially the inextricable bond between mother and daughter -- and in this it does succeed. It is not deeply psychological or intellectual (perhaps thankfully), but it is warm and well written, and ultimately very worth reading, especially for Baudami's loving and skillful portrait of her Indian culture.

Rating:
Summary: Well, the best books need a plot...
Review: The main problem with this novel is its complete lack of continuity. There's no plot, so the story consists almost entirely of flashbacks of the childhood through adulthood experiences of the two narrators (Saroja and Kamini, who are mother and daughter.)

TAMARIND WOMAN is not meant, however, to be a thrilling tale, but rather an in-depth look at the tangled relationships of family life -- especially the inextricable bond between mother and daughter -- and in this it does succeed. It is not deeply psychological or intellectual (perhaps thankfully), but it is warm and well written, and ultimately very worth reading, especially for Baudami's loving and skillful portrait of her Indian culture.

Rating:
Summary: I'd give it 3.5 stars if I could.
Review: This story starts out by the daughter telling the story of her life with her family and her time in India. It goes between current times and past life..

Kamini lives with her mother, father and her sister Roopa in India. They spend alot of time changing places because her father is a Railway worker and they go to new towns so that her father can work. Kamini is a dreamer with a mouth.. She wants to go to college and not be married so young.

The second half of this book is about the mother and how her life came to be and her life with the girls. Saroja the mother spends most of her younger life going to school, till her father decides it is time for her to married and stop school. So Saroja marrys a man and spend the next few years with him having two daughers. After her daughter she still wants her freedom and does things that cause gossip.

When the girls move away and have grown up. Saroja decides to take a trip and see parts of India that she hasn't seen before.

This story is well written, but at times I felt it went into the details of each charactor too much.